1935-07-30 — Page 15

.

MENACE TO HUMAN FREEDOM

DICTATORSHIP'S DANGER

EXPLAINED

London, July 18.

Mr. H. G..Wells spoke of the menace to human freedom, seen la dictatorships, when replying to the toast of "The Guests" at the annual dinner of the China Society at the Criterion Restaurant this week. Mr. Quo Tal-chi, Chinese Ambassador, was in the

· chair.

In the course of his speech; Mr. Wells said he felt a terrible Impostor. He had no right whatever to speak on behalf of the guests. His ignorance about matters Chinese was profound. He had offended in the Outline of History. Ho had to confess with shame that he still did not understand the peculiar nuance which forbade him to say "Chinamen" and ordered him to say "Chinese." He did not know why there should be this opprobrium on the word "Chinamen" and perhaps it would be explained to him later by the Chairman.

WGS

in-

He found this a very stimulating bringing us together whether wo occasion. In the last few days he liked it or not into one community. had been reading two great his What were our resemblances. tories of civilisations, Toynbee and What were our differences? What Will Durant, and the temptation were the differences between us and to launch upon an unbridled dis- the Atlantic countries and those course on the relations of Eastern from the great lands of Eastern and Western culture was very Asia? great, but he thought that the hot- To begin with there were certain'

the weather

shorter supericial aspects. Ife ter the speeches should be and he would clined to think that in comparison not do it.

with the Chinese we ran to whis- A few days ago he was turning kers (laughter). On the other hand over a book of Goldsmith, one of the the Chinese had a certain delight- most delightful of English writers. ful breadth of their cheek bones and Goldsmith was writing about the their faces which made them soom way in which sympathy was a mat- always the most kindly and attrac ter of nearness and ho safd a re- tive of other races. Those were markable thing-ho was writing superficial differences. The deeper about 150 years ngo-he said that differences were extraordinarily im- if in England whenever you fred portant and valuable. He would a gun a man died in Ching it would say that the great difference be not prevent people firing guns. tween our great Western communi- That was a measure of the rotles and their great Eastern com- moteness of China only a century munity was the fact that for long and a half ago. China was a fairy- ages we had been so far apart that land, It was another world, It we had developed, a profound differ- was something so far away that the ence in our languages, a profound ordinary English mind, the or difference in the idiom of dinary Western European mind thoughts, The Chinese had, he really did not believe that it existed believed, a fundamental different as a practical fact. It was too re-shape of thought from ours, and mote to be reached. The Chinese since they lived under conditions then-not Chinamen (laughter) so similar it was of extraordinary was a decoration on a dinner plate. Importanco to us in the West and He was thing you told a fairy to them in the East that we should story about fantastic stories like get on with the business of out- that delightful story of the origin standing those fundamental if of Roast Pig by Charles Lamb. In-ferences. dead China was further away than Fairyland, for that after all was under the hills and close at hand in our imaginations.

CHINESE PHILOSOPHY

our

Mr. Wells said that if he had a dozen lives or so to spend, and he wished he had, he would spend one

at

HONGKONG

TELEGRAPHL TUESDAY, TULY

EUROPE'S TRAGIC ANNIVERSARIES

By MORRIS GILBERT

IT'S July 30, 1914, and the most calamitous war in the world's

history is less than a week away..

Paris, 3 ́--President Poincare, Premier Viviani, and War Minister Messimy, conferring at the Elysees Palaco, frame a telegram to St. Petersburg reiterating France's resolution to fulfil her obligations as an ally of Russla, but asking Russia "to take

no immediate step which would offer Germany a pretext for mobilisation."

JOFFRE

Soldier

St. Petersburg. 4 p.m.-Pre- mler Sazanov, pushed by the general staff and the war minis- try, calls on the czar to urge him to order general mobilisa» tion. The czar is firm against it at first. "Think of the thou- sands and thousands of men who will be sent to thoir death 1" ho groans. Sazanov fills his lungs. "Think of the safety of your Empire!" he thundern... **I order general mobilisation!" the czar cries.

It was the Great Divide of in- ternational negotiation. Hitherto there had been a chance that war could be confined to the Balkana. Thereafter, it became European,

POINCARE

Statesman

Paris, Night~~~"If King George's government,” says President Poincare to the British ambassador, "should announce that in the event of conflict between Germany and France, resulting from the actual differences between Austria and Serbia, England would come to Franco's aid, there would be no war.”

London.-Sir Edward Grey declines to do this. Paris-The cabinet, faced with the problem of not com- promising the chance of peace but at the same time of not being entirely unprepared for war, secka to solve it by an ingenious order withdrawing all troopa ton kilometres behind France's frontiera, at the same time perceiving that preliminary mobilisa- tion could be carried out behind this barrage if required. Joffre modifies this programme by specifying that such withdrawal should not take place where inconvenient.

CANTON FINANCE

NO MILITARY EXPENDITURE FOR TEN DAYS

govern-

FUKIEN EPIDEMIC

DISEASE SPREADING IN SHOUNING COUNTY

Foochow, July 29. Epidemic discases are reported to be spreading seriously in Shouning County, north Fukien.

The Magistrate has wired to the government urging

Canton, July 29. The Kwangtung trade depres- alon la having its detrimental effect on the revenue of the

provincial Kwangtung Chan Chal-tong has instructed them the paymasters of his Head- medical corps to Shouning to quarters that for ten days from assist the local authority there in August 1 no bill be paid.

chocking the spread of disease.

ment. For this reason General provincial

to Bund an emergency

It is understood that the 5th. Medical Corp is leaving here for Shouning by order of the Pro vincial Government-Wah Kiu Yat

Po

WAB

The short moratorium of ten days le made in order to give the WORLD COMMUNITY.

Treasury an opportunity to settle least in trying to translate | other more urgent accounts. Now all that had altered in the Chinese philosophy Into English. brief space of less than a century. He believed they would both benefit What had happened had been the enormously by bringing those dif- any so, peoples of the open hand. NATURAL SYMPATHY abolition of distance and to-day in- forent aspects of thinking into re- and not peoples of the clenched dist. Mr. Wells said he would not talk stead of being a native, so to speak, lationship one to the other. All They were

liberal communities. politics and if he went on and be speaking in a gathering of most|Western thought was haunted for interestingly strange foreigners he instance by certain assumptions And they were all now confronted came more particular in what he saying he might be talking found himself completely at home that might be false assumptions, with variations of the same pro-politics, but he thought he had said In this assembly, one of the citizens The distinction, for instance be-blem,

enough to indicate what he meant→→→→ of a world community which was tween body and spirit which haunt- being drawn closer and closer ed all our religions and philoso-

that there was a sympathy, that In the world to-day there was there, had to be a sympathy and together with every year of our{phical thinking. So far as he going on in various forms, a tre- one we had to develop into practi- lives. That was a very extra-could learn that fundamental | mendous attack upon liberty-a cal and effective forms, a natural ordinary thing indeed.

structural assumption which was tremendous attack upon freedom. eympathy between the tradition of He had always resented the mysquite possibly fallacious, was not A drift-an extraordinary drift-Liberal thought in America and tical talk in which historians dealt found in Chinese thought and towards over-discipline, towards a Western Europe and the spirit of so freely about East and West. thinking, and if we could get our sort of political hardness and in the Chinese people. "East was cast and West was west minds together, as he hoped we tolerance, towards aggression, The essential history of the next and never the twain shall meet." could, through such a medium as towards militarism, and excessive hundred years would very proba- It had always scomed the most base. the China Society, we might-we|control was apparent all over the bly be the struggle for human lese nonsense to him. That sort of of the West and they of the East world. The temperament the liberty. And human liberty thing implied antagonism; it was find ourselves getting nearer to Chinese people was, he was con-manded as its primary condition the one of those mischievous things some more fundamental method of vinced, as hostile to that sort of peace of the world. Feeling so that led to infinite trouble between thinking.

thing as the temperament of the strongly, he felt that he could say races and people. There was no All the differences between us Western Europeans and particular-for himself and his fellow guests mysterious East in his mind. There were either agreeable or profitablely of the Anglo-Saxon and English-as guests that they were not there were various Easts and they were differences. He would like to say speaking community, In the past as strangers. They were there as all extraordinarily different and a word about another great re- dozen years in various countries, fellow citizens of the world state. they marched with the West and semblance which he saw between one after another, they had seen They were there as friends and came closer to the West and they the Chinese community and our the light of liberty, the light of allies. They were there as co- pooled more and more their com- own. China was like America and free thought and free discussion, operators in the search for that mon destiny as the years passed. like the British Empire in that all going out. Here as in China wo world civilisation towards which Now, so far as ourselves and the three were great loose communities faced variations of the same great our triple peoples were the natural Chinese went, we were extra-They were not bound together in menace to human freedom. and temperamental leaders. ordinarily parallel to each other in any very tight organisation. They many respects and we were bound had all a great variety of liberty to come closer and closer. Wo wore in their lives. They sustained a cer Inhabitants of the temperate zone.tain largenoss of mind and enjoyed We could live in each other's coun-a varied freedom of personal living, tries quite comfortably. Fate was They were all three, if he might

de.

MACKINTOSH'S

THREE DAYS

SUMMER SALE

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday

July 31st, Aug. 1st & 2nd

ARROW SHIRTS

Blue, Tan, Green & Grey

COLOURED SHIRTS

Summit, and Van Heusen

SPORTS SHIRTS

White Poplin and Taffeta

$2.00

$3.00

$2.00

SHORT PYJAMAS

White and Striped

$2.00

AERTEX PYJAMAS

White Short-Coloured Long

$4.00

$1.00

UNDERWEAR

White Cotton Vests and Drawers Per Garment

SUMMER SOCKS-

Silk, Lisle, Viyella, Wool

STOCKINGS

Light Weight Wool

$1.00

$2.00

SUMMIT COLLARS

for

Stiff and Soft-Slightly Solled $1.00

SUMMER TIES

Foulard, Cashmere, Silk

$1.00

BATHING SUITS Jantzen, Morley Wool-

$2.00

POPLIN PYJAMAS

Really Exceptional Value

$4.50

Page 15Page 16