The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1920-09-07

men. As usual thing the foreign |
 consl1ls warn both parties against
 bonn bar ding any section of the town.
 where there are foreigners. X
 The city of Chungking was attacked |
 while I was stationed there and in |
 that case all the soldiers and even
 the police of the city ran away an. left the city at the mercy of the robbers within and the rebels with ] out. In that instance all the Con- | suls went out and met the rebel of icers on the opposite bank of the l river and came back with them while | they took over control of the l city" sThen there are a good many calls which have to be attended to. Of i ficial calls I mean. If official is ] travelling when he reaches town he i calls, not only on all the Chinese of | ficials, but on the consuls, customs l oofficers, and officers of any war ves- | sels in the harbor. These calls have i to be returned very quickly or it is 1 considered a grave breach of official 1 manners If an American gunboat | comes into port it falls to the Consul 1 to entertain the officers and supply l them with information and cooperate | with them in any wa} possible Another one of the regular duties l of a consul is the writing of political reports. He is expected to keep his government fully posted as to what :! is going on in his district. Four copies of each report are made and sent to the American Minister at Pe- king. He keeps one for his own files and sends the remaining three to the Secretary of State in Washington Tn addition to these regular duties | Of a consul there many unexpected things which make demands on his l time.''
 l Can you cite instance for me MT. Hanson % asked.
 ] Yes, take for example my con | nection with the improvements on the | Min River" he replied The city of l Foochow is located on the Min River, 1 twenty-one miles from the sea- For ! a part of the year vessels of any size | can only come up to within nine | miles of the city because the channel | is so shallow. It was decided to l deepen the channel so there would at 1 all times be a depth of ten feet in l the nine miles. The matter was put in 1 charge of a board made up of Chi 1 nese officials delegated by the Gov l ernment, prominent Chinese mer- | chants and citizens, representatives of | the foreign merchants and all the | Foreign Consuls. The actual work is | in charge of an executive committee | appointed by this board composed of
 1 three members; a Chinese official,
 ] the Commissioner of Customs, ana
 myself. I was able to have an
 American engineer appointed to have
 charge of the work. This adds to
 American prestige and American busi-
 ness. The undertaking is being paid
 for by means of a. surtax on the GUS
 toms duties The estimated cost is
 $900,000. Work has been going on
 for a year and a half and it is ex-
 pected to take much longer
 Another example Of what I mean by unexpected duties occurred in the ] summer of 1919 when we had a. c11o1-
 era scare. I, as head of the Ameri-
 can Red Cross, secured s5,0O0 in gold l from the Red Cross in the United States and was busy all summer in l connection with the use of it.'
 ffMr. Hanson, in order to take care of all this work you must have quite } an office force,'' I observed.
 'tOn the contrary my force is very . small and consists of two Chinese clerks who read write and speak English and have been at the Consu- late for ten years, and a .Chinaman who does nothing but write letters
 | and messages in Chinese. Each Consul is supposed to be provided with a } Vice4Consu1 to aSits him but the ser vice has been so short of men in the ) last few years that many of us have to get along without them
 Y What special preparation did you l have to have for your york; asked Before leaving Washington I had to pass a hard Civil Service exannina- 3 ton. I then spent two years at the
 Picking Legation studying the Chinese language and Chinese geography and t commerce. In connection with these l studies I also took up certain studies s in law. At the end of the two g years I passed an examination and l was appointed a, vice consul and in-
 terpreter- At the end of another two years I had to go to Peking for an l examination, principally in Chinese and two years later another and final one. In order to pass the last one had to be more or less familiar with s Chinese classics in the original and y read and write 4,000 Chinese char acters. For a number of years wrote ! a hundred Chinese characters a. day to keep them in my mind and even g now make it a, practice to read in Chinese for an hour each day in or g der to retain it. So you see it was six
 years after I went out before I pass ] ed my final examinations