"Baby Dragons"

On tour through English factory towns is an august, frock-coated, slant-eyed Trade Delegation from the rich Chinese province of Manchuria. Last week while visiting the extensive Longbridge Works at Birmingham, where Sir Herbert Austin turns out his trig, seven h. p. "Baby Austins" in thousands, Chairman T. Y. Wang of the Delegation said:

"Our great arsenal in Mukden is going to be transformed into an automobile factory, by far the largest in the East. We shall make 'Chinese Dragon' cars and also 'Baby Dragons.' I see no reason why one day China may not export these cars to Europe and America."

All very well are such confident, prophetic words, but at present the Mukden Arsenal is working overtime to produce enough artillery, rifles and ammunition for the latest Chinese civil war. So perfect and efficient are copies of the famed French "75" field gun now made in Mukden, that if ever the arsenal is set to copying motor cars it may prove difficult to tell a "Baby Dragon" from an "Austin Seven." Similarly, tractors are made in Soviet Russia so exactly like those produced by Henry Ford-- even to the name plate -- that simple peasants to whom they are sold never know the difference.