The Avenue Haig Den To the Editor of the "Nonru-Cura Dany News"
Swm—in a Ieller which you kind published in your journal of May 3 T invited the attention of our recently appointed councillors to the plague spot in our midst which, despite my reiterated remonstrances, Still exists at No. 346 Avenue Haig. in Magrant contravention of the law of the land and in open deliance of the newly established Special Police Force of the Western Area whose duty it now is to suppress it.
From your issue of yesterday 1 Jearned that the members of the: General Committee of the British Residents Association have, drawn the attention of their Association to the continuance of gambling dens in the Western District which. instead fof being suppressed. appear to be Increasing in number. An influential committee such as. this is enid. Fender an inestimable service 19 the cenmnunity by taking ction for the venture to suggest that they should Couneit their intolerable apathy in the matter.
Tu the meantime T must take up my pen in the now almost forlorn hope' of injecting, through—the medium of your columns some grains of decency into the con Sciences of our new councillors. 'Their predecessors sheltered themselves "behind the fatuous excuse that the place. although on' a Afunicipal road of which the police of the Settlement had control. was situated outside it. but that excuse no longer available to the present Our municipal police have recent-been fully occupied with raids on dens of very minor calibre in the th Seltiement itself, but, the Special Police Force of the Western Area. has, so far shown no inclination to imitate their example by a. raid upon the much larger establishment on Avenue Haig. the pernicious influence of which, far "exceeds that of all the others put together. What the significance of this extracrdinary display of reluctance on. their pant?
"The new Council surely owes it to the community in general. and in particular to. those of it who are actually aMfiieted by this appalling
explanation of their apparently comfulgance "to offer some. reasonable placent indifference to what can only be regarded as an outrage and an insult to that community.
Shanghai, May 23.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.