Nov. 13.
Yesterday this journal gave its usual salute to the departure of yet another Old China Hand for England and retirement. In the bald recital of the career of a Yangtze pilot who first came China aboard a tea clipper and is Heaving with the news of a less than three-day flight from London to Melbourne fresh in his _me-mary, there is little room to do Justice to the vigour and honest Virtue of the order to which he be-Tongs. Old China Hands, in the public mind, are so often axsociated with' casual political pronouncements at odd moments of stress that their real achievements fare apt to pass unnoticed. Old China Hands have their views on the present, in the light of their memory of the past. Those views are not without value but they are by far the least of the contrition made by their authors to the service of the community.
One day a gifted pen may do Justice to the Old China Hana Kipling's has done for those other pioneers East of Suez. The task may never be attempted. The Old China Hand belongs to no sine gle nation. He may be British, American, French or a Nether= lander—or any other of the numerous nationalities which find in China an outlet for the spirit of adventure. So, probably, the Old China Hand will never have his poet laureate or his chronicler. It will be a sad day for the world when men like him cease to bring their message of comradeship the outskirts of civilization. So, it is iting that even in the fugitive column of a daily newspaper, an opportunity should be taken to acclaim his worth. The real Old China Hand is no taipan—though taipans are proud to claim kinship with him—and is no professional explorer or conscientious lomat. He is justo bit of Europe or America carried on the wings of adventure to. strange places in the Far East. He treats the Yangtze, or the China coast for the Treaty Port as if it were Peckham Rye, the Champs Elysees Broadway. He does not see himself as a hero of romance or a plenipotentiary of Empire. He just takes China as he finds her; [and he does not even worry over~ much how she finds him.
Emplse builders receive honours the: e homeland—when they fare not being the targets for political backs. They are, however, beings apart. They often find it Jdificutt to reconcile the glamour: lot their active lives abroad with the " boredom and comparative Inegligence of the atmosphere _of retirement. Their honours re-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.