To the Editor of the "NortH-Curva Dary News'
Sir—In your editorial entitled "A Great Man Dies" which gives a brief account of Kemal's revolutionary work for rebuilding up Turkey, there are these significant words: "He orders his people to take Turkish names, to become Turks first and last and all the time." I am sure that the words must have made a profound impression in the mind of many of your Chinese readers.
You often find that a modern Chinese, especially the student, has a foreign name. A thousand and one English and French names have been adopted, ranging from the commonest John and Mary to the fanciest Romeo and Juliet. And most probably these John's and Mary's are sipping Ceylon tea with cream, or wearing Parisian silk, when the native products are just as good, if not better.
But by far the majority of the educated Chinese, and men of intere national renown like Hu Shih, the Chinese Ambassador to the United States, and Lin Vu-tang, philologist and writer of "My Country and My People," have never assumed foreign names. They simply spell their Chinese names in English so as to give the same pronunciation, And who that is proud of his country and people will not appreciate Kemals order?
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.