1939-07-12 — Page 6

THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPHY, WEDNESDAY, JULY 12, 1989.

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DEATH!

Mrs. Sum Fung Sle Kwan,, aged 96 years, (mother of Sum Pak Ming and Sum Chung Hing), at her residence "Ulam Hall", 41, Con- duil Rand, on July 11. Funeral will take place on Friday, the 14th July, cortege will leave the residence at 10 am. for the Chinese Cemetry, Aberdeen.

The

Thongkong Telegraph.

Wyndham St., Hongkong 'Phone 26615 July 12, 1939

Crisis Arising?

ΑΝ

"YOU SHOULD HAVE

When there is

trouble about

Wabout we are urged to pray. THENEVER there is trouble

And we do pray, even those who never do so at other times.

Yet some of us find the whole thing difficult and unreal, rather like talking down the telephone when you are not sure any one is there.

Some cannot see the sense of pray-- int anyway.

Will God take notice of us, alter alt Docs He His arrangements for us? need us to tell Him what to do?

You will probably not bother about such questions if you really feel like praying. The natural thing to do is to pray first, reason afterwards; for prayer is, somehow, instinctive.

N OBVIOUSLY grave situation is steadily coming to a head in the Far East.

It has been created, firstly, by the Japanese action in Tientsin, accondly, by the illegal blockade of Chinese ports, and, thirdly, by the Japanese-sponsored anli-British movement in the Japan ese occupied areas, culminating in the attacks on British property in Tsingtao yesterday,

Men prayed long before any one Until recently there has been a asked "Is it any use?" To feel like disposition in some sections of praying is, in a sense, to believe in British opinion to believe that the prayer. Innanese actions are excusable on the-grounds of military necessity, but few people can still hold that belief.

But you cannot be expected to pray if you think there is nothing; in and have this feeling all the

me you are trying to do it. Nor is it, after all, in strict accord with Christian teaching to pray only when you want something,

Many of us prayed last when we wanted to pass an examination at school. or have a bicycle for our birthday. And that is as for as we ever got.

The incitement of Chinese mobs to attack British persons and pro- perty creating a situation which may have the most serious reper cussions.

Chinese The

in the Japanese-occupied arcas, unhappily, must rely exclusively on Japanese sources of news, and they are daily It is pointed out that if ye seldom being fed with information inimical pray you cannot expect to find prayer

satisfying, arch not only to the interests

of their music, poetry, you need long and In-

rent

Like art.

Ltd. country and their countrymen, but timate acquaintance with it to ensure

Tel. 20269.

Are you

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that when

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Kong you will

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WHY

?

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Seo the range of models at-

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Also to Western Pewers. The type full understanding and appreciation. This seems reasonable enough, and

"talking of war propaganda Japan-has been,

perhaps explains the feeding the Chinese in the occupied nothing" feeling some of us get. aren is similar in many respects to To return to the other diflculties:

border

the type they are attempting to

Even the fervent believer will admit that prayer is something mysterious, feed us regarding the

beyond his understanding, Yet he the operations at Outer Mongolia. This can point out that it helps him type of propaganda is comparatively troubles of life, enables him to be innocuous in its effect, since the happy, strong and unofrald.

And not only he himself, but most time must come when even the

of the big figures in history, the most illiterate person must wonder people who have really achieved great at repeated "victory" claims. Since things, have found this too.

An alternative to prayer seems to the beginning of the Tientsiu be a belief in blind fate, This in blockade, however, a new type of turn will very Ekely lead you, propaganda, which first made its superstitions, charms, and restless appearance at Tientsin, has spread feat. Prayer Aves us from this nightmare, and on the face of it over North China. It is propaganda seems less futile and fantastic, openly directed against Great Bri-2 Probably we make tho mistake of

the tain, who is blamed as the country worrying overmuch about

dealing with the responsible for the prolongation of known, instead livstilities, as the Power for evil known. We know that prayer works our end, so to speak; how It operates responsible for the hardship those at the other is, surely, of secondary Chinese In the occupied areas Importance.

10

un-

SEEN THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY!”

Making the silk-worm turn

T

HERE ought to be an

chair empty

marked "The Lady of Bi-ling' at the dinner of the Rayon and Silk Association

It would be a nice gesture to

one who, for three thousand years, has been the patroness of the silk industry and who has now been deposed.

For the Association, incorporated to-day, is the formal admission that silk must take second place to rayon, the so-called "artifici milk."

which has supplanted IL, and that the chemist has beaten the silk-worm at its own job. It follows the reorganisation of the 32-year- old Slik Association to which rayon was merely a step-chlid.

-by- RITCHIE CALDER

Derbyshire silk manufacturer, Lombe, went to Lombardy dis- guised as a workman. He obtained work in one of the silk factories. He studied the devices. He made drawings of them and then bolted

for hotne.

The Italians discovered the trick. They sent warships to pursue him on his voyage home. He escaped. Queen Mary takes the place of

And, in Derbyshire, he recon- The Lady of Si-ling, wife of the

structed

the

plant. Legend goes Chinese emperor Huang-ti. by be-

farther. It says he was myste- coming the patroness of the newriously poisoned by Italians who Association.

came to England to avenge the theft of their secret.

UEEN MARY will not be expected to tend with her Own hands the machines which make

rayon.

as the Empress once nursed the worms, which made silk, or gather Ar-trees, as Bi-ling gathered mui- berry leaves, or invent, as she did, the loom which gave woven silk to the world.

Queen Mary can leave all that to the scientists and the engineers and to the 100,000 workers who are now employed through the rayon Industry in this country.

Thus has a revolution taken place in one of the world's oldest textile industrica.

In A.D. 300 the Roman Emperor Justinian introduced the industry to Europe. He did it by bribing priests who had gone on a pilgrim- ape to the East to smuggle silk- worms out of China, where they were no Jealously guarded as

The Green Eye of the Little Ye

Yellow God. For the Chinese were deter- mined to maintain their monopoly of the silk-market. The allk-worms were brought to the West hidden in the hollow bamboo of the pil- grims' staffs.

HE gulle was repeated by an Englishman, In the 18th Century. Britain's silk industry had been the started by refugees from Netherlands, who fled, during the reign of Henry VI, from the perse- cutions of the Spaniards. It had grown through the Influx of an- other food of refugees, the Huguenots, fleeing from the Mas- 'sacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve.

But at the beginning of the 18th Century, the Italians still controlled the secrets of one of the most difcult processes, 30 a

The religious man cannot possibly matter. Constant repetition of this

know, and he most often

censes to theme, especially when there are no

care. He just prays.

The theologians have puzzled means of contradiction or of nunking

down the centuries: known the truth, may lead to in themselves

and have their Ueories, But the cidents of a type which may make man who feels impelled to pray can- Taingtao a minor affair. Many not wait for theories. Chinese In the occupied area must Certainly, prayer zeema like ask- indeed believe that Chinese resisting God to change Ilis mind, or not the Deity are probably inadequate. ance has collapsed; that Chlang to forget us, or to let us off lightly wide of the mark. But they are Kal-ahck has been roduced to when we have done wrong. Some- banditry, since this is the type of times it even appears na if we re natural to us; they are cur own.

telling Him what to do. nows that has been constantly dis- But these crudities, It is answer- this instinct to pray.

seminated by the Japaness for the past twelve months. From that be- Hef it is but a step to the belief that the oppressors now are not the Japanese,

Britain is being provoked now to a more dangeroua extent than here- tofore. If it continues, it la un likely that the British Government will content itself with protesia,

romantic

Artificial

silk" had equally It is linked with origins. Pasteur and with the invention of the electric lamp.

Pasteur was called in to investi-

gate the plague which Was destroying

the French silk-worms. His discovery of the germ-origin of disease was responsible for say- But, ing the French silk industry. working with him, was a young assistant, Count de Chardonnet, who was more interested in the living-mechanism by which the worms manufactured slik than in the

of death-mechanism

the disease.

H

E began to experiment and to try to reproduce the process artificially. He tried to make alik by pulping the mulberry leaves on which the worms fed.

At this time; Joseph Swan, the English rival of Edison in the race to produce an electric lamp, was trying to find a filament which would become incandescent inside the bulb. He hit upon the device of produclug, by squirting celly- - lase acetate through jets, an arti

ficial fibre. which when burned would become a carbon alament.

He made his fiament, but he did not realize that he had found a new textile thread as well. Char- donnet jumped in and patented the making of artificial threads in 1804.

A year later, Ewan's wife; -

as an afterthought, exhibited fab- rics which she had crocheted from her husband's flaments at the London Inventions Exhibition.

W

TORKING with Swan were three men, Cross, Bovan and Topham. They saw that "the Old Man was on to something" in his artificial Abre.

Cross and Bevan left Swan and began to experiment: They pro- duced the first viscose, which now accounts for nearly 90 per cent, of the world's production of rayon. They were still thinking in terms of electric filaments. But Court- That is what we nearly all feel aulds, in the silk trade since 1708 when we come to the point. And and famous for their mourning that is why, in these worrying times, crepe, popularised by Queen Vic- The Widow of Windsor," we turn to prayer as the one thing torin os

saw other possiblities, that will calm us, help us.

You could its well explain away your own existence as explain sway We pray because we cannot help

ed, are only signs of your weakness. They merely prove how little we praying. know and how helpless we are.

It appears inevitable to think of God in human terma-ts.

a Father, listening to Hin children. No doubt, with even the beat of us, our prayers are feeble, poor things. Our ideas of.

Cecil Clark

They bought the rights of the process,

Meanwhile, the results of trying

to make weavable threads had been discouraging. But Swan's other assistant, Topham, the flans- blower who helped him with his bulbs, had been experimenting. He invented the "spinning-box," which is the key to the spinning process. His first spinning-box was

blacklead tin, made out of

Early years were full of dis- It looked as I appointments. rayon was going to be useful only for making artificial flowers and hat ornaments. although it was used for golf-jackets.

Then about 1908 it began to prove a commercial possibility and, up to the war, grew modestly.

D

URING the war cellulase Jacetate, on which the brothers Dreyfus had concentrated, was produced no

dope for neropians wings.

After the war they turned their attention to producing a textile yarn, and the result was British Celanese.

Bince the war rayon has worked miracles. In our mothers' day sliks were Sunday best. They were dear and had to last a long time, Fashions could not change. had to be enduring and ser- They viceable.

Now aliks," in the form of rayon, are the ever-changing fancy It has given us of the women,

glamour-girls." It has given every work-girl the right to elegant

silk stockings and fashions which alter with the seasons or with their whims The silk of Bactety has become the dress of the millions.

The world produces a thousand

lb. of rayon million 15.

a year, of which Britain accounts for a tenth. Forests melt into a shimmering sca of slk."

Except that nowadays “silk" is.

a misnomer. Rayon is no longer merely "artifelat silk." Indeed. in France and America, it is illegal to call it 80,

TOR is it just a substitute for slik. In the form of staple fibre," which is rayon in short lengths instead of continuous threads, it is apun In combination with cotton and wool.

In Germany, searching for self-suficiency, they are trying to replace, completely, natural tex- tiles by "staple fibre."

Even

often

rayon.

this country, men's suits contain a large proportion of

And now, 'made from coal, air and water, a new product, “ Nylon,”. which is said to be as strong as steel and Aner than silk, has been discovered. Du Ponts, the big American chemical combine, aro building £2,000,000 plant to pro- duce it. Imperial Chemical Indus- tries and Courtaulds are combin- lug to create a firm to manufacture it for the whole textile industry hero. It will come under the gla of the new Rayon and Blik Associ ation.

From the trees of the forest, from the coal in the bowels of the earth, women-

and men are being

elothed in elegance.

And the time-honoured slik- warm, farmed now on mass-pro- duction lines, carries on Nature's competition with the chemist.