CHINA.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13900, 11 May 1909, Page 6

CHINA.

The Lord Mayor presided at the Mansion House, London, on March 16th, at the inaugural meeting of the China Emergency Appeal Committee, which is seeking to raise a minimum fund of £IOO,OOO for the purposes of establishing, on Christian lines, medical training colleges and normal and theological institutions in China, and for the translation of the best Western literature suitable for the colleges in the Far East. They did not desire, said the Lord Mayor, to go to China in any spirit of interference. They only desired, to show the Chinese how they had benefited in the West from the teachings of Christianity. The presence of the Chinese Ambassador that afternoon, his lordship said, indicated the approval of Hie Chinese Government.- (Cheers.) Sir Robert Hart said that the object of the gathering was to assist the 400,000,000 of Chinese people to move in the right direction, now that they were changing front and making a new departure. The Chinese were throwing aside the teaching of the past and looking elsewhere for further wisdom.. The Rev. J. Scott Lidgett- (President of the Wesleyan Conference) said lie was there to show that the Free Churches of the country were roused to the magnitude of the opportunity, and the extent of the responsibility that rested on all of them in his matter. The movement was the beginning of a national reparation that had long been due to China. The. American Ambassador said that the movement represented by the committee brought up inevitably and necessarily another problem which was indissolubly associated with the educational work in China. He referred to the opium problem, for which they could never find any permanent and thorough solution, short of the education they were seeking to furnish. Great Britain had put readily into the movement for the reform of the opium traffic, as evidenced by the fact that to meet the wishes of the Chinese the export of Bengal opium had been limited by a reduction of 3600 chests in 1907-8, involving a loss to the Indian Revenue of half a million sterling. Further than that the Government had ordered a corresponding reduction in the size of the crop permitted for the ensuing year.