THE BLOOD RED FLAG- OF ENGLAND.
[To THZ EDITOR 07 THE "SPECTATOR."'
SIR,—This being the All-British Shopping Week, and a good many Union Jacks about, may I ask what flag we common people are at liberty to fly. I have never attempted to fly a British flag without being straightway requested to take it down. When my dear husband and I arrived in Chungking in a craft of which he was owner, " the blood red flag of England " had been our delight and our pride for twenty-six days through the Yangtse Gorges, as we each evening returned to our boat guided by its red gleam. There was something that thrilled us as we arrived there, taking our flag for the first time into those inland waters. It gave a chill when the very friendly Consul asked us immediately to lower it as contrary to treaty. Years afterwards, when a Consul of quite another kind refused in any way to celebrate our " Good Queen's" Jubilee, saying he was not paid to do so, my dear husband did what he could, gathering all the little foreign colony together to a banquet with a special Chinese cook, engaged to prepare the sucking pig that represents roast beef and turkey in that district. A Royal Standard was procurable, and my husband flew it on the highest mast he could, to be again requested to haul it down by a very friendly lieutenant in command of one of the small river gunboats tied up to our garden. When I was returning alone from England and wanted the protection of our flag through the perils of the
Upper Yangtse, a wretched-looking thing like a pinafore—a Union Jack with a broad frill round it—was brought to me as what the Ichang Consul approved, the sort of thing I could not sit under without feeling like a slobbering baby. I had but a little while beforehand seen that an M.P., Sir Richard Martin, I think, had been bringing forward the question of our flag in the House, and been told there was a flag English people might fly without being officers of the Army or Navy, or Consular officials. But, if so, what is it ? So little acquainted are most people with the nature of flags that the Consular officials at Chungking mostly came and went with their Union Jacks upside down. There ought to be a flag for us all to know, and love, and fly wherever we are, and wherever we please, although I do not wish to emulate an American lady friend who ricksha'd through Japan, Stars and Stripes flying on either side of her ricksha ; nor the ordinary American travelling man, who produces the Stars and Stripes from his pocket to decorate his cabin with, indifferent to the nationality of his cabin companion. Indeed, individually, my feelings have been too deeply wounded ever to be likely to attempt to fly a flag again of any kind. But it would be well for English people generally to have a flag to rally round. " The meteor flag of England " so far seems to be a meteor indeed.—I am, Sir, &c., A MOURNER FROM WEST CHINA.
[The Royal Standard is the King's flag, and naturally can only be flown by the Sovereign. On the high seas the flying of the Jack and of the White, Blue, and Red ensigns are regu- lated by law or by Admiralty regulations having the force of law. On land any Briton is free to fly any flag be likes, but, if he is a sensible man and is endowed with good taste, he will, when he wants to fly the National Colours, hoist not the White, Blue, or Red Ensign, but the Union Flag, familiarly, if not quite correctly, called the Union Jack—Union Jack is strictly a sea term. To prevent flying the Union Flag upside down, a very common error—but one which sends a pang through the heart of a sailor—the following doggerel may prove useful
To fly the Union flag aright In top staff corner place broad white.
The broader stripe of white should always be uppermost.-- En. Spectator.]
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