Works Commissioner is gradvally—and with careful thought of the feelings of the Treasurer—carrying out a scheme in mitigation of trafic congestion is too trivial to be noted. As for the Treasurer he is obviously of no account. When that Traffle Dicta-for is appointed a few millions here and there will, of course, be spent to make Shanghai safe for Speed-merchants. The payment of the bill is the Treasurer's funeral—or the ratepayer's. Then tore are the Police who have the foolish obsession that their main function isthe preservation of law and order they persist in regarding the armed robber, the kid-apper and the thief as people requiring more attention than that double-dyed criminal, the pede-strain, or the chauffeur less carjowner. They also are unable to find time constantly to be explaining the experiments which their traffic department is conducting to expedite the streams of vehicles passing through the narrow channels of Shanghai's streets, They. pretend that the mere revival of reposals which have been tested 2nd found wanting long ago is not sufficient to excite them to enthusiastic belief in the advent of a Daniel to judgment. They have dimly heard "of the parking trouble. They will casually agree more puzzling to them than to the geniuses who abound in bars, correspondence columns and other places where genius is truly expensive.
The possibilities of controversy jon these lines are great- If the Trafic Committee of the Council and other responsible authorities do not rashly intrude by attempting to take the matter seriously, there is no reason why traffic experts should not continue to enliven the daily routine of Shanghai's depressed condition till silver reaches a price at which Senator Pittman might be moved to protest. Provided the Treasurer keeps calm and wraps himself up in the white sheet of a blameless budget, the chickens will not come home to roost. So, by all means, let public-spirited critics emit to a Properly respectful audience, their electrical brain waves of what-fever length or frequency. They
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.