December 14, 1903.]
typhoid. Four Europeans died of phthisis. The total number of foreign deaths was eigh- teen. In the small Yungtsze port of Wuhu, the general foreign health was good for the last nine months of 1901 and the first three of 1902. One child died from convulsions, and there were fifteen cases of malarial fever.
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Floods and a long spell of hot, damp weather were conducive to numerous minor ailments. The natives suffered much from tuberculosis. Chinkiang during the same period had a health record benign and uneventful." No deaths occurred in the foreign com- munity and no serious illness was treated; the Chinese, on the other hand, suffered much from diphtheria, measles, scarlet fever, and small-pox. At Nanking in the half-year ending the 31st March, 1902, malaria and diarrhoea were what the foreign residents chiefly suffered from. There were floods here too, affecting considerably the quarter of the city in which the Customs students lived, and the latter were more attacked in consequence. Much malaria and dysentery prevailed among the natives, and there was a severe epidemic of measles. Wenchow, Chekiang, in the corresponding period, was healthy for foreigners, and there was no unusual sickness among the Chinese. In the next half-year about 5,000 or 6,000 native deaths from cholera were estimated at Wenchow, but foreigners did not suffer, though the general health was below the average, fever, diarrhea, and debility being the principal complaints. The Soochow report deals with the period September, 1901, to September, 1902, which was one of the worst years for that part of China ever experienced. Diphtheria, scarlet fever, cholera, dysentery, typhoid, and malaria abounded; only one foreigner died, from dysentery, complicated with malaria, but 20,000 natives died in the six months in Soochow city itself
CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
CRUELTY TO ANIMALS.
(Daily Press, 5th December.)
**
A rather amusing argument hea been proceeding at Shanghai lately amusing though arising out of so serious a subject as the prevention of cruelty to animals. In Shanghai, as here, there is a society trying to stop the sufferings inflicted on animals by the unthinking or callous. In aid of this S.P.C.A. a little while ago Mr. C. E.
Shanghai, preached a DARWENT, minister of the Union Church,
advocating its work. Letters in the papers sermon, warmly followed, and then "to his amazement," as he says himself, Mr. DARWENT found his words construed into a deliverance in favour of vegetarianism. Mr. DARWENT protests, in a letter to the North-China Daily News, ihat he will "eat roast phensaut with any- one," that he has "no sympathy with vegetarianism either in practice or theory," that the arguments in favour of vegetari- auism are based on "false logic, false spychology, or weak sentiment," and then goes on: "It is said that life is sacred and "that it is wrong to take life. It is not. 'Life is not sacred. It is personality that is sacred. To kill a man is murder, it is "a violation of personality; to put your ‘foot ou a black beetle is not murder. And the life of an ox is no more sacred than "that of a beetle." And so he continues, finding that the pain i.flicted in abattoirs is slight and momentary, and that it is far better from the oxen's, sheeps', fowls', and game-birds' point of view to have lived and be expeditiously killed than never to have been killed at all. Finally the minister protests against a vegetarian red herring being dragged across the path" of his sermon. The controversy has its amusing aspect, as we have said; but it has also its sad side. It is hardly edifying to see a minister of religion at such pains to prove that the standpoint of the carnivore is the one ap- proved by his religion, i.e. by God, and that those who disagree are weak sentimentalists. We are not going here to enter upon a plea for vegetarianism, which is to us a counsel of perfection, we confess. But we cannot allow that it is not the logical outcome of admitting the rights of animals and of any campaign for the prevention of cruelty to animals. It is for this very reason that otherwise honest people tangle themselves up so desperately when they endeavour to deny the relation between the conclusion and the premises. So now
we find Mr. DARWENT in Shanghai arguing that it is not wrong to take life; that life is not sacred, but personality is; that you may kill an unpersonal ox or a profane black-beetle, but not sacred personality-endowed man. Herein he begs the greatest question that can be begged in this world. A charming assump tion of superior knowledge on this point may be seen in the following sentence, which occurs in the same letter in the Daily News "Lay hold of the distinction between life and personality, which so many people, who do not think clearly, con- fuse, and the argument on this ground is left without a logical leg to stand upon." *Clear thinkers," "logical legs"! Are these all arrayed on the side of those that see a personality in man and only life in the other animals? We must say that we prefer the frank sportsman for sport's sake and the bon vivant to the clear thinker who has to disguise the conclusion to which his pre- mises are pointing.
Coming further south, we find Dr. RINGER remarking on the great amount of serious sickness and the unusual mortality in the foreign community of Canton in the half-year ending the 31st March, 1902. Seven fatal cases of cholera occurred, the same disease commencing among the natives in epidemic form in January, 1902. Diar- rhoea was common among the Europeans, and so was climatic fever; there were three cases of typhoid, Hoihow, with its small foreign population of under 70, was healthy in this same half-year, as also was Pakhoi; but in the former place there was some malaria, which is prevalent among the natives there. In the next half-year, ie. down to tre 30th September, 1902, the foreign communities at both Hoibow and Pakhoi continued healthy, but Dr. Lasells at the Hainan port insists on the necessity of vacations and of residents not waiting until their health is impaired. Cholera was in evidence among the Chinese in the Hoi- how neighbourhood, and there was plague and cholera at Pakhoi, not to mention much diarrhoea. At Szemao in the year up to April, 1902, malaria was far the most preva- leut affection, as much as ten or twelve burials a day of victims taking place during the worst period; nothing is said of any foreign resident. At Mengtsze at the be ginning of 1902 Dr. BARBEZIEUX declares a very satisfactory sanitary condition. A little influenza and diarrhoea had occurred among the European population of just Digestive, skin, and eye maladies were most severe among the Chinese.
over 30.
As a result of the Allen cass in Manila
the merchants of Manila have peti.ioned Con- gress for an amendment of the Contract Labour Law, so that it may not apply to accountants, stenographers, and clerks, etc.
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But it must be admitted that the practical side of work to prevent cruelty to animals lies, under the present conditions of thought upon the subject, in checking unnecessary suffering inflicted by man and insuring
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painless execution, as far as possible, of animals destined for food. That there is a tremendous field of operation in China, and in the European settlements in China as much as anywhere, cannot be denied. In Hongkong there is much work to be done. Some is being done already by our local S.P.C.A. But there is much which they have not been able to touch yet. propose soon to point out a very terrible state of things, which has been going on for many years unchecked, and which is not due to any needs of the Chinese, but to those of the Europeans and others who have settled here.
LIMITS OF NEWSPAPER DISCUSSION.
We
But
́(Daily Press, 11th December.) Our outspoken contemporary the Kobe Chronicle had a leading article recently on "the limits of newspaper discussion." The question is one that must necessarily arise in every part of the world where a newspaper exists and must exercise the mind of any one either conducting or reading a news- paper. It is a familiar saying that a man with a grievance will write to the Times, that journal being taken as the most typical aud the widest-read in the world. But it is not of coure only on grievances, so called, that people are ready often to address themselves to the Press. They may have opinions to advance or others' opinions to combat; and the most public way of so doing, if one is not a politician, is to get one's views into print. then arises the query to what extent the editor should give a hearing to those who wish to get one, and how far he should him- self discuss debatable subjects. It has grown to be a custom, at home, to taboo religious and most moral discussions, but to allow free play, within the limits of the laws of libel and of decency, to arguments on other matters.
There are a number of journals, no doubt, which refuse to be bound by any exclusive rules and will, when, the occasion arises, discuss religious and moral subjects in a free manner; such, if they are not papers devoted to the exposi- tion of questions of the kind, are apt to court rebuke, That this is just can- not be allowed, provided the treat- ment of the subject by the journal is worthy.
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The Kobe Chronicle on this point writes as follows:-"A news- paper should, it seems to us, take the "whole world for its province, social, political, or religious, and, while giving the fullest opportunity for the expression of dissent from editorial or other views set forth, should not hesitate to deal in a straightforward fashion with any matter "of public importance that may arise." This appears to us, too, the correct attitude to adopt. It is one, perhaps, which grows more difficult in proportion to the smallness of the place in which the journal is issued. Therefore one might expect to find it more difficult in the Far East that at home. But, to compensate for this, there is undoubtedly a greater freedom of thought, iu many ways, induced by residence so far from home-in spite of the proverb that crossing the sea changes the clime but not the mind. The tendency of the world is, for all the reactions which periodically take place, toward greater freedom of thought, and therefore of discussion.
We confess that this subject was sug gested to us by certain letters which have appeared in other columns of this journal on the subject of "Missionaries and the Press," though it must be said that the discussion has not confined itself very closely
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