Speaker on Security Printing Tells of Long Drawn Out Struggle Between the Two Mr. B.C. Westall, managing direc for of Messrs. De La Rue & Ca., Lid. London, was' the speaker at Thursday's timn-meeting of the Shanghai Rotary Club, held at the Metropole Hotel, and gave a most Interestin address" on "Security Printing: Sir George Willis was among ° the specially invited guests. Mr. A. Morley' presided, Referring to the antiquity of banknotes in China, Mr. Westall mentioned -that at the Bank of England he was shown_a bank-note which he was informed was nearly 200 years old, and it was only, when he changed anew £5 Bank of England note, receiving for It 65 Chinese bank-notes that realized that those bank-notes of 2,000 years ago were still in circulation, irty in appearance with much use, and with their wounds patched up With sticking plaster, saying that their bank "will pay on demand the sum of '$1". Te was, ald the speaker, 3 moving sight.
"There Is a very great danger" continued Mr. Westall, in allowing a bank-note io remain'in circulation too Jong. It gets so old, and so dirty, that the printing becomes indecipherable: all that a forger has to do is to get a forgery that Is not by any means perfect one, but which has some' faint resemblance to a genuine note: hho can dirty it, and maltreat it, and he will find no difMcully in passing it, ecause there are so many filthy notes circulation at the same time. More Important: in the manufacture of bank-note paper there isa substance used called size'—a gelatine substance of some sort of animal fat, which, in the course of time, tends to become decomposed, and after decomposition sets in a bank-note isnot only a bank-note, but becomes a home for germs and bacteria, which ix real danger to the community—al large.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.