of the congestion even to those who are prepared to accept overcrowding as a natural condition in a Chinese urban area, The Council cannot be accused of bureaucratic diffidence in thus frankly reducing a grim situation to the hard facts of truly appalling figures. It is wise. Difficult as the problem is there can be no hope of beginning to tackle it until the public actually knows its significance. Statistics are often accused of lying. Here they tell an unassailable truth in stark digits. For it takes very little intelligence to perceive that the percentages cited must indicate congestion or overcrowding of truly lamentable proportions. There is no short cut out of this predicament. In the central districts of the Settlement it has special complexities of its own. Yet, making all allowances for differences of locality and clrcumstance, it may not be amiss to point out that the experiments conducted the City Government of Shanghai invite serious attention and chal~ Tenge consideration by the Municipal Council. This thought brings. to mind the important factor of ce-operation between the three municipal authorities in developing. their census statistics. It is understood that arrangements have been tentatively made so that eventually the census of the whole of the area known as Shanghai can be token simultaneously. This will involve an adjustment whereby the Shanghai Municipal Council, the City Government and the French Municipal Council will each take the census for its administrative area on the same day and with the same classification of groupings and categories. Then Shanghai will really begin to know itself. As the time-honoured saw has it, that is the whole philosophy of well-being. In prosaic terms, the Council and its sister authorities will then have a fully-documented statement framed on lines recognized by international usage for the presentation of Shanghai's problems of government to the understanding of its citizens—and to the world at large.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.