(Editer, North-Chin London, May 25.
The extent to which the war in China has affected World prices was forcibly brought out by the President of the Board of Trade in the Hou?" of Commons in a speech on supply.
Mr. Stanley drew attention to the abnormal height of commodity prices at the beginning of 1937 and their conspicuous drop at the end. Speculation, he said, had been largely responsible for the rise, and some decline was inevitable and desirable.
"But." Mr. Stanley said, "or started, that fall has gone beyond the point where it was desirable to a point where by the uncertainties it has created and the losses it has made, it has had a serious effect upon world trade as a whole."
The first cause of this alarming decline in prices, Mr, Stanley considered to be the war between China and Japan. He said he believed it tad had a far greater effect on world trade than was fully realized in this country, and that both from the side of China and Japan:
"As far as China is concerned, over a period of two or three years she has been providing a market. not " great market but an increasing market for Our export goods, and many of us impressed by the new life in China by ithe new organization. by he greater security and by the prospects Of raising the standard of living. Were looking to this immense market a possible solution of many of the export difficulties of this country and of other countries in the world.
Of course. the effect of war upon hopes of that kind have been immediate and disastrous. Exports fell Daily News" 1911-1930) pool their memories and publish them in the interests of historical record. They should have so much to tell of a civilization now vanished, of China as she was before she finally succumbed to the virus of so-called Western progress.
Dredging the Whangpoo it John Haslam put a timely question in the House of Commons en Monday on the alarming condition of the Whangpoo due to the enforced suspension of conservancy work, of which a recent number of the "North hina Ileraid" coutainet a grave account.
In his reply, Mr. Butler, Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, said:—
Our latest information is that the interference with the work of the Whangpoo Conservancy Board by the Japanese naval and military authori-ins "and "the seizure by them of ihe conservancy vessels and equipment have resulted in considerable siting of parts of the Whangpoo river, With one exception, however, it is reported that no difficulty has mer been experienced in bringing ships of deep draught to the Shanghai Vharves, and the mouth of the Yi unaffected, Beyond a narrowing of the channel in certain places ihére has so far been no vital 4"- Verioration in the condition of the main fairway.
"The conservancy of the Whangno n r is the subject of an international cement to which Jaran is a party and negotiations are now proceeding between a committee of the Consular Body, supported by His Majesty's Ambassador, and the Japanese authorities the resumption of for dredging by ihe Conservancy Board the the return of their vessels halt. For the fist quarto this year they are still on a ipw level That, of course? is the obvious and direct damage done w, our trade by this particular dispute."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.