To the Editor of the "Nonru-Curxa Day News"
Sim—To make the problem of maintaining a Municipal Orchestra a question of "music or medicine" as some of your correspondents would like to put it, is certainly both unfair and demagogical. There is no Feason why we should have to choose between music and medicine. Why not have both It the Orchestra were to be abo. ished, the amount allotted to its up-Keep would, I am afraid, disappear In the deficit of the Municipal Budget, without noticeable benefit to any other municipal services. If AN. Ex Burns Souoren or anybody else thinks that the money, oF any part of it, would be diverted to the relief of indigent Chinese, he is sadly mistaken.
Tt should be borne in mind that the Orchestra accounts for only O47 per cent. of the total expenditure of the Municipal Council. Are the remain~ ing 9953 per cent. really: 90. well laid out that it would be impossible to increase the grant to hospitals etc. if such an increase is required, without resorting to the modest 0.47 per cent. allotted to the Orchestra As far as the ratepayers are concerned I fail to see what relief the abolition of the Orchestra would bring to them. The reduction in rent ral tax (in the purely theoretical event {ide taxes would be Teduced corres: Pundingiy) would be from 3780 10 per cent in my opinion iis rearetiable that a O'fasn and others, who onthe Dem admission understand nothing of Susie should feel themselves called ton {0° launch anew campalgh cuna one of the very few cultural See of sis ly, an Instation Which, if it were. to be soolshed, Mani po crealy mised by ait overs musi.
Music-Lover. Shanghai, Mar. 12.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.