It is doubtful if there is any city in the world which in peace times presents so many aspects of tragedy as docs Shanghai. Attention has been drawn, by a letter to this journal from Bacnu B. Momms of the Salvation Army, to the fact that because of the cold snap over the last week-end no fewer than 500 dead bodies have been picked up in Shanghai streets. The daily total of bodies recovered in Shanghai is always large, but the advent of cold weather increases mortality amongst the under-nourished. The fact that ninety per cent. of the dead is made up of children under the age of ten is significant, It is possible that a substantial proportion of them are bodies abandoned after death by parents too poor to afford them burial but even then the fact remains that because of lack of warmth-giving food many little, destitute children are unable to withstand the rigours of the climate, The plan of the Salvation Army to send a motor bus out on nightly rounds taking rice to the waifs and strays of Shanghai's streets is a most workmanlike one, and has much to commend it as the most direct way of giving relief. The "North-China Daily News" understands from Bucwe Morris that the Salvation Army will put a second or even a third bus on the rounds if circumstances justify. But all this needs money. At a time like this, when the demands upon the pocket of charitable Shanghai have reached such large proportions, some reluctance is felt in putting forward a further appeal, but if ever there were an urgent case this must surely be it. A pound of hot, cooked rice during the bitterly cold hours of the night and early morning may mean to some child all the difference between life and death, and the cost of that amount of food is small compared with what is carelessly spent ju amusement and such in the course of every day. What means so little to the donor is so much to the recipient, and it cannot be believed that the expansive, and generous heart of Shanghai will be closed to an appeal such as this. Its urgency is such that he who gives quickly indeed gives twice.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.