Daniel McIntyre Collegiate Institute - Breezes Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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D. M. C. I. BREEZES 57 ing to restore the Manchurian line of kings and establish an aristocracy. On the other hand the southern faction is striving to conquer the north, and with a united nation, hold an election for the presidency; a posi¬ tion left vacant since the death of the late Dr. Sun Yat Sen. So it is a civil war between democracy and autocracy. There is no comparison whatever, between ancient China and the China of today. The “Middle Kingdom once vast and mighty, is now a comparatively small and weak nation; once the largest homogeneous nation, now split into many factions which are at each other’s throats. China has stood while other nations have risen and fallen. The question is—is China about to have its turn to fall, or will it be united to stand? —J. G. Mar, Room 56. IN MEMORIAM In memory of Elizabeth Janette Carswell, who passed on, January 15th. Students of Room 7 extend their sympathy to relatives and friends of their late schoolmate. A light has from our schoolroom gone, A voice we loved is still, A place is vacant in our class, Which we can never fill. NORMAL NOTES The Normal season is fast drawing to a close, and we who are en¬ tering the teaching profession, realize that we are on the threshold of life. In future years, when looking back over our term at Normal, wo shall have many happy recollections. Among our numerous activities is the dramatic work. Under Miss t-thirriff’s guidance the Student Players presented several plays. Five one-act plays were given by the classes, before Christmas, and a five-act comedy since then. In addition to this, enjoyable “Lit” programmes have been given by most of the classes. Sports are by no means neglected. In the fall, a field day was held at Assiniboine Park, as a get-together affair. During the winter, curling and basketball held our attention, but at present the spring- days call us forth to the baseball diamond. Each class has had four dances during the term. The most enjoy¬ able of these was the concluding dance held at the Isaac Brock School. On May 11th, the graduates held their closing exercises. The pro¬ gramme consisted of folk dances by members of Class “A” several songs by a chorus from Class “C, ” and the valedictory address by Miss Warwiek. The Hon. Mr. Hoey gave an inspiring address, and a few words were spoken by Dr. W. A. McIntyre. At present, we are contemplating with mingled pleasure and regret, the new life which lies before us. —Dorothy Hutchison.

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56 D. M. C. I. BREEZES THE SITUATION IN CHINA IN re cent years there have been many uprisings in China against for¬ eign nations. Then, China itself is in a state of civil warfare, which began soon after the Revolution in 1911. To understand the situation, we must know something of the people and their history; so let us look into the past of this once vast and mighty nation of the Far East. •China, translated literally, means “The Flowery Middle King¬ dom.” It was given this name in its days of pomp and glory. For China at one time stretched from North China to the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea; and as far west as Europe. The Mongolians forced the Russian princes to do homage to them in 1280. They conquered the Hungarians, Poles, and Galicians, then swept through Asia Minor. Only a few years ago, discoveries were made of drawings and carvings, dis¬ tinctly Chinese, on walls of caves in South Africa. All this goes to show the vastness of the old Chinese Empire. Now let us turn to the people of the ancient times. The Chinese worship under three forms of religion, Buddhism, Tarism, and perhaps the most common, and containing the highest ideals, Confucianism. The latter is the worship of the famous sage Confucius. He taught the people good and evil, and also of God; but the name “Heaven” took the place of the Divine name. His golden rule was “What you do not like when done unto yourself, do not to others.” Ancestral worship was, and still is an important factor in Chinese religion, showing great love for their parents and ancestors. The people had a high degree of in¬ telligence, inventing such things as paper, the magnetic needle, which was followed by the compass, and gunpowder. Many other useful articles have been credited to Chinese invention. Type printing was in use centuries before it was discovered in Europe. China is said to have regarded early traders as inferiors, and re¬ fused to have dealings with them; but according to certain authorities, it is now known that China carried on trade with foreign nations until she was excited to hostilities by the actions of the Portuguese and Spaniards from 1520 to 1570. China, on account of trade, has suffered many losses of territory. Hong Kong, for instance, was ceded to Eng¬ land because of some troubles over the opium trade. This is only one o p the multifarious cases, as many treaties have been made with foreign nations, regarding trade, and leasing and cessation of lands. The people claim that China was not given a fair deal in these pacts; and call them the “unequal treaties.” After losing much land and prestige in war, the Chinese sought to regain their lost ground. Riots and other forms of disturbances took place, which resulted only in further losses. So we find among the people a feeling of “anti-foreignism,” which persists even today. Its existence has been shown by the more recent disturbances. Last year Britain returned the Hankow concessions into Chinese control. The country itself is now in the grip of Bolshevism, which has been blamed for the “anti-foreign” uprisings. The political situation is easily understood. The country is divided into two factions, the south and the north. The northern faction is try-

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58 D. M. C. T. BREEZES THE EXPLORERS OF THE OCEAN BED QAN you imagine a creature not as large as a man, easily supporting on its body a weight equal to the weight of twenty railroad trains loaded with steel bars ' ? It seems impossible that such could exist, but, as a matter of fact there are millions of such creatures. Few persons know that the wide, blue surface of water conceals a weird and wonderful country of life, the realities of which surpass our wildest dreams—or nightmares. We know, of course, that there are fishes and other creatures swimming about in the underworld of water, but what we can see of the ocean as we look over the side of a boat or stand along the sea shore, does not tell us anything of the real kingdom of the sea. Slowiy, men are exploring the depths, but even the diver cannot catch a glimpse of this country of mystery, that lies beneath the waves. No diver ever has been able to explore more than two hundred and eighty-eight feet below the surface of the sea, yet in some places the ocean is over six miles deep. Man has scaled the skies, and mined for miles into the earth, but the sea has not permitted him to fathom its depths. The first man to go down to a great depth was a gunnery instruc¬ tor, of the British navy, named Catto. At the end of a series of diving experiments made in 1906, he dived two hundred and ten feet, and was the first man who saw the sea at such a depth and lived to tell the tale. In 1915 an American submarine met with an accident off Honolulu while under water, and did not come up to the surface. Divers were sent down to find it. One of these divers, Frank Crilly, reached the wreck in five minutes, but it took two hundred and five men to draw him safely to the surface. Later one of his fellow divers, Laughlin, dived, but his life-line became entangled at two hundred feet, and f rilly had to dive to bring him to the surface again. “Where there is no sunlight there can be no animal life and where there is no plant life there can be no animal life,” says the general pub¬ lic ; so beyond the depth of six hundred yards the sea must be utterly uninhabited. However, a strange thing came to the aid of explorers of the ocean bed. During the year 1860 a telegraph cable in the Mediterranean Sea broke at the depth of seventy-two hundred feet, and when the broken cable was raised it was found to be over-grown with sea animals in an astonishing variety of forms. At seventy-two hundred feet, the floor of the sea is as black as night and freezing cold; yet it was seen that animals were able to live, with tons of water crushing them down and not a ray of sunlight, to grow plants for them to feed upon. Of course no diver could descend to the ocean floor, for he would be crushed to death by the awful pressure of water, long before he reached the bottom. The only way to explore the deep sea is to let down iron hooks and nets and try to drag up some of the things living in the