ONE CHEERO CHEEKS THREE CHEERS!
It's Stout
-It's Milk Stout
#1 MACKEVONS the goodness of milk that does you DOUBLE GOOD
MACKESON'S MILK STOUT
THE ORIGINAL AND GENUINE MILK - STOUT
Sole Agents:-A. S. WATSON & CO., LTD.
WINE DEPT.
TELEPHONE 20616.
KAIPING COAL
HOME,
FACTORY
AND
BUNKERS
FOR ALL PURPOSES.
POWER
HOUSE,
: TUGS &
LOCOS
THE KAILAN MINING ADMINISTRATION
Head Office:---TIENTSIN.
Agents:-DODWELL & CO., LTD., Hong Kong.
Eat at -
Parisian Grill
VRAS
10, Queen's Rd., C. (Wang Hing Bldg.) Try Our Special Tiffins also a la carte Telephone 27880
HUNTLEY
WATCH COMDXN * NO. 148 DES VOEUX" ROAD CENTRAL TELE27684
THE CHINA MAIL, NOVEMBER 19, 1988.
The China Mail
Ninety-Third Year of Publication
8A Wyndham Street, Hong Kong.
Telephone 20022
London Office:
7, Garrick Street, London, W.C.2
Notice To Contributora.
All communications intended for publication should be addressed to
the Editor, and be accompanied by
the Writer's Name and Address, not necessarily for insertion but as a guarantee of good faith.
Subscription Rates.
3 Months
6 Months
One Year
H.K.$ 9.00
H.K.$18.00
H.K.$36.00
Postage Abroad Extra
Hong Kong, Saturday, Nov. 19, 1938.
DEMOCRACY
The firm belief of the philosopher is that the fate of democracy is linked up with the fate of in- tellect.
That modern democracy should have orignated in England where philosophy, had enthron- ed... common sense and ex- perience, is no mere accident of history.
It is no accident either that the French revolution should ‘have sprung from the intellectual Age of Enligtenment. For de mocracy proceeds along the path of intellectual experience. It is inchoate, never completed, forever tentative, New ex- perience necessitates constant readjustments.
Democracy it not to be consider-
ed as an ideal state of society
motives a process and comparing
sifting
Verdict With Music
88
Fact can be as Gilbertian
fancy. The librettist of "Iolan- the," "The Mikado" and how many other gems of polysylla- bic persiflage?-would find a plot ready made in a case de- cided by the Recorder's court in Quebec recently.
A man was charged with pos- sessing burglars tools by night, having been arrested at 9.21 p.m.:
Oh, woe betide the poor
fellow,"
Unless the judge's heart
be mellow! For one possessing burglars' tools after 9p.m. must bear the burden of proving that he did not intend to use them în what W. S. Gilbert called "his -employment.”
༄
Sir Arthur Sullivan would have written music in a minor key for this moment. But wait, and hark! There is balm in Gilead, and succor even in a solicitor. For the man's lawyer discovered that his client was arrested by daylight saving time. Daylight saving time, he held, does not apply to the cri- minal code. The man, he con- tended, was arrested at 8.21
p.m.
The court accepted the plea, a report from Quebec states. Thus with implications on which Gilbert might construct a happy ending, the burden of proof swung from the defen- dant to the prosecution, which now must refute the claim that while in possession of burglars". tools the man was not actually "niaturing his felonious little plans."
So with justice emphatic, The end is ecstatic, And to keep himself out of
jail's cloisters
He may prove his equipment Was meant for a shipment Of reluctantly edible oysters.
already achieved but as an Harry Hawk
eternal goal just as knowledge
is an eternal. goal. We must The British Broadcasting Cor-
not expect that it will solve all our problems or cure every trouble and difficulty. The very essence of democracy is to have done away with miracles and magic formulas, Every step forward has to be paid for with considerable effort and patience.
A dictatorship on the other hand resembles a man obstinately zigzagging from one side of the street to the other with a great show of careless energy and singing marching songs. In its tentative progress demo- cracy resembles evolution. while dictatorships spell adventure. Do you believe that the history of mankind is meant to be an evolutionary process or rather a series of adventurous. inci- dents? Of course adventure is attractive, especially for young people: Every revolutionary impulse is more or less adventurous and every extremist considers him- self a romantic and takes plea- sure in the risks of the politi- cal game. Democracy, however, is not a game. It is a method of ad- justing irrational factors to in- tellectual standards by co- ordinating and controlling them. It is the same process which our intellect applies to
our experience, sentiments and
poration has added one more to the nation's band of epony- mous heroes. It has set the figure of Harry Hawk, the military airman, in the Pan- theon that includes, among others, Jack Tar, Tommy At- kins, Mr. Roe and Mr. Doe of legal fame, Pooh-Bah, Jeeves, and that preposterous patriot, wearer of the very old school tie of red, white and true-blue, Colonel Blimp
Harry differs slightly from his.
companions in that we know something of his previous car- eer. For was he not one of the famous company that rode with Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all to Widdicombe Fair? In view of his unfortunate ex- perience then with Tam Pearce's old mare, it is not as- tonishing that he has degerted her for Pegasus. One wishes him every
success, but one cannot help thinking that he suffers a trifle from an alliterative excellence, and is perhaps too: true to be good. He has a touch of the robot. It` was difficult for him to escape it, because he has been made to order a fact that in itself may tend to shorten his term of office; for the name, that clothes a familiar fiction wears better for not having been be- spoke.