One Hundred Years of Singapore. Edited by W. Makepeace, Dr.
G. E. Brooke, and R. St. J. Braddell. 2 vols. (Murray. 42e. net.)—Singapore was founded on an almost uninhabited island in February, 1819, by Sir Stamford Raffles. These substantial volumes celebrate the centenary of the great port. Various writers deal fully with its history, its institutions, its schools and churches, its harbour and trade, and its amusements, and contribute personal reminiscences of prominent officials and citizens. The centenary ceremonies are described. There is a chronological table, and there is a very good index ; the book is elaborately illustrated and will be useful for reference. Mr. Still, the editor of the Straits Times, contributes an interesting chapter on Singapore's future. He predicts, reasonably enough, that the town will cover the whole island and have a million people, that its importance as a port must ever increase, and that, when it is connected with the mainland of Johore by a causeway and bridge, it will become the natural terminus of a great Eastern Asiatic railway system. He says that within the past ten years he has seen " the Asiatic population come fifty years closer to the state which would make it possible to give Malaya a system of representative self-government," though he does not suggest that the time for that has come.
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