"This Humble Company"

Butterfield & Swire ranks as one of Britain's most proud and powerful companies in the China trade. Sometime in the late 19th Century it came to dominate Yangtze River shipping; it also operated a first-class fleet of ships up & down the China coast. When the Japanese in 1895 demanded the cession of Formosa, after defeating China in war, the influential taipans of Butterfield & Swire sent a haughty admonition to His Majesty's Minister in Peking: the Japanese, they insisted, must not be permitted to encroach on British trading privileges.

Now, as His Majesty's Prime Minister Clement Attlee says, there is a "new China." There is also a new Butterfield & Swire. Recently the company advertised a ship scheduled to sail from Hong Kong and arrive at Swatow on the south China coast by April n. Red Chinese authorities, in a huff because they had given permission for the ship to dock on April 13 only, refused to advance the entry date. What was more, they demanded a public apology from the company.

Last week Butterfield & Swire inserted an appeasing ad in Hong Kong's Ta Rung Pao. "This humble company," it read, "regrets its conduct in trying to deceive its passengers. Besides guaranteeing that there will be no similar recurrence, it inserts this notice specially in this newspaper to repent and to apologize to the passengers on that trip."

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