dark, cloud-like forms of shrubbery. Near the gate some calla lilies
stood like graceful, silent ghosts. The night air was fragrant with the
scent of rich, damp soil and growing things.

"But don't you think," I pleaded as I opened the gate to let him pass,
"that there is, after all, something poetic in the volcanic conception
of a garden?"

"No, no," he cried. "Poetic? No. Good night. Good night. I do not
understand this new Japan. There is no repose any more. It is all
volcanoes, all exploding. It is the beauties of calm that we are losing.
Calm! Yes, that is it, calm! calm! calm!"

His agitated voice, shouting, "Calm! calm! calm!" came back to me as
like a typhoon he whirled off into the darkness, leaving me in the sweet
quiet of the garden--to meditate.

                                PART III

                              CHAPTER XVI

    _The "Connecticut Yankee" in Old Japan--Commodore Perry--The
    Elder Statesmen--Marquis Okuma--Self-made Men--Viscount
    Shibusawa--The Power of the Daimyo--Samurai Privileges,
    Including That of Suicide--Education in Old Japan--Jigoro Kano
    and Jiudo--The Farewell Letter of a Patriot--Kodokwan and
    Butokukai--The Old Military Virtues--General Nogi--His Death
    With Countess Nogi_

Despite the convulsions, overturnings, and transitions through which so
many nations have lately been passing, Japan still holds the world's
record for swift and stupendous change. The thing that happened to Japan
staggers the imagination. History affords no parallel. The nearest
parallel is to be found in the fiction of a great imaginative writer. An
American or a European going to Japan at approximately the time of the
Imperial Restoration of 1868, found himself, in effect, dropped back
through the centuries after the manner of Mark Twain's "Connecticut
Yankee"; and the Japanese who lived through the transition which then
began, met an experience like that pictured in Mark Twain's fantasy as
having befallen the people of King Arthur's Court when modern knowledge
was suddenly visited upon them.

The true story of Japan, however, surpasses in its wonder the invention
of Mark Twain; for whereas the facts of history compelled the author of
"A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" to let ancient Britain
backslide into her semi-barbarism after the disappearance of the
Connecticut Yankee, Japan not only changed completely but held her gains
and continued to progress.

The beginning of the period of transition is customarily dated from the
year 1853, when Commodore Perry first arrived, or from 1854, when he
negotiated his treaty; but though that treaty did open the door through
which the spirit of change was soon to enter, the actual modernizing of
the nation did not start until 1868, when Yoshinobu Tokugawa, fifteenth
of his line, and last shogun to govern Japan, relinquished his power to
the Emperor.

Men able to remember the events of the Restoration are about as rare in
Japan as are those who, in this country, remember the impeachment of
Andrew Johnson, which occurred in the same year; and men who played
important parts in the Restoration are of course rarer still--as rare,
say, as Americans who played important parts in the Civil War. As for
Japanese who can recall Perry's visit, they would correspond in years to
those who, with us, can recollect the beginning of the struggle for Free
Soil in Kansas. In neither land, alas, is there more than a handful of
such old folk left.

It so happens, however, that in Japan several very remarkable men have
survived to great age.

The three most powerful figures in politics at the time of my visit were
the octogenarian noblemen known as the Genro, or Elder Statesmen: Field
Marshal Prince Yamagata, Marquis Matsukata, and Marquis Okuma. Prince
Yamagata, as a soldier, took an active part in the civil warfare
attending the Restoration. Both he and Marquis Okuma were born in
1838--that is to say seven years before Texas was admitted to the Union
as the twenty-eighth state. Marquis Matsukata was born in 1840.

Of these venerable statesmen, Prince Yamagata and Marquis Matsukata
figured, I found, as great unseen influences; but Marquis Okuma, while
perhaps not actually more active than his colleagues of the Genro,
appeared frequently before the public, and was more of a popular idol,
being often referred to as Japan's "Grand Old Man." In politics he had
long been known as a great fighter and an artful tactician; also he was
sympathetically regarded by reason of his having been, many years ago,
the victim of a bomb outrage in which he lost a leg.

I knew of his having been thus crippled, but through some trick of
memory failed to recall the fact when, one day, I found myself a member
of a small party of Americans received by the Marquis at his house. We
were with him for something more than an hour; perhaps two hours. During
that time he stood and made an address, moved about the room, and even
stepped out to the garden, yet I was not once reminded of his physical
handicap. I have never seen a person so seriously maimed who, in his
movements, revealed it so little. And that at eighty-three years of age!

I should have guessed him twenty years younger. Lean, tall, wiry, alert,
with close-cropped white hair and snapping black eyes, he appeared to be
at the very apex of his powers.

That he was versatile I knew. All three of the Genro have at various
times been Prime Minister, and have held other high offices under the
Government, but Marquis Okuma's positions have been extremely varied,
calling for the display of a wide range of knowledge and of talents. I
was told that he had organized the Nationalist Party, published a
magazine, edited a number of important literary and historical works,
founded and presided over Waseda University, and had long been famed as
a horticulturist.

It was a curious thing to hear him speak in a language I could not
understand, yet to feel so strongly his gift for swaying men with
oratory.

The experience reminded me of that of a newspaper man I know, who
accompanied William Jennings Bryan on one of his political speech-making
tours long ago.

"I was a dyed-in-the-wool Republican," he told me, in recounting the
experience, "and did not believe in Bryan or his measures, yet I
continually found myself carried away by his oratory. While he was
speaking he made me believe in things I _didn't_ believe in. I would
want to applaud and cheer him like the rest of the audience.

"Afterwards I would go back to the train and sober up. I wanted to kick
myself for letting him twist me around his finger like that. But the
next time I heard him the same thing would happen. It wasn't what he
said; it was his voice and phrasing and his magnetism."

I have no doubt that a Japanese unacquainted with English would sense
Bryan's elocutionary power precisely as I did that of Marquis Okuma;
indeed I am not sure that a foreigner, unfamiliar with the language of
the orator, is not in a sense the auditor who can best measure his
power.

Marquis Okuma's features indicated extraordinary pugnacity, yet I should
say that his pugnacity was under perfect control. He could exhibit both
passion and icy coolness, and I believe he could turn on either at will,
as one turns on hot or cold water. If he was William Jennings Bryan he
was also Henry Cabot Lodge.

It is worth remarking that these Elder Statesmen are without exception
self-made men. None of them was born with a title; all were members of
modest samurai families; all rose through ability.

In this respect, as in many others, comparisons between the governmental
system of Imperial Japan and that of Imperial Germany that was, do not
hold. Japan is not governed by a hereditary ruling class. The government
service is open to all men, under a system of competitive examinations,
and promotion does not go by family or favour, but is in almost all
cases a recognition of ability exhibited in minor offices. Young men in
the consular service are in line for ambassadorships and may reasonably
hope, if they exhibit great talents, ultimately to reach the highest
offices.

It would seem, moreover, that in Japan as in some other lands,
aristocratic and wealthy families do not, as a rule, produce the
strongest men. Thus I was informed that, of the entire cabinet of Prime
Minister Hara, but one member was a man of noble family, that one having
been Count Oki, Minister of Justice. And even Count Oki was only of the
second generation of nobility.

In the business world the same rule applies. The titled business men of
Japan have risen, practically without exception, from humble beginnings.
I was told that one of them, whom I met, had begun life as a pedlar, and
was proud of it. Looking up another business genius in the national
"Who's Who," I find the following statement, which may be assumed to
have been furnished by the gentleman to whom it refers:

    Arrived in Tokyo in '71, with empty purse; proceeded to
    Yokohama, supporting himself by hawking cheap viands.

If the honorary title, "Grand Old Man of Japan," had not already been
conferred, and I had been invited to make nominations, I should have
gone outside the realm of politics and cast my vote for Viscount Eiichi
Shibusawa.

Had the Viscount been, at the time of the Restoration, a member of one
of the great clans responsible for the return of the reins of government
to Imperial hands, his career might have resembled more closely the
careers of the three old nobles of the Genro. But whereas Prince
Yamagata, Marquis Matsukata, and Marquis Okuma were respectively men of
Choshu, Satsuma, and Saga--clans that cast their lot with the coalition
that returned the Emperor to power--Viscount Shibusawa was on the other
side, having been a retainer of the last shogun.

The spoils went, naturally enough, to the victors. Strong men belonging
to the clans which had supported the Imperial House became the strong
men of the centralized government. Even to-day, when clans, as such, no
longer exist, the old clan sentiment survives, with the result that men
of Satsuma and Choshu origin are most influential in politics. The
militaristic tendency sometimes noticed in the action of the Japanese
Government is said to be largely due to this fact, for the clan of
Satsuma was in the old days notorious for its warlike inclinations, and
there is evidence to show that those inclinations have, to some extent
survived. Naval officers are to-day drawn largely from old Satsuma
families, while Choshu furnishes many officers to the army.

At twenty-seven years of age, Viscount Shibusawa had by his ability
become vice-minister of the Shogun's treasury. Naturally, then, after
the fall of the shogunate, he went in for finance. He founded the First
Bank of Japan--literally the first modern bank started there--and,
prospering greatly became a man of large affairs. Repeatedly he was
offered the portfolio of Finance under the Government, but always
refused it. A few years ago he retired from active business, and as has
already been mentioned, gave his time thereafter to all manner of good
works.

When I met him he was nearing his eighty-second birthday. He distinctly
remembered Perry's arrival in Japan and the events that followed. I
wished to get the story of a representative man who had seen these
things, and therefore asked him to grant me an interview. This he was so
kind as to do, allowing me the better part of two days--for interviewing
through an interpreter, even though he be the best of interpreters, is
slow work.

We talked in a pretty brick bungalow in the Viscount's garden. Outside
the door was an English rose-garden, with bushes trained to the shape of
trees.

Prior to that time I had always seen the Viscount wearing a frock coat
or a dress suit, but here at home, on a day free from formalities, he
was clad in the silken robes that Japanese gentlemen put on for
comfort--though they might well put them on for elegance, too.

Short, stocky, energetic, with a strong neck and large round
head, the face seamed with deep wrinkles, he was one of the most
extraordinary-looking men I had ever met. He radiated force, courage,
honesty. I knew a Sioux chief, long ago, who had a face like that, even
to the colour, and to the deep wrinkles of humour about the mouth and
eyes. Nor, in either case, did the promise of those wrinkles fail.

When, having likened Viscount Shibusawa to an Indian chief, I also liken
him to a barrel-bodied, square-jawed, weather-beaten old British squire
of the perfect John Bull type, I may overtax the reader's imagination;
yet there was in him as much of the one as of the other.

He was born in the country, coming of a good but not aristocratic
family. The Japan of his youth and early manhood was divided into some
two hundred and fifty or three hundred feudal districts, each ruled by a
daimyo, or chieftain, having his castles, his court, his concubines, his
retainers--among the latter soldiers in armour, equipped with swords,
spears or bows and arrows, and wearing hideous masks calculated to
terrify the foe.

These chiefs had absolute power over the people and lands in their
domains. They could make laws, issue paper money, levy taxes, impose
labour and punishment on the people, or arbitrarily take from them
property or life itself.

It was a land without railroads, without steam power, without
window-glass; a land in which nobles journeyed by the highroads in
magnificent processions, surrounded by their soldiers, mounted and
afoot, their lacquered palanquins, their coolie bearers; a land in
which, when great lords passed, humble citizens fell to their knees and
touched their foreheads to the ground; a land of duels, feuds,
vendettas, clan wars; a land in which the samurai, or gentry, alone were
allowed to wear swords, and in which one of the privileges most highly
prized by the samurai was that of dying by his own hand, if condemned to
death, instead of by the hand of the executioner. Involved with the
privilege of _hara-kiri_, or _seppuku_, was a property right. The
property of a man beheaded by the executioner was confiscated, whereas
one committing hara-kiri could leave his estate to his family.

The education of young men varied in those times according to rank.
Youths of the aristocracy were instructed in the Chinese classics, which
in Japan take the place of Latin and Greek with us. Medicine and
astronomy were also taught. The sons of lesser samurai received a
training calculated to fit them for practical affairs. All those
entitled to wear swords studied swordsmanship, and the process by which
they learned it was sometimes severe, for it was the custom of masters
to attack the pupil suddenly from behind, or even when he was asleep at
night, on the theory that he should be ready at all times to defend
himself. A samurai found killed with his sword completely sheathed was
disgraced. At least two inches of the blade must show in proof that the
dead man had attempted a defence. Jiu-jutsu was also taught to many
samurai youths, and in this, as in swordsmanship, it was the practice of
instructors to make surprise attacks upon their pupils.

Viscount Shibusawa's recollections of old days, as he recounted them to
me, will make a separate chapter, but before that chapter is begun, let
me mention several points of samurai tradition--among them jiu-jutsu,
and the more advanced art or science of jiudo, developed by my friend
Mr. Jigoro Kano.

As after the Restoration the craze for all things American and European
spread through Japan, the old arts of jiu-jutsu, which for more than
three centuries had been practised by samurai, fell into disuse. Before
that time there had been many different schools of jiu-jutsu, teaching a
variety of systems, but as the old masters of the art became
superannuated no followers were arising to take their places.

In 1878, when Mr. Kano took up the study of jiu-jutsu, he saw that,
through lack of interest, many of the fine points of the art were likely
to be lost. In order to preserve as much of it as he could, he went to
great pains to make himself proficient, not merely in one system of
jiu-jutsu, but in several systems as taught by the several great masters
then alive.

His first interest in jiu-jutsu arose through the fact that he had been
a weak child and wished to make himself a strong man. I was reminded of
Theodore Roosevelt's sickly childhood when Mr. Kano told me that; and it
is interesting to recall that it was President Roosevelt who first
caused jiu-jutsu to be widely talked of in the United States, and that
he studied it, while in the White House, under one of Mr. Kano's pupils.
Also I was interested to hear from Mr. Kano that, as a young man, he
gave an exhibition of jiu-jutsu before General Grant, at Viscount
Shibusawa's house in Tokyo.

Far from being a professional athlete, Mr. Kano is a gentleman of
samurai family, a graduate of the Literary College of the Imperial
University, a linguist, a traveller, an educator of high reputation, the
holder of several decorations. Among other offices he has been head
master of the Peers' School in Tokyo.

As the reader is doubtless aware, the theory of jiu-jutsu was to defeat
the adversary, not by pitting force against force, but by yielding
before the opponent's onslaughts in such a way as to turn his strength
against him.

Jiudo, which means "the way or doctrine of yielding," is a combination,
created by Mr. Kano, of all systems of jiu-jutsu interwoven with a plan
of mental, moral, and physical training, calculated to elevate the art
above any mere consideration of combat alone--although that side is by
no means neglected.

Innumerable stories, exciting or amusing, might be told of the heroic
adventures of celebrated jiudoists, but I know of nothing which sheds
more light upon Mr. Kano's teachings, in their moral aspect, than does a
letter written to him by Commander Yuasa of the Japanese Navy, a former
pupil of the Kodokwan, the school of jiudo established by Mr. Kano in
Tokyo. The letter was written by Commander Yuasa when he was about to
take the steamer _Sagami Maru_ and sink her at the harbour entrance in
the third blockading expedition at Port Arthur. The following are
extracts from it:

    We shall do all that human power can, and leave the rest to
    Heaven. Thus we can calmly ride to certain death. I am happy to
    say that among the members of this forlorn hope are three of
    your former pupils: Commander Hirose, Lieutenant Commander
    Honda, and myself. May this fact redound to the credit of the
    Kodokwan.

    Though I greatly regret that while living I could not do justice
    to the kindness you have shown me, still please accept as an
    expression of my gratitude the fact that I lay down my life for
    the sake of our country, as you have so kindly taught us, in
    time of peace, to be ready to do.

The writer of this letter was lost, as was also Commander Hirose, one of
the brother officers he mentions. The other, Lieutenant Commander Honda,
was wounded by a shell, but was rescued and lived to tell the tale.

Foreigners visiting Japan and wishing to see jiudo demonstrated, are
welcome at the Kodokwan, where, if notice is given, an interpreter is
provided. There are now some twenty thousand practitioners of jiudo who
look to the Kodokwan as headquarters and to Mr. Kano as their master.

Another place where jiudo may be witnessed is at the
Butokukai--Association for the Inculcation of the Military Virtues--in
Kyoto. The latter is a private organization, like an athletic club, with
a fine temple-like building, and many branch establishments throughout
the country. It has some two hundred thousand members, of which several
thousands are active.

The primary idea of this organization is to keep alive certain old
Japanese military arts, such as jiudo, archery, fencing, the use of
lances and spears, and the employment of the curious lance-like
_naginata_, which, with its curved blade and long handle, was used only
by women.

Contests between men armed with dummy swords and women using wooden
naginata are sometimes to be witnessed at the Butokukai, and are
extremely interesting as recalling the days when the women of Old Japan
fought beside their men, using the naginata as an offensive weapon, and
a short dagger, worn in the fold of the obi, as a defensive weapon
corresponding to the shorter of the two swords that men used to wear.

Samurai women were taught to defend themselves with the dagger, and to
use it for suicide if in fear of defeat and dishonour. Families in which
the samurai tradition is sedulously maintained still make it a custom to
present their daughters, at the time of marriage, with daggers of this
type, though such weapons are now recognized merely as emblems of a
spirit to be preserved.

The great modern samurai hero of Japan was General Count Nogi, the hero
of Port Arthur, in memory of whom a shrine was recently dedicated in
Tokyo.

This shrine stands in the grounds behind the simple house in Tokyo where
Count and Countess Nogi lived, and where they died together by their own
hands. Nogi is canonized in Japan, and his house is held a sacred place,
and is visited by thousands of persons each year.

The theory upon which self-destruction is practised according to the old
samurai tradition, and is widely approved in certain circumstances, is
one of the things that baffles the Occidental mind.

I therefore asked Viscount Kentaro Kaneko, who knew General Nogi, to
tell me the story of his death, and to explain to me how he came to
commit seppuku.

    [Illustration: Viscount Kentaro Kaneko (Harvard '78), Privy
    Councilor to the Emperor, President of the America-Japan Society
    of Tokyo, and friend of President Roosevelt]

"When Nogi was given command at Port Arthur," said the Viscount, "his
two sons were officers under him. He told his wife to prepare three
coffins, and to hold no funeral services until all three were ready to
be buried together.

"In the assault on Port Arthur some thirty thousand Japanese soldiers
gave up their lives. This sacrifice of life was at first much criticized
in Japan, but public sentiment changed in face of the fact that the
General lost both his sons. He returned to Japan a victor, it is true,
but a most unhappy man. Always in his mind were thoughts of the families
of the thirty thousand brave young men it had been necessary to
sacrifice. He did not want to be acclaimed in the streets, but to be let
alone. He went about in an old uniform and tried to be as inconspicuous
as possible.

"One day at an audience with the Emperor Meiji, Nogi said to him as he
was leaving, something to the effect that he should never see him again.

"The Emperor, gathering that Nogi was contemplating seppuku, called him
back.

"'Nogi,' he said, 'I still have need of you. I want your life.'

"So the General did not carry out his plan at that time, but lived on,
as the Emperor had ordered him to do, becoming president of the school
at which the sons of nobles are educated.

"All through the years, however, he was haunted by the memory of the
thirty thousand soldiers he had been compelled to send to their death.

"When the Emperor Meiji died, Nogi was one of the guard of honour, made
up of peers, who in rotation watched at the Imperial bier for forty days
and forty nights.

"Then came the state funeral. On the day of the funeral Nogi wrote a
poem which declared in effect, 'I shall follow in the footsteps of Your
Majesty.' This poem he showed to Prince Yamagata, who took it to mean
merely that Nogi would be in the procession following the Imperial
remains to the grave.

"But when the guns announced the departure of the funeral cortège from
the palace, Nogi was not there. Like the samurai of old, he desired to
follow his dead master into the beyond. At the sound of the guns he took
his short sword and committed seppuku, while in the next room Countess
Nogi, his devoted wife, dressed all in white, cut the arteries of her
neck. Thus the two died together, for the sake of the Emperor and the
thirty thousand soldiers who had sacrificed their lives."

At no point is the outlook of the Oriental more completely at odds with
that of the Occidental, than in the view it takes of suicide.

Whereas with us suicide is condemned as cowardly, being resorted to as a
means of escape from the hardships of life, there will oftentimes be
something highly heroic in a Japanese suicide. Unhappiness, it is true,
does drive some Japanese to self-destruction, but in many other cases
the suicide represents something more in the nature of a self-inflicted
punishment for failure of some kind. Thus it is with the schoolboys who
sometimes kill themselves because they have failed in their
examinations. Likewise, while in Japan I heard of two railroad gatemen
who had, by failing to close their gate when a train was coming, been
responsible for the death of a man travelling in a ricksha. A few days
after this accident both these gatemen suicided by throwing themselves
beneath a train. For their neglect they paid voluntarily with their
lives.

"And," said the Viscount, "we had in the old days another sort of
suicide, examples of which sometimes occur even to this day. When a man
believed profoundly in something, and was unable to attract attention to
the thing in which he believed, he would sometimes commit seppuku as a
means of drawing notice to it. He would leave a paper setting forth his
beliefs, and people would give it attention, feeling that if a man was
willing to die in order to emphasize a point, his message was worth
considering."

The Viscount paused. Then rather reflectively he added: "It is as though
he were to underscore his protest--in red."

                              CHAPTER XVII

    _The Old-time Anti-Foreign Sentiment--Prince Yoshinobu
    Tokugawa--Emperor and Shogun--Prince Yoshinobu becomes
    Shogun--His Highness, Akitaké, Goes to France--Humorous
    Episodes--The Defeat of Prince Yoshinobu's Army--Various
    Explanations--The Restoration of the Emperor--Prince Yoshinobu's
    Retirement--The Viscount's Theory--Prince Keikyu Tokugawa--A
    Roosevelt Anecdote--Swords and Watchchain_

"I was a boy of fourteen," said Viscount Shibusawa "when your Commodore
Perry came to Japan. At that time, and for a considerable period
afterwards, I was 'anti-foreigner'--that is, I was opposed to the
abandonment of our old Japanese isolation, and to the opening of
relations with foreign powers.

"The majority of thoughtful men felt as I did. Our trouble with the
Jesuits, in the latter part of the sixteenth and early part of the
seventeenth century came about through a fear which grew up amongst us
that the Jesuits were trying to get political control of Japan. This
fear brought about their expulsion from the country, as well as some
persecution of themselves and their converts, and it was then that our
policy of isolation began. More lately we had seen the Opium War in
China, and that had added to our conviction that foreign powers were
merely seeking territory, and that they were utterly unscrupulous.

"When I reached the age of twenty-five, I became a retainer of Yoshinobu
Tokugawa, a powerful prince, kinsman of Iyemochi Tokugawa, who was then
Shogun. Not being of noble family, I did not belong to Prince
Yoshinobu's intimate circle, but was a member of what might be termed
the middle group at his court.

"He was then acting as intermediary between the Shogun and the Imperial
Court at Kyoto--for though the Shogun ruled the land, as shoguns had for
centuries, there was maintained a fiction that he did so by imperial
consent.

"When Iyemochi died, the powerful daimyos nominated my lord, Prince
Yoshinobu, to succeed him. I was opposed to his accepting the office,
for the country was then in a very unsettled condition, and I felt sure
that the next shogun, whoever he might be, would have serious
difficulties to encounter; especially with the important question of
foreign relations to the fore, and with such powerful lords as those of
Satsuma, Choshu, Tosa, and Hizan becoming increasingly hostile to the
shogunate and increasingly favourable to the Imperial House.

"The fact that Prince Yoshinobu had acted as intermediary between his
kinsman, the fourteenth Shogun, and the Imperial Court at Kyoto, made it
a delicate matter for him later to accept the shogunate. Moreover,
though he belonged to the Tokugawa family, his branch of the family, the
Mito branch, had continually insisted upon Imperial supremacy in Japan.
However, circumstances compelled him to accept the office. I was greatly
disappointed when he did so.

"This occurred two years after I became his retainer. I was now
vice-minister of his treasury, with the additional duties of keeping
track of all modern innovations and supervising the new-style military
drill, with rifles, which we were then taking up.

"Shortly after becoming Shogun, Yoshinobu decided to send his brother,
Akitaké, to France to be educated, and he appointed me a member of the
entourage that was to accompany the young man. I was then twenty-seven
years old.

"We sailed in January 1867--a party of twenty-five, among whom were a
doctor, an officer who went to study artillery, and various others
besides Akitaké's seven personal attendants.

"For international purposes the Shogun was now called Tycoon, for the
word 'shogun,' meaning 'generalissimo,' carried with it no connotation
of rulership; whereas 'tycoon' means 'great prince'--and of course it
seemed proper enough for a great prince to treat with foreign powers. As
brother of the Tycoon, Akitaké received, in Europe, the title
'Highness'.

"Matters looked very ominous for the shogunate at the time we left
Japan, but I felt that the best thing for me to do was to go abroad and
learn all I could, with a view to being better able to serve my country
when I should return.

"The members of our party wore the Japanese costume, including topknots
and two swords. I, however, devised a special elegance for myself. I
heard that the governor of Saigon, where our ship was to stop, intended
to welcome our party officially, so I had a dress coat made." The
Viscount shook with laughter as he recalled the episode. "It wasn't a
dress suit--just the coat. And when we got to Saigon I wore that coat
over my Japanese silks, in the daytime.

"Our lack of experience with European ways caused many amusing things to
happen. For instance, when we were in the train crossing the Isthmus of
Suez--there was no canal then--one member of the party, unaccustomed to
window-glass, threw an orange-peel, expecting it to go out of the
window. The peel hit the glass and bounced back falling into the lap of
an official who had come to escort us across the isthmus. We were much
embarrassed.

"Later, in Paris, another absurd thing occurred. You must understand
that in Japan it is customary for guests, leaving a house where they
have been entertained, to wrap up cakes and such things and take them
home. One member of our party, who had never seen ice-cream before,
attempted this, wrapping the ice-cream in paper and tucking it in the
front of his kimono. Needless to say, the ice-cream was no longer
ice-cream when he got back to the hotel, and he himself was not very
comfortable.

"The Paris Exposition of 1867 was in progress when we arrived. When it
was over we travelled through Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, Italy, and
England. Originally it was planned that after our official tour we
should settle down to study, and I was eager for this time to come.
However, it was not long before we received news that the shogunate had
fallen.

"The news was puzzling. I could not gather what was happening in Japan.
First I heard that Yoshinobu, as shogun, had publicly returned full
authority of the Emperor, but later came word of the battle of
Toba-Fushimi, in which troops of the Imperial Party defeated troops of
the Shogun. This made it appear that Yoshinobu had played false, first
publicly relinquishing the shogun's power and then fighting to maintain
it. These seemingly conflicting acts puzzled me, for I knew that
Yoshinobu was a man of the highest honour.

"Presently came a messenger from Japan saying that Akitaké had become
head of the Mito branch of the Tokugawa family, which made it necessary
for us to abandon our plans and return. We sailed from England in
December 1867, reaching Japan in November 1868, eleven months later.

"I was dumbfounded by the changes I found. Though I knew that the Shogun
Government had fallen I had not visualized what that would mean. My
lord, Yoshinobu, was held prisoner in a house in Suruga. Learning that
he was allowed to see his intimate friends and retainers, I journeyed to
Suruga, where I had audience with him several times. I found him
reticent, and was able to get from him little information as to the
mysterious course he had pursued.

"After having been held prisoner for a year he was released, but he
continued for thirty years to reside in the neighbourhood of Suruga,
leading a secluded life. Not until thirty-one years after his
resignation of the shogunate did he come to Tokyo. Four years later the
Emperor created him a prince of the new régime. This showed pretty
clearly that the Emperor had not mistrusted him.

"For twenty years after my return to Japan I was unable to get at the
bottom of this matter. I tried to get some explanation from Yoshinobu
himself, but he evaded my inquiries. Meanwhile the question was
constantly discussed in Japan. Those hostile to Yoshinobu contended that
he had not acted with sincerity, having been led by the burdens
connected with the opening of foreign relations, to lay down the
shogunate, and having later changed his mind and fought to retain it. On
the face of it, this seemed true. Yoshinobu was called a coward and a
traitor, and was severely criticized for having escaped after the battle
of Toba-Fushimi.

"On the other hand, those who supported Yoshinobu asserted that he had
acted logically and wisely: that he had seen that his government was
going to fall, and had been entirely honest in surrendering the
shogunate prior to the battle. These adherents insisted that he had not
wanted a battle, but had set out for Kyoto to see the Emperor with a
view to arranging details, especially with regard to the future welfare
of his retainers. "But when a great lord, travelled, in those times, he
travelled with an army, and Yoshinobu's defenders maintained that this
was what had brought on the battle--that when the men of Choshu and
Satsuma learned that Yoshinobu was moving toward Kyoto with his
soldiers, they came out and attacked him, believing, or pretending to
believe, that he was on a hostile errand.

"At this time the Emperor was but seventeen years of age, and the
Government was in the hands of elder statesmen of the Imperial Party.
The Emperor himself probably had no idea on what errand Yoshinobu was
approaching Kyoto; and whether the elder statesmen knew or not, they
belonged to clans hostile to the shogunate, and preferred to fight.

"Many years passed before the truth began to become clear. At last, when
the old wounds were pretty well healed, I undertook the compilation of a
history of Yoshinobu's life and times. Finally I asked him point-blank
about the events connected with his resignation and the subsequent
battle. He told me that he had indeed started to Kyoto on a peaceful
errand, but that when the forces sent out by the great clansmen
appeared, he could not control his own men. He had neither sought nor
desired battle. Feeling that his highest duty was to the Emperor, he
withdrew from the battle, taking no part in it, and returned whence he
had come, going into retirement. He knew, of course, that the battle
would put him in a false light, and he decided that the wisest and most
honourable course for him to pursue was to show, by his life in
retirement, his absolute submission to the Emperor.

"In order fully to appreciate why Yoshinobu was so ready to lay down his
power, the old Japanese doctrine of loyalty to the throne must be fully
grasped. This loyalty amounts to a religion, and permeates the whole
life of Japan. That is why the shoguns who for so many centuries ruled
Japan, never attempted to usurp imperial rank, but were satisfied, while
usurping the power, to preserve the form of governing always as
vice-regents.

"It is my personal belief that when Yoshinobu Tokugawa accepted the
shogunate despite the opposition of his trusted retainers, he did so
with the full intention of restoring to the Imperial House its rightful
power. I used to ask him about this, and while he never admitted it, he
never denied it. That was characteristic of him. He was the most modest
and self-effacing of men--the last man who would have claimed for
himself the credit for performing a self-sacrificing and heroic act of
patriotism. For him the performance of the act was sufficient."

Throughout my talk with Viscount Shibusawa I felt in him the passionate
loyalty of the retainer to his lord. Where I had wished for
reminiscences of a more personal nature, the Viscount, I could see,
thought of himself first of all in his relation to the family of Prince
Yoshinobu, the last shogun, whose retainer he was. He was not interested
in telling me of his own career, but he was profoundly interested in
seeing that I, being a writer, should understand the relationship of
Prince Yoshinobu to the Imperial Restoration. His attitude reminded me
of that of a noble old Southern gentleman, now dead and gone, who had
been the adjutant of Robert E. Lee, and who loved Lee and loved to talk
about him. When I talked with him it was the same. I had great
difficulty in getting him to tell me about his own experiences.

The loyalty of the retainer to the family of his lord is also to be seen
in the relationship between the Viscount and young Prince Keikyu
Tokugawa, son of Yoshinobu. After the death of the father the Viscount
continued to act as advisor to the son. He became his chief counsellor,
and when, a few years since, he resigned from the board of directors of
the First Bank of Japan--the bank which he founded five years after the
Restoration--it was young Prince Tokugawa who succeeded to his empty
chair.

The Prince, who is a member of the House of Peers, is known in the
United States, having come here during the war as representative of the
Japanese Red Cross.

Viscount Shibusawa is also a figure not unfamiliar to Americans, having
visited this country several times. I am indebted to him for an anecdote
illustrative of the prodigious memory of President Roosevelt.

"Eighteen years ago," he said, "when Mr. Roosevelt was president, I
called upon him at the White House. We had a pleasant talk. He
complimented the behaviour of the Japanese troops in the Boxer trouble,
saying that they were not only brave but orderly and well disciplined.
Then he spoke with admiration of the art of Japan.

"I said to him, 'Mr. President, I am only a banker, and I regret to say
that in my country banking is not yet so highly developed as is art.'

"'Perhaps it will be,' he replied, 'by the time we meet again.'

"Thirteen years later, when I called upon him at his home at Oyster Bay,
he took up the conversation where we had left off.

"'The last time I saw you,' he said, 'I did not ask you about banking in
Japan. Now I want you to tell me all about it.'"

As I was leaving the bungalow in the garden late in the afternoon of the
second day spent in interviewing the Viscount, the thought came to me
that probably I should never again talk with a man who had lived through
such transitions. I wanted a souvenir, and I wished it to be something
emblematic of the changes witnessed by those shrewd, humorous old eyes.

Therefore, not without some hesitation, I asked the Viscount if he would
be so kind as to put on his two samurai swords and let me take his
photograph.

He dispatched a servant who presently returned from the house bearing
the weapons. The Viscount tucked them through his sash, and I snapped
the shutter, hoping fervently that the late afternoon light would prove
to have been adequate.

    [Illustration: Viscount Shibusawa, one of the Grand Old Men of
    Japan, consented to pose for me, wearing his samurai swords]

As the reader may see for himself, the picture turned out well. Indeed
it turned out better than I myself had anticipated, for besides the
swords and silken robes of Old Japan, there may be seen in it a very
modern note.

It was the Viscount's grandson who, when I showed him the photograph,
called attention to that.

"Yes," he said, with a smile, "you have there the swords of Old Japan.
But the watch-chain--that is an anachronism."

                             CHAPTER XVIII

    _Viscount Kaneko's Home--Some Souvenirs--A Rooseveltian
    Memory--Doctor Bigelow's Prophecy--A First Meeting with
    Roosevelt--The Russo-Japanese War--Luncheons at the White
    House--Roosevelt's Interest in the Samurai Tradition--Sagamore
    Hill--Mrs. Roosevelt and Quentin--A Simple Home--The President
    Brings Blankets--A Bear Hunt--The Peace of Portsmouth and a
    Bearskin for the Emperor--A Letter of Roosevelt's on Relations
    with Japan--A Letter from Mid-Africa--"American Samurai"_

Never while in Japan did I feel quite so close to home as on the several
occasions when I sat in the study of Viscount Kentaro Kaneko, in Tokyo,
listening to his reminiscences and looking at his souvenirs of Theodore
Roosevelt.

No Japanese has been more widely known in the United States, or more
familiar with our ways, than Viscount Kaneko (Harvard '78), Privy
Councilor to the Emperor, chairman of the commission which is engaged in
preparing the history of the reign of the late Emperor Meiji, and
president of the America-Japan Society of Tokyo.

I found him living in a good-sized but not ostentatious house, purely
Japanese in architecture. But it was not purely Japanese in its
equipment. Like the houses of other Tokyo gentlemen accustomed to see
much of foreigners, it had carpet over the hall matting, rendering the
removal of shoes unnecessary, and certain of its rooms were furnished in
the Occidental style.

Such rooms, in Japan, usually are stiff reception-rooms which look as if
they were used only when visitors from abroad put in an appearance; but
Viscount Kaneko's study held a homelike feeling which made me think the
room was frequented by the master of the house when no guests were
present.

On the walls were framed photographs of notables, European and American,
with the Roosevelt family very much to the fore, and I noticed beneath
the photograph of President Roosevelt a cordial inscription in the
familiar handwriting, so honest and boyish--writing as unlike that of
any other great man as Roosevelt himself was unlike any other great man.

When I had crossed and read the inscription, Viscount Kaneko called my
attention to the frame.

"That frame," he said, "is made from a piece of Oregon pine which was
brought among other presents to the Shogun by Commodore Perry. The
Emperor presented me with a piece of the wood, and I had made from it
that frame and a writing box on which the scene of Perry's arrival is
depicted in gold lacquer."

There was also a photograph of Mrs. Roosevelt with two of her sons, and
one of Quentin Roosevelt as a child, astride a pony, with an inscription
to the Viscount's son Takemaro, dated August seventh, 1905. In the
corner of the frame was inserted a photograph which the Viscount had
caused to be taken of Quentin's grave in France.

Viscount Kaneko was a student at Harvard when Roosevelt entered the
university, but they were two years apart and did not know each other
there. Their first meeting occurred in Washington in 1889, when
Roosevelt was Civil Service Commissioner and Viscount Kaneko was
returning to Japan after having visited the principal countries of
Europe for the purpose of studying parliamentary forms. The first
Japanese Parliament met in the year following, 1890, when Japan adopted
a Constitution.

In looking back upon my interviews with the Viscount I find myself
marvelling to-day, as I did then, at the detailed accuracy of his
memory. He recounted events of fifteen and more years before with a
vividness and an attention to trifles that was extraordinary. It was as
if he had refreshed his memory by reading from a diary.

"I had two letters of introduction to Roosevelt," he told me, "when I
went to Washington in 1889. One had been given to me by James Bryce,
later Viscount Bryce, who was then in Gladstone's Cabinet. The other I
received from my friend Dr. William Sturges Bigelow.

"When Doctor Bigelow gave me the letter, he said: 'This will introduce
you to a man who will some day be President of the United States.' I
always remembered that and watched Roosevelt's career with the more
interest for that reason.

"On reaching Washington I called on Roosevelt at a private boarding
house where he was living, and he returned my call next day. Naturally I
perceived at once that he was a man of extraordinarily vigorous mind. I
enjoyed him greatly, and was pleased and interested, after my return to
Japan, to see him steadily ascending. He became Assistant Secretary of
the Navy, Colonel of the Rough Riders, Governor of New York. 'Now,' I
said to myself on reading that he had been elected Governor, 'he is on
the way to fulfilling Doctor Bigelow's prophecy.' Then he became
Vice-President, and I thought: 'That is too bad. They have shelved him.
He won't be President after all.' But McKinley was assassinated and
Roosevelt came to the White House.

"Early in 1904, at the time of our war with Russia, I was sent to the
United States on an unofficial embassy. I went first to New York, where
I remained for a week; then to Washington. There I called on my old
friend Mr. Justice Holmes of the Supreme Court--'Brother Kaneko' he used
to call me--requesting him to take me to the White House to meet the
President, who I thought would not remember me. But Justice Holmes had
disagreed with Roosevelt over the Northern Securities case, and did not
feel that he was persona grata at the White House just then. Therefore I
arranged through our Minister, Mr. Takahira, for a meeting.

"One morning in May, 1904, the Minister took me to call upon the
President. Our appointment was for half past ten. We were not kept
waiting long. I will never forget the picture of Roosevelt as he quickly
thrust open the door and rushed into the room. The Minister had no
chance to present me. 'I am delighted to see you again Baron!' the
President exclaimed in that wonderfully hearty way of his. And as we
shook hands he threw his arm over my shoulder, demanding: 'Why did you
stay for a week in New York? Why didn't you come and see me right away?'

"During our talk, which lasted an hour, he let me see that he was
absolutely neutral in his official attitude toward our war with Russia,
but nevertheless made me feel that he had much personal sympathy for
Japan. He declared frankly that popular sentiment in the United States
was favourable to Japan, and added that the Russian Government had
complained that American army and navy officers were openly
pro-Japanese. This had made it necessary for him to issue a proclamation
of neutrality. But though, as President, he was particular to be
scrupulously just to both sides, I was in no doubt as to the
friendliness of his private sentiments.

"He advised me not to stay in Washington, but to make my headquarters in
New York, coming over to Washington to see him when it was necessary.
This I did, and as time went on, and we became closer friends, he often
did me the honour of inviting me to luncheon _en famille_ at the White
House.

"At one of these luncheons I told him of Doctor Bigelow's prophecy, and
of how I had watched him mounting step by step to its fulfilment. That
seemed to please him.

"'Edith,' he called across the table to Mrs. Roosevelt, 'do you hear
that? Here is a man who has kept a friendly eye on me from away off in
Japan.'

"Once at one of these intimate White House luncheons he remarked that as
President it was necessary to preserve a certain style. 'Coming to see
us here,' he said, 'you don't get an accurate idea of what our family
life really is. You must come and pay us a visit at Oyster Bay this
summer when we get home. Then you will know more about us.'

"He did not forget the invitation, but early in July 1905, repeated it
by telegraph. I went to Oyster Bay and stayed over night. It was in many
ways a memorable experience.

"He was always greatly interested in our samurai tradition and in the
doctrine we call bushido. I remember his asking me how much money was
required for the keeping up of a samurai's position. I explained that
there were different classes of samurai--that the shoguns had themselves
been samurai, with others of various grades below them.

"'Middle-class samurai,' I said, 'do not need a great deal of money.
They require only enough for dress to be worn on social occasions, for
the education of their families, and the maintenance of their political
position, whatever it may be. They need no money for pleasures or
extravagances.'

"'Just the same,' the President replied, 'a man doesn't want to fall
behind his ancestors, materially or otherwise. Take my own case: I want
to keep my place as my forbears kept theirs. I desire neither more nor
less than what my father had. I want my children to be able to grow up
in this old home at Oyster Bay just as the children of my generation
did.' Then he began to ask me more about the details of samurai life.

"'What about doctor's bills?' he asked. 'You didn't mention that item in
estimating the expense of living.'

"I told him of a curious custom we used to have. In each samurai class
there were families of doctors who were endowed by the Government, the
profession being passed down from father to son. These doctors took care
of samurai families of the rank corresponding to their own, and charged
nothing for so doing. Twice a year, in January and July, when it is
customary to give presents, presents were given to the doctors. They
also took care of the poor as a matter of charity.

"That interested him, too. He was always intensely interested in the
samurai, because our samurai virtues were virtues of a kind he
particularly admired--courage, stoicism, love of duty and of country.

"We sat on the wide verandah, overlooking the lawn sloping down toward
Long Island Sound. Mrs. Roosevelt sat with us, knitting. It was July,
but she was knitting mittens. Presently a maid came and spoke to her,
and she left us.

"When she came back she said to me, 'Baron, I want to ask a favour of
you. Quentin has been crying. He took great pains to clean his pony
to-day, to show it to you, and we promised that he should be allowed to
do so. He has been riding around the lawn hoping you would notice him.'

"Of course I sent for Quentin, and he appeared proudly upon his pony. I
asked him to ride around the lawn, which he did.

"'You ride splendidly!' I said, when he drew up again before the porch.

"'Do you think so?' he asked, evidently much pleased.

"'Indeed I do!' I said, and asked him to go around the lawn again.

"When he came back I told him about my son, who was just his age. 'I
shall have him learn to ride,' I said, 'and when he can ride as well as
you can I shall have his picture taken on a pony and send it to you.'

"That," continued the Viscount, "is how we happen to have this picture
of Quentin on his pony. He sent it to my son, and my son sent him a
picture. I always like to think of the good-will there was between those
two boys--an American boy and a Japanese boy who had never seen each
other.

"That night we sat talking in the drawing room which is to the left of
the hall as you go into the house. Mrs. Roosevelt was still knitting
mittens for the children. It was all wonderfully simple and homelike. I
could hardly believe that I was in the home of the head of a great
nation. At that time the house was lighted with kerosene lamps, yet in
Japan I had been using electric light for fifteen years.

"At about ten o'clock Mrs. Roosevelt said good night to us and retired.
Before she went upstairs she moved about, fastening windows and putting
out lamps in parts of the house in which they would not be needed any
more. Then she brought candles and matches so that we should have them
when we were ready to go to bed.

"After an hour's talk about the war, which was still raging, the
President rose and lit the candles. Then he put out the remaining lamps,
and conducted me upstairs to my room. It was a cool night. He felt of
the coverings on my bed, and decided that I might need another blanket.
'I'll get you one,' he said, leaving the room. And in a minute or two he
reappeared with a blanket over his shoulder.

"'Come,' he said, as he put it on the bed, 'and I'll show you the
bathroom.' I went with him. 'Here's soap,' said he, 'and here are clean
towels.' Then he took me back to my room and wished me a good night.

"As for me, I was fascinated, almost dazed. I kept saying to myself,
'This man who has lighted me upstairs with a candle, and carried me a
blanket, and shown me where to find soap and towels, is the President of
the United States! The President of the United States has done all these
things for me. It is the greatest honour a man could have.'

"Earlier in the same year, before the President moved from the White
House to Oyster Bay, he went bear hunting. That was just before Admiral
Togo's victory over the Russian fleet, in the Sea of Japan.

"Before leaving, the President sent for me and told me, in the presence
of Mr. Taft, who was Secretary of War, that if anything of importance
should come up during his absence, I was to see Mr. Taft about it, and
that in the event of its being anything absolutely vital, Mr. Taft would
know how to reach him.

"Mr. Taft showed me a photograph hanging on the wall of the President's
office, showing the wild country to which the President was going on his
hunting trip.

"I remarked playfully to him that I thought it advisable, at that time,
that the President refrain from killing bears, whatever other animals he
might see fit to slay.

"Roosevelt, sitting at his desk, overheard me.

"'What's that you are saying?' he asked.

"I repeated what I had said to Mr. Taft.

"'Why do you think I should not kill bears?' demanded the President.

"'Well, Mr. President,' I replied, 'you know that the various nations
have their special symbols in the animal kingdom. America has the eagle,
Britain the lion, France the cock, and Russia, well----'

"He got up, laughing and came over to me.

"'Nevertheless,' he said, 'I shall go right ahead and kill bears!'

"Before he left on that hunting trip I went to see him and asked as a
special favour that he give me the skin of one of the bears he should
kill.

"He refused, saying that if he were to start presenting trophies to his
friends they would all be after him.

"At that I said to him, 'If I were asking this for myself, Mr.
President, I would not pursue the matter further, but I am not asking it
for myself. I want that bear skin for our Emperor.'

"'Very well, then,' he said. 'You shall have it.'

"He went off on his hunting trip, and came back. Then followed the
negotiations for a cessation of hostilities between Japan and Russia,
and the Portsmouth Peace Conference, through which Roosevelt brought
about the end of the war.

"In August of the same year, 1905, I received this letter from him."

The Viscount handed me the letter to read. It was as follows:

                                       Oyster Bay, N, Y,.
                                                August 30, 1905.

    _Personal_

    MY DEAR BARON KANEKO:

    I cannot too highly state my appreciation of the wisdom and
    magnanimity of Japan, which make a fit crown to the prowess of
    her soldiers. Will you tell the Emperor that I shall take the
    liberty of sending him by you a bear skin? I want you soon to
    come out here and take lunch.

                                        Sincerely yours,
                                            THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

"Later," the Viscount went on, "I was asked by the President to come to
Oyster Bay and select one of the skins. I however did not wish to make
the selection, so the President did that, picking out the largest skin
of all and giving it to me for the Emperor Meiji.

"His Majesty was greatly pleased with the skin, not only because it was
a trophy from the President himself, but because of the emblematic
nature of the gift. That bearskin was in his library at the Imperial
Palace in Tokyo as long as he lived."

One of the most important Roosevelt letters shown me by Viscount Kaneko
was on the subject of Japanese-American relations. As this letter is not
included in the two-volume collection of Roosevelt correspondence
compiled in such masterly fashion by Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Roosevelt's
literary executor, I have asked the permission of Mrs. Roosevelt and of
Mr. Bishop to quote it here.

It was as follows:

                            THE WHITE HOUSE

                               WASHINGTON

                                                   May 23, 1907.

    _Confidential_

    MY DEAR BARON KANEKO:

    I much appreciate your thought of Archie. The little fellow was
    very sick but is now all right. His mother and I have just had
    him on a short trip in the country.

    I was delighted to meet General Kuroki and Admiral Ijuin with
    their staffs. General Kuroki is, of course, one of the most
    illustrious men living. Through his interpreter, a very able
    young staff officer, I spoke to him a little about our troubles
    on the Pacific Slope.

    Nothing during my Presidency has given me more concern than
    these troubles. History often teaches by example, and I think we
    can best understand just what the situation is, and how it ought
    to be met, by taking into account the change in general
    international relations during the last two or three centuries.

    During this period all the civilized nations have made great
    progress. During the first part of it Japan did not appear in
    the general progress, but for the last half century she has gone
    ahead so much faster than any other nation that I think we can
    fairly say that, taking the last three centuries together, her
    advance has been on the whole greater than that of any other
    nation. But all have advanced, and especially in the way in
    which the people of each treat people of other nationalities.
    Two centuries ago there was the greatest suspicion and
    malevolence exhibited by all the people, high and low, of each
    European country, for all the people, high and low, of every
    other European country, with but few exceptions. The cultivated
    people of the different countries, however, had already begun to
    treat with one another on good terms. But when, for instance,
    the Huguenots were exiled from France, and great numbers of
    Huguenot workmen went to England, their presence excited the
    most violent hostility, manifesting itself even in mob violence,
    among the English workmen. The men were closely allied by race
    and religion, they had practically the same type of ancestral
    culture, and yet they were unable to get on together. Two
    centuries have passed, the world has moved forward, and now
    there could be no repetition of such hostilities. In the same
    way a marvellous progress has been made in the relations of
    Japan with the Occidental nations. Fifty years ago you and I and
    those like us could not have travelled in one another's
    countries. We should have had very unpleasant and possibly very
    dangerous experiences. But the same progress that has been going
    on as between nations in Europe and their descendants in America
    and Australia, has also been going on as between Japan and the
    Occidental nations. In these times, then, gentlemen, all
    educated people, members of professions and the like, get on so
    well together that they not only travel each in the other's
    country, but associate on the most intimate terms. Among the
    friends whom I especially value I include a number of Japanese
    gentlemen. But the half century has been too short a time for
    the advance to include the labouring classes of the two
    countries, as between themselves.

    Exactly as the educated classes in Europe, among the several
    nations, grew to be able to associate together generations
    before it was possible for such association to take place among
    the men who had no such advantages of education, so it is
    evident we must not press too fast in bringing the labouring
    classes of Japan and America together. Already in these fifty
    years we have completely attained the goal as between the
    educated and the intellectual classes of the two countries. We
    must be content to wait another generation before we shall have
    made progress enough to permit the same close intimacy between
    the classes who have had less opportunity for cultivation, and
    whose lives are less easy, so that each has to feel, in earning
    its daily bread, the pressure of the competition of the other. I
    have become convinced that to try to move too far forward all at
    once is to incur jeopardy of trouble. This is just as true of
    one nation as of the other. If scores of thousands of American
    miners went to Saghalin, or of American mechanics to Japan or
    Formosa, trouble would almost certainly ensue. Just in the same
    way scores of thousands of Japanese labourers, whether
    agricultural or industrial, are certain, chiefly because of the
    pressure caused thereby, to be a sources of trouble if they
    should come here or to Australia. I mention Australia because it
    is a part of the British Empire, because the Australians have
    discriminated against continental immigration in favour of
    immigration from the British Isles, and have in effect
    discriminated to a certain degree in favour of immigration from
    England and Scotland as against immigration from Ireland.

    My dear Baron, the business of statesmen is to try constantly to
    keep international relations better, to do away with causes of
    friction, and secure as nearly ideal justice as actual
    conditions will permit. I think that with this object in view
    and facing conditions not as I would like them to be, but as
    they are, the best thing to do is to prevent the labouring
    classes of either country from going in any numbers to the
    other. In a generation I believe all need of such prevention
    will have passed away; and at any rate this leaves free the
    opportunity for all those fit to profit by intercourse, to go
    each to the other's country. I have just appointed a commission
    on general immigration which will very possibly urge restrictive
    measures as regards European immigration, and which I am in
    hopes will be able to bring about a method by which the result
    we have in view will be obtained with the minimum friction.

    With warm regards to the Baroness, believe me,

                                    Sincerely yours,
                                            THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

    Baron Kentaro Kaneko,

                Tokyo, Japan.

The foregoing letter may well be studied at this time when, through lack
of the kind of statesmanship shown by Roosevelt, the Californian
situation has become worse instead of better.

Another letter shown me by Viscount Kaneko was written in pencil on a
large sheet of yellow paper torn from a pad. It came from the African
jungle, and ran as follows:

                                           Mid-Africa
                                               Sept. 10th, 1909.

    MY DEAR BARON,[3]

    I have no facilities for writing here; but I must just send you
    a line of thanks for your welcome note. I have had a most
    interesting trip; my son Kermit has done particularly well. He
    has the spirit of a samurai! I greatly hope to visit Japan; but
    when it may be possible I can not say.

    With warm regards to the Viscountess,[3] believe me,

                                      Sincerely yours,
                                             THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

    [3] Despite the fact that Roosevelt knew that Kaneko had been
        made a Viscount he addressed him in this letter by his old
        title.

The last letter of the series was written on the stationery of the
Kansas City _Star_, of which Roosevelt was an associate editor with an
office in New York. The letter read:

                                        New York, Aug. 21, 1918.

    MY DEAR VISCOUNT KANEKO:

    I thank you for your letter; and Mrs. Roosevelt was as much
    touched by it as I was. Remember to give your son a letter to us
    when he comes here to go to Harvard. One of our newspapers, the
    Chicago _Tribune_, when the news was brought that Quentin was
    dead and two of his brothers wounded, spoke of my four sons as
    "American samurai." I was proud of the reference! As you say,
    all of us who are born are doomed to die. No man is fit to live
    who is afraid to die for a great cause. My sorrow for Quentin is
    outweighed by my pride in him.

                                Faithfully your friend,
                                             THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

The foregoing, written less than five months before Colonel Roosevelt's
death, was the last letter of the series shown me by Viscount Kaneko.

Reading it I was reminded of what Colonel Roosevelt said to me as he lay
on his bed in the hospital the last time I saw him.

Speaking of his four sons in the war he said:

"We have been an exceptionally united family. Come what may, we have
many absolutely satisfying years together to look back upon."

                              CHAPTER XIX

        _Placidity and_ Sodans--_Talk and Tea--American Business
        Methods_ versus _Japanese--The American Housekeeper in
        Nippon--Japan's Problem-- Population and Food--The
        Militarists--Land-Grabbing--Liberalism--Emigration--
        Industrialism--Examples of Inefficiency--"Public
        Futilities"--Comedies of the Telephone--The Cables_

Elsewhere I have said that the Japanese are generally hard workers;
wherefore it may seem paradoxical to add that they are also leisurely
workers. But the paradox is not so great as it would seem. The hours of
work are longer in Japan than in most other countries, but work is not
so vigorously pressed.

Without being in the least lazy, the Japanese take their time to
everything. With masters and servants, employers and workmen, it is much
the same. They appear placid. They hold _sodans_, conferring and
arranging matters with terrible precision. If you attempt to use the
telephone you are prepared for a long struggle and a long wait. The
clerks in the cable office act as if the cable had just been laid--as if
your cablegram were the first one they had ever been called upon to
send, and they didn't quite know how to handle it, or how much to
charge. Often they are unable to make change. Sometimes even the railway
ticket agents have no change. Business conferences are conducted over
successive cups of pale green tea, and I am told that it is customary to
begin them with talk on any topic other than the main one. In the
lexicon of Japanese trade and commerce there is no such word as
"snappy."

The hustling American business man who tries to rush things through
often arouses the Japanese business man's suspicion. What is he after?
Why is he in such a hurry? There must be something behind it all. It is
necessary to be particularly careful in dealing with such a man.
Negotiations drag and drag until the American, if he be of nervous
disposition, is driven nearly wild. And sometimes this results in his
making a bad bargain merely for the sake of getting through.

"I'm sorry I ever came to the Far East!" he will declare bitterly. "I
feel that I am getting nothing accomplished over here--nothing!" Then he
will tell you what is the trouble with the Japanese:

"They are used to playing only with white chips!"

The American housekeeper in Japan, if she knows what nerves are, may
have similar difficulties. Her Japanese servants will conduct her ménage
well enough if she lets them do it in their Japanese way, but if she
attempts to run her home as she would run it in the United States, she
is lost. It can't be done. I know of an American woman who could not get
a cook because her efforts to Americanize her household had given her a
bad reputation with the Cook's Guild. Another could get no sewing done,
for a like reason. For all the servants and working people have their
guilds, and news travels. Thus many an American housekeeper in Japan has
became a nervous wreck.

Yet on the other hand, numbers of American business men and their wives
enjoy Japanese life, and only come home when it is necessary to give
their children an American education. The men are successful and their
homes are comfortable and well run. But always you will find that they
are people of calm disposition: people having sufficient balance to
adjust themselves to the customs of the country.

The essential point seems to be that the Japanese view life in longer
perspective than we do. Where we see ourselves as individuals having
certain things to accomplish in a rather short life, they see themselves
as mere links in an endless family chain. We are conscious of our
parents and our children but they are conscious of ancestors, reaching
back to the mists of antiquity, and of a posterity destined to people
the nebulous vaults of the far-distant future.

But while, from a philosophical standpoint, this way of looking at life
may be quite as good as ours, or even better, still I believe it tends
to handicap the Japanese in meeting the urgent material problems by
which they are confronted. And though these problems are not so terrible
as those of war-racked Europe, they are, if measured by any other
standard, terrible enough.

Japan's fundamental problem--the one out of which grow all other
Japanese problems in which the world is interested--is, as I have said
before, that of great density of population coupled with an inadequate
supply of food and raw materials. Fifty years ago the population of
Japan proper was less than 33,000,000. To-day it is more than
57,000,000. There has been an increase in five decades of more than 75
per cent., but there has been no corresponding increase in the country's
arable land.

    [Illustration: The film was not large enough to hold the family
    of this youngish fisherman at Nabuto. Nine children! Fifty years
    ago Japan had a population of 33,000,000. To-day it is nearing
    60,000,000.]

In Japan itself there have been various theories as to how this problem
should be met. The militarists, who are still very powerful, have in the
past undoubtedly favoured what we have come lately to call the Prussian
system, the grabbing system: the system which has been followed in the
Far East not by Japan alone but by England, Russia, France, and
Germany--and by the United States (if in a form somewhat more moderate)
in the Hawaiian Islands, and the Philippines.

"If the others do it," the Japanese militarists have argued, "why
shouldn't we? Why shouldn't we, who need additional territory so much
more than they do, grab on the continent of Asia for land to which our
surplus population may be sent, and from which we may get food and raw
materials?"

To which the other nations answer: "Unfortunately for you, you came
along too late. The good old grabbing days are gone. The world is
radiant with a new international morality, and woe be unto those who
offend against it! Germany tried it--see what happened to her!"

Japan did see what happened to Germany and the lesson was not wasted on
her. Nor was the least striking part of the lesson contained in
America's exhibition of military might. And truth to tell, Japan needed
such a lesson; for her victories over China and Russia had put her
militarists in the ascendant, and had made them, and perhaps the bulk of
their countrymen also, over-confident, with the result that Japan
occasionally rattled the sabre in the Far East somewhat as Germany was
wont to do in Europe.

But although it cannot be denied that the Japanese militarists exhibited
undue aggressiveness in China and Siberia during the late war, and
although their actions since have not been altogether satisfactory to
the rest of the world, there is good reason to suppose that their
old-time dream of vast territorial aggrandizement has diminished, even
though it may not have entirely faded from the minds of some of them.

This new tendency toward moderation is due to the war's lesson and to
the marked growth of liberal and anti-militarist sentiment among the
Japanese people. The militarists, though they still control the
Government, are less aggressive than they used to be, both because the
Japanese public protests when too much aggressiveness is shown, and
because the more intelligent members of the militaristic group now
realize that if Japan were to bring on a great war she would inevitably
be ruined. So, while the power and aggressiveness of this dangerous
element slowly wane, the liberal element, led by some of the sanest and
ablest men in Japan, steadily gains strength.

The outcome of this struggle between the advocates of force and those of
fair dealing will, in my judgment, be determined largely by the course
pursued by other nations. If, as we all hope, a new order of things is
to grow out of the late war, then within a few years I believe we shall
see the liberal group running Japan. But if, on the contrary, the world
backslides, and the old selfish system is resumed, then the Japanese
militarists will say to the people: "Well, you see that we were right
after all!"

But however these matters may turn out, I do not believe that Japan will
ever fully settle her surplus population problem by means of emigration,
whether to annexed territory, or to other countries. The Japanese do not
like to leave home. There are only about 300,000 Japanese in China, for
example, and they have not colonized to nearly the extent they might
have in Siberia. If they do leave home they seek mild climates, but they
are now barred from colonizing in the United States, Canada, and
Australia and even when they settle in Mexico or South America one sees
protests in our press. Yet if Japan's population is to remain static
hundreds of thousands of her people must leave the islands every year.
All considered, it seems more than improbable that they will ever
emigrate in such a wholesale way.

By what means, then, is the problem to be solved?

Apparently the leaders of the small group that governs Japan came, some
years ago, to the conclusion that the best means for solving their
difficulties lay in turning Japan into an industrial country. They
determined to manufacture goods, export them, and with the proceeds pay
for imports of raw materials and food--in short, to adopt the plan which
England began to follow nearly a century ago, and which Belgium has also
followed. England's situation was in many respects like that of Japan,
for there were certain essential raw materials which she did not have
either at home or in her possessions; and like Japan she is unable to
feed herself. With Belgium the situation was even worse than with
England. Yet through industrializing themselves both countries have
prospered greatly. Is it not then logical to suppose that by following a
similar course Japan will likewise prosper? Recent statistics seem,
moreover, to indicate that with industrialization the birth-rate tends
to decline.

In attempting a great industrial programme Japan has two advantages: she
has abundant cheap labour and a short haul to the great markets of Asia.
Geographically we are her nearest competitor for Asiatic trade, yet we
have at the very least, four thousand miles farther to carry our goods.
Obviously this is an immense disadvantage to us, and we are further
handicapped by the high cost of our labour.

Having us at so great a disadvantage in the matter of commerce with
Asia, it would seem that Japan should have little difficulty in securing
for herself the lion's share of the Asiatic trade.

But it must not be supposed that Japan has as yet become sufficiently
industrialized to solve her problem. She must become a much greater
manufacturing and exporting nation than she now is. And in order to
accomplish that she must greatly improve in one particular: she must
master much more thoroughly than she has so far mastered them, the
horrid arts of "efficiency."

I do not mean to imply that the Japanese are never efficient, but only
that they are not always so efficient as they ought to be, and as they
must become. I am aware, now, that I expected too much of them in this
particular. Reports of their astonishing military efficiency at the time
of their war with Russia, caused me to think of them almost as supermen.
And they are not that. Nor is any other race.

It may be true that in military matters they are highly efficient.
Probably they are. My own observation as a traveller on their ships
convinces me that they are efficient on the sea, and this opinion is
supported by what American naval officers have told me of their navy and
their naval men. I visited a huge cotton mill near Tokyo which was
clearly a first-class institution of the kind; also I was much struck,
in going through a penitentiary, by the evidences of their understanding
of modern and enlightened practice in the conduct of penal
establishments; and I might go on with a list of other institutions
which impressed me favourably.

But that is not the side I wish here to bring out. On the contrary, I
wish to call attention to the fact that the high degree of efficiency
shown by the Japanese in certain instances serves but to emphasize their
widespread inefficiency in others.

In an earlier chapter I spoke of the fact that in Japan one sees three
men instead of two in the cab of a locomotive, that hand-carts are used
for watering city streets, and that more servants are required there
than here in a house of given size. These are but minor items in the
wholesale waste of labour. It is as if Japan said to herself: "I have
all these people to look after and I must put as many of them as
possible on every job." And that, in my judgment, is not the way Japan
should look at it. Instead of putting on every job more people than are
actually needed, she should endeavour to develop her industries to such
a point that there will be a full, honest day's work for everyone. For,
of course, her labour wastage keeps up her manufacturing and operating
costs.

An example of the way time is wasted may be seen wherever railroad gangs
are at work. They swing their picks to the accompaniment of a song, and
the rhythm is taken from the slowest man. Wastage is also exhibited in
the way a house is built. They build the framework of the roof upon the
ground. Then they take it apart. Then they go up and put it together all
over again, in place. A whole house is constructed in this way. The
parts are not fashioned on the premises as the building goes up, but are
made elsewhere and brought to the actual scene of building to be fitted
together. The tiles are fastened to the roof with mud, but instead of
carrying this mud up in bulk they toss it up from hand to hand, six men
forming a chain for the purpose.

Or again, to cite a very simple example of domestic inefficiency,
consider their method of washing a kimono. Instead of laundering the
garment all at once, they rip it apart, wash the pieces separately, dry
them on a board, and sew them together again.

In factory management also one sometimes finds the most surprising
inefficiency. I know of a great manufacturing plant in Japan which, if
you were to go through it, you would call thoroughly modern. The
buildings are modern, the machinery is modern. But there is one thing
missing, and it is a vital thing. The plant stands a good half mile from
the railway line; coal and raw materials are transported from car to
factory in carts, or in baskets carried on the backs of coolies, and the
finished product is removed in like manner.

Though the cost of labour in Japan was trebled after the war, wages are
still low as compared with other countries. But this fact, which should
be taken advantage of in the struggle for world trade, is too often used
only as an excuse for such waste of labour as I have pointed out. And it
is because of this and similar inefficiencies that the Japanese now find
themselves unable to compete in costs, in certain lines, with other
nations, even though the labour of those other nations is much better
paid.

Among the things most criticized by visitors are the bad roads, both in
the country and in the cities; the hotels, which except in a few places
are poor (I am speaking only of the foreign-style hotels); and the
miserable conditions of what the _Japan Advertiser_ humorously refers to
as "public futilities."

Tokyo, with a transportation problem which ought easily to be solved,
has utterly inadequate street-car service. The rush hour there is only
saved from being as terrible as the rush hour in New York by the lack of
subterranean features.

But it is in all matters having to do with communications that Japanese
inefficiency is most strikingly brought to the notice of strangers. The
postal service is poor, the cable service is expensive and absurdly slow
(when I was in Japan it took about ten days to cable to America and get
an answer back), and the telephone service is unbelievably awful. All
these, like the railroads, are owned and operated by the Government.

I began to suspect their telephones when I saw the old full-bosomed wall
instruments they use, with bell-cranks to be rung; but little did I then
guess the full measure of their telephonic backwardness.

It is like opera bouffe. Though the demand for new telephones far
exceeds the supply, the Government makes no appreciable effort to remedy
the situation. Every year an absurdly small number of lines is added to
the existing system. These are assigned by lot among those who have
applied for them. Thus, if a man be lucky in the draw, he may get a
telephone within two or three years. But I know one gentleman in Tokyo
who was not lucky in the draw. At the ripe age of sixty-seven he applied
to the Government for an additional office telephone. The instrument was
installed shortly after he had celebrated his eightieth birthday. Long
may he live to use it!

If one be in a hurry to have a telephone put in, one does not apply to
the authorities, but attacks the problem in a manner more direct--either
through a telephone broker or through advertising. Thus one can get in
contact with a person wishing to sell an installation and a number. The
number must, however, be in the exchange serving the district in which
the telephone is to be placed.

Though this is a very expensive method, it is the one usually employed
in Tokyo and other large cities. A telephone for the business district
of the capital may cost as much as twelve hundred dollars, but in a
residential district it will be considerably cheaper--five hundred
dollars or less.

A curious detail of this business is that low numbers bring the highest
price in the open market. This, I was informed, is because green
operators, in process of being broken-in, sit at that end of the central
switchboard at which the high numbers invariably occur, thus
guaranteeing the owners of high numbers a grade of service calculated to
drive them to the madhouse.

It must not be imagined that the Japanese are content with their
telephone service. They are not. For some time prior to my arrival in
Japan the press had been demanding a reform, and at last it was
announced that action was about to be taken to improve matters.

But all that happened was this: Instead of increasing the service, the
government functionaries started a campaign to discourage the use of
telephones. Up to that time, unlimited service had been given. Now,
however, a flat charge of two sen (about one cent) per call was
announced, the theory being that many persons would think twice before
spending two sen on an idle telephonic conversation.

After watching the new plan in operation for a few days the telephone
authorities jubilantly announced that it was a great success--the number
of calls had appreciably diminished. Apparently it never occurred to
them that the result of such a policy, carried to its logical
conclusion, would be to eliminate the telephone entirely.

With the Japanese cables the trouble has been largely due to congestion.
The use of two important lines was cut off by the war, and as service on
these lines has not up to the time of writing been resumed, owing to the
disorganization of Russia and Germany, a heavy strain has been placed
upon the transpacific cables. I am assured, however, that conditions
would not be so bad as they are if the Japanese were entirely efficient
in their handling of cable business, and my own experiences with cable
messages, while there, would seem to indicate that this is true.

Moreover, at the time when cable congestion was at its worst, the
Japanese refused to operate their transpacific wireless for more than
seven hours a day; and even then they would take business only for San
Francisco and vicinity, for the reason, it was explained, that they did
not wish to be bothered with the details of figuring the rates to
various parts of the United States. Lately they have increased their
service to cover the states of California, Oregon and Washington; but
that, at the time of writing, is as far as they have consented to extend
it.

                               CHAPTER XX

    _The Average American and International Affairs--The Vagueness
    of the Orient--A Definition by Former Ambassador Morris--"They
    say"--The "Yellow Peril"--International Insults--Physiognomy--
    What the Japanese Should Learn About Us--Our Race Problems--
    Racial Integrity--Assimilation--Californian Methods--The Two
    Sound Arguments Against Oriental Immigration_

    If public opinion is fed with distorted facts, unworthy
    suspicions, or alarming rumours; if every careless utterance by
    thoughtless and insignificant men is to be given prominence in
    print; if every casual difference of view is to be magnified
    into a crisis, sober judgment and deliberate action become
    impossible.--JOHN W. DAVIS, _former Ambassador to the Court of
    St. James's_.

Concerned with making a living, the Average American has as a rule
neither the time nor the inclination to study international affairs. He
expects his government to see to such things for him. He has no interest
in what his government is doing with regard to other nations unless his
personal feelings are in some way involved. Thus if he be a
German-American he may take cognizance of our relations with Germany; or
if he be a Russian-American he may desire that we recognize the
so-called government of Lenine and Trotzky; or again, if he be an
Irish-American he may wish the President of the United States to go
personally to London and knock the British premier's hat off. But if he
be simply an average unhyphenated American the chances are that he is
disgusted with the clatter of the hyphenates and bored with the whole
business of foreign relations and race problems. His main interest in
governmental affairs at the present time has nothing to do with foreign
relations but comes much closer to home. He is tired of paying heavy
taxes, tired of paying exorbitantly for the necessities of life. He
wants his government to remedy those two things. Then, because he is
sick of hyphenated citizens and internal race problems, he wants
immigration stopped.

The Orient is all vague to him. If he does not live on the Pacific Coast
or in some large city where Japanese have settled, he may never have
laid eyes upon a Japanese. Or if he has seen Japanese over here he may
have seen them in the farming districts of the Pacific slope. Whether he
has seen them or not, he has gathered some impression of them through
newspaper accounts of the trouble there has been about them in
California. He understands that their customs, religion, and food are
unlike his--which may be taken as implying a certain lack of merit in
them. He understands that Japanese women and children work in the
fields. His own women and children do not work in the fields, but wear
silk stockings, chew gum, and go to the movies--all of which, of course,
counts against the Japanese, since to work in the fields is in these
times almost un-American. And of course it is still more un-American to
do what the Japanese labourers did in California until the patriotic
Californians stopped them; namely to save money and buy farms.

Then there is this business about "picture-brides"--my Average American
may have heard vaguely about that, though probably he does not know that
the Japanese Government, in deference to our wishes, no longer allows
picture-brides to come here. He would not think of such a thing as
picking out a wife by photograph. None of his friends would do it,
either.

It may be well here to state the actual nature of the issue in
California. This can be done briefly in no better way than by quoting an
editorial published not long since in the New York _World_, a newspaper
remarkable for the intelligence with which it has generally treated the
Japanese question.

The _World_'s editorial was published apropos an address made by Mr.
Roland S. Morris, who served under the Wilson Administration as
ambassador to Tokyo, and whose admirable work in Tokyo might have borne
good fruit but for our unfortunate habit of relieving ambassadors,
however able, when the political party to which they belong goes out of
power.

Said the _World_:

    In his address at the University Club on the Japanese issue in
    California, Roland S. Morris, American Ambassador to Tokyo,
    refrained from discussing the merits of the case and merely
    defined the question in accordance with the facts. It is only in
    the light of the facts that a sound decision can be reached
    where argument and judgment run along the line of fixed
    prejudices.

    As Mr. Morris explained, Japan does not question the right of
    the United States, subject to its treaty obligations, to
    legislate on the admission of foreigners. While under the treaty
    of 1911 Japanese were granted full rights of residence and
    admission, the Tokyo Government accepted the condition that it
    would continue limiting emigration from Japan to the United
    States in compliance with the "Gentleman's Agreement" of
    1908.[4]

    [4] The "limiting" here referred to includes the stoppage of
        labour emigration, not by us, but by the Japanese
        Government, which took this amiable and dignified means of
        avoiding a direct issue of the subject of racial equality.

    The Japanese Government and people are not seeking the removal
    of restrictions on immigration. The Japanese are not eligible to
    American citizenship, but they have enjoyed in this country the
    same personal and property rights as other aliens. It is here
    that the friction has been created by the action of California.

    In 1913 California deprived those aliens who were ineligible to
    citizenship of certain property rights. In 1920, in Mr. Morris's
    words, "this legislation was amplified by an initiative and
    referendum act." What he does not state is that this measure was
    intended to discriminate against the Japanese in buying and
    leasing land.

    Hence the protests of the Government at Tokyo. The Japanese
    object to what they regard as the injustice of being set apart
    as a separate class, suffering political disabilities and
    deprived of rights other aliens enjoy.

    Mr. Morris leaves the issue open when he says: "The Japanese
    protest presents to all our people this very definite question:
    In the larger view of our relations with the Orient, is it wise
    thus to classify aliens on the basis of their eligibility to
    citizenship?"

    In pursuance of its local ends, California has adopted a
    provocative position and played into the hands of Japanese
    jingoes and militarists.

Lamentably, these simple facts have been cast adrift upon a stormy sea
of Californian prejudice. That sea, I fear, so fills the eye of the
Average American that oftentimes he fails entirely to descry the
shipwrecked waifs of Truth out there upon their little raft. Were he to
attempt to state his views upon the California question he would in all
probability quote as the source of his information that favourite
authority, "They say."

"They say Japanese immigrants are flooding into California and buying up
the farming land; they say the Japanese have large families; they say
they don't make desirable neighbours; they say that if things keep on
this way they will ultimately control the state. Certainly we don't want
any part of our country dominated by foreigners." The less familiar he
is with certain Californian traits the more he is likely to conclude: "I
guess it must be true or the Californians wouldn't be making such a row
about it."

His tendency to reason thus may be enhanced by the recollection of a
phrase he has heard: the "Yellow Peril"--one of the most poisonous
phrases ever coined. He does not know that the term was Made in Germany
for the very purpose of exciting international suspicion and ill-will.
He may not be alive to our real Yellow Peril--that of the yellow
press--but may, upon the contrary, actually acquire his views on
international affairs from such inflammatory sheets as those published
by William Randolph Hearst, himself a son of California and a leader in
the anti-Japanese chorus.

My Average American knows little of Californian politics, and nothing of
politics in Japan. He does not realize that Californian politicians are
largely responsible for the stirring up of anti-Japanese sentiment,
precisely as earlier politicians of the state were responsible for
anti-Chinese sentiment, and that in both cases vote-getting was a chief
motive. It is sometimes very convenient for a demagogue to have a
voteless alien race at hand to bully.

My Average American is probably unaware that more than two hundred
thousand Californian voters cast their ballots against the
discriminatory laws passed in November, 1920, even though the press of
California was generally closed to spokesmen representing sentiment
opposed to undue harshness toward the Japanese. Still less is he likely
to be aware that politicians in Japan know all the tricks familiar to
their Californian counterparts; that they, too, know how to gather votes
by stirring up race feeling. So, when he sees in his newspaper-headlines
that a Japanese whose name he has never before heard, but who, the paper
says, is high in politics, has been talking of war with the United
States, he begins to wonder whether those people over there are not,
perhaps, looking for trouble. And when he reads of Japan's great naval
building programme the notion becomes a little more concrete in his
mind.

Of course he does not understand that, meanwhile, in Japan there has
been going on a process precisely similar: that hostile and insulting
things said by American politicians are cabled to Japan and published
there, where they carry undue weight; and that while we are reading of
Japan's naval programme and wondering what it signifies, Japan is
reading of ours, and likewise wondering.

That any one could suspect the United States of aggressive purpose is
inconceivable to my Average American. Though the United States has
lately shown that she can fight, she has also shown she is loath to do
it. The Average American has no feeling of hostility toward Japan, and
the idea of war with Japan seems to him absurd to the point of being
fantastic. There is, as he conceives it, but one way in which such a war
could be started, and that is by Japanese aggression.

Assure him that the exact reverse of this view represents Japanese
sentiment and you will stupefy him. "You must be wrong about that," he
will tell you. "The Japanese must know that we hate war and that we have
no more desire to fight them than to select our wives out of a
photograph album." And he may add something about Japanese
"inscrutability."

That is another point:

When my Average American meets a stranger of his own race, or of almost
any European nationality, he can form, from the stranger's physiognomy,
some estimate of his character. It is a type of face he understands. But
the Oriented physiognomy baffles him. He cannot read it. To him it is as
a book in an unknown tongue--a very symbol for mystery.

That it may be equally difficult for the Japanese to judge of us would
not occur to him. Our faces are--well, they are regular _faces_; there
is nothing queer about them. _We_ aren't queer in any way. It is other
people who are queer.

If certain simple facts about Japan were understood in the United
States, and certain simple facts about the United States were understood
in Japan, it might not follow that the two nations would thereafter
cordially approve of all each other's policies and acts, but it ought
certainly to follow that they could view such policies and acts with
eyes more tolerant.

You and I, for instance, might not approve the aggressive methods of
some canvasser we had encountered, but if we knew that his wife and
family were crowded into a single room wondering where to-morrow's
breakfast would come from, we could forgive the man a good deal.
Similarly, if he were to see you or me bulldozing a helpless guest in
our own house, his disapproval of our action might be mitigated if he
understood that the entire neighbourhood had fallen into the habit of
using our house as a common camping ground for undesirable members of
their families, and that we had been goaded by these unwelcome visitors
into a state of desperation.

What are the essential things for the Japanese to learn about us?

They must get a better understanding of our various race problems. They
must realize that, important as the problem involving their settlers on
the Pacific Coast appears to them, it is to us a minor problem--being
one of the least of a number of race-problems with which we are
confronted.

They must know that our population is derived from all the countries of
Europe. And they must be made aware that though we have in the past
viewed this situation with fatuous complacency, we no longer do so. Our
old beautiful theory that the United States was properly a refuge for
the oppressed of all other lands has lost a wheel and gone into the
ditch. Some of us have even begun to suspect that the oppressed of other
lands were in certain instances oppressed for what may have been good
and sufficient cause. We have found that some of these individuals, on
arriving in the United States, become so exhilarated by our free air
that from oppressed they turn into oppressors who would fain take our
government out of our hands and run it in the interest of the Kaiser,
the Soviets, or of Mr. De Valera's interesting Republic.

With these and other hyphenated racial problems we are continually
contending. We no sooner meet one than another arises. Now we must needs
create an Alien Property Custodian to take a hand. Now we deport a band
of the more violent Bolsheviks. Now we summon glaziers to put new
windows in the Union Club in New York, where the British flag (flying in
commemoration of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, three hundred years
ago) was hailed with bricks by members of a congregation emerging from
St. Patrick's Cathedral, across the way.

We used to speak with loving confidence of something called the "Melting
Pot," which was supposed to make newly arrived immigrants into good
American citizens. Sometimes it did so, but we have lately learned that
its by-product consisted too often of bricks and bombs.

We do not boast about the Melting Pot any more. Having overloaded it and
found it could not do the work we put upon it, we want time in which to
catch up with back orders, as it were. Meanwhile no new ones must be
taken.

But while the problems growing out of European immigration have of
recent years troubled us most, they do not constitute our greatest race
problem. Always in the background of our consciousness, like a volcano
quiescent but very much alive, looms our gigantic negro problem--the
problem which for the sins of our slave-importing and slave-holding
forefathers we inherit, and from which, according to our characteristic
way of "meeting" great quiescent problems, we are always endeavouring to
hide. For it is not our way to advance upon a bull and take him by the
horns. If a bull seeks to be taken by the horns he must do the
advancing. We Americans all know this about ourselves, but it is our way
to excuse the failing by boasting of the tussle we will give the bull if
he ever gets us in a corner.

There is no need here even to outline the tragedies of the negro
problem, but there is one aspect of the matter which should be spoken
of. Experience has shown that whereas immigrants from Europe can
ultimately be absorbed into what we may term the American race, the
negro, wearing the badge of his race in the pigment of his skin, is not
to be absorbed. Even the octoroon is clearly distinguishable from the
white. The negro race must, so far as the future can be read, remain a
race apart.

The case of the Indian affords another example of the failure of two
races, separated by colour and other physical markings, to fuse. In the
early days of this country's settlement, when the Indians strongly
predominated, they did not absorb the then few whites. When the time
came that there was an equal number of Indians and whites, still they
did not fuse. And now, when but a handful remains of the once mighty
Indian nations, that remnant still retains its racial integrity.

Here, however, is involved no question of racial inferiority. Whites and
Indians have to some small extent intermarried, and when both parties
represent the best of their respective races, not only is there no sense
of degradation to either, but the white descendants of such alliances
are often proud of their Indian blood.

In this whole matter of the fusibility of races there is, then, no basic
principle of inferiority or superiority. Such questions are here as
extraneous as in the case of oil and water, which though they will not
mix are not therefore designated as a superior and an inferior fluid.

The fact is that some inner consciousness tells us that the
characteristic physical markings of the chief races of the world were
not given them for nothing; that Nature intended the broad lines of race
to be maintained; and we are told that crosses which disregard these
natural race divisions are usually penalized by deterioration.

To find in this truth the faintest implication of insult would be
absurd. It would be as ridiculous to resent the statement that "like
seeks like," as to resent the statement that "honesty is the best
policy."

No people insists more firmly than the Japanese upon racial integrity.
The most fanatical English horseman could hardly be more finicky about
the maintenance of pure thoroughbred stock. Marriages between native
Japanese and foreigners are not encouraged and seldom occur. Among the
upper classes they almost never occur. A citizen of Japan cannot enter
into a legal marriage with a Korean or a Formosan, although Korea and
Formosa are Japanese colonies. (I am informed that steps were taken in
1918 to make such marriages legal, but up to the time of writing this
has not been accomplished.)

The law regulating the acts of the Japanese Imperial Family does not
permit the marriage of members of that family with persons other than
those of Japanese Imperial or noble stock. This law had to be amended in
order to make possible the marriage, several years ago, of a Japanese
Imperial princess, the daughter of Prince Nashimoto, with the heir to
the Korean Royal Family--which family, by the way, now ranks as a sort
of Japanese nobility. The marriage, it may be added, was unpopular with
the Japanese masses, because of their strong feeling that Japanese
blood, and especially Japanese Imperial blood, should not be diluted.
Had the prince been a European it is not improbable that a louder
protest would have been heard, for the Japanese does not, as a rule,
look with favour upon Eurasians. There are exceptions, but in the main
the man or woman of mixed Oriental and Occidental blood lives socially
upon an international boundary line, on neither side of which is
exuberant cordiality displayed.

The intelligent and patriotic sentiment of the United States is at
present overwhelmingly in favour of the stoppage of all immigration; and
even if there comes a time when it is felt that the floodgates may again
be opened, they will not, if wisdom prevails, be opened wide, but will
admit only such aliens as are susceptible to assimilation.

What does assimilation mean?

It means that the immigrant shall lose his racial identity in ours. It
means that he shall be susceptible to absorption into the body of our
race through marriage, or at the very least that his children shall be
susceptible to such absorption. And this in turn means, among other
things, that he shall have no ineradicable physical characteristics
which strongly differentiate him from our national physical type.

This is one chief reason why, in my opinion, Orientals should never
settle in the United States. Broadly speaking, they are no more suited
to become citizens of the United States than are we to become citizens
of Japan or China.

Another chief reason why Japanese labour immigration is not acceptable
to us is that the Japanese can live on less than we can. They are
willing to work longer hours for less pay. Also they are thrifty. These
are virtues; but the fact that they are virtues does not make Japanese
competition the more welcome to white labour.

This point also should readily be appreciated by the people of Japan,
who find it generally necessary to exclude Chinese labour on precisely
the same ground--that is, because a Chinaman can live on less than a
Japanese, and can consequently work for lower wages.

Had California, in her desire to prevent the further acquirement of land
by Japanese settlers, rested her case on these two clean-cut issues:
namely, unassimilability and economic necessity; had she refrained from
vituperation, taking up the matter purely on its merits; had she
recognized her duty as a state to the Nation and coöperated with the
Washington Government, instead of ignoring the international bearing of
the question and embarrassing the Government by radical and independent
state action; and had she, above all, shown any disposition to deal as
justly with the Japanese as the circumstances would permit; then,
without a doubt, the entire Nation would have been behind California.
And what is perhaps as important, the whole matter could then have been
presented to Japan in a reasonable and temperate manner, without
offence, yet with arguments the force of which Japan could hardly
escape.

But it is not apparently in the nature of the average Californian to go
at things in a moderate way. Moderation is not one of his traits. His
father, or grandfather, was a sturdy pioneer whose habit it was to
express resentment with a bowie-knife and answer antagonism with a Colt
.45. In the descendant these family traits are modified but not
extinguished. If he does not approve of the manner in which an amiable
alien wears his eyebrows he is likely to call him something--without a
smile.

Antagonism? Why should he mind antagonism? He likes it. He feels the
need of it. He must have something to combat--something to neutralize
the everlasting sunshine and the cloying sweetness of the orange-blossom
and the rose.

And alas, there is Senator Hiram Johnson, of whom the New York _Times_
recently remarked that, "he would lose his proprietary political issue
if the differences with Japan were peacefully composed. And we know,"
the _Times_ continued, "that it is better to meet a bear robbed of her
whelps than a politician deprived of his issue." And again, alas, there
is ex-Senator Phelan--though the ex-, which has recently been added to
his title, may tend, to some extent, to moderate his effectiveness as a
baiter of the Japanese. And thrice alas, there is Mr. V. S. McClatchy,
the Sacramento apiarist, whose "Bee" is trained to sting the Japanese
wherever it will hurt most.

That the difficulties between the two countries must be harmonized, all
thoughtful citizens of both will agree. For myself, I do not see how
this can be fully accomplished without some modification of the present
discriminatory alien land law of California--a law which, aimed at one
alien group alone, is not in consonance with the American sense of
justice.

The Japanese labourers who are already legally here--many of them
originally brought here, by the way, at the instance of Californian
employers--should be treated with absolute fairness. They should not be
deprived of the just rewards of their industry and thrift. Their racial
virtues should be appreciated and might well be emulated.

It should be clear, however, that for our good and the good of the
Japanese, no further immigrants of their labouring class should ever
enter the United States. And it should be equally clear that in such a
statement there is no cause for offence.

The United States does not invariably act wisely. Neither does Japan.
But the American heart is in the right place, and so is the Japanese
heart.

Let us try, then, on both sides, to look at these problems with honest
and disinterested eyes. Let us try to get each other's point of view.
Let us even go so far as to make due allowance for the frailty of human
nature, as exhibited on both sides of the Pacific.

But let us have no thought of straining good will by attempting to
become on any larger scale inmates of the same house, dwellers under the
same national roof.

                              CHAPTER XXI

_Some Reflections on New York Hospitality--And on the Hospitality of
Japan--Letters of Introduction--Bowing--How Japanese Politeness is
Sometimes Misunderstood--Entertaining Foreigners--Showing the Country at
its Best--What is the Mysterious "Truth" About Japan?--Japanese _versus_
Chinese--Leadership in the Far East--Will Japan Become a Moral
Leader?--A "First-Class Power"--The New "Long Pants"--How to Treat
Japan--The Wisdom of Roosevelt and Root._

A vigorous and sustained display of hospitality must always be
astonishing to one who calls New York his home; for New York is without
doubt the most inhospitable city in the world. In the jaded hotel-clerk,
the bored box-office man, and the fish-eyed head waiter, the spirit of
its welcome is personified.

There is no dissimulation. The stranger is as welcome in New York as he
feels. If there be a hotel room, a theatre seat, or a restaurant table
disengaged, he may have it, at a price. If all are occupied he may, so
far as New York cares, step outside and, with due regard to the season
and the traffic regulations, die of sunstroke or perish in a
snowdrift--whereupon his case comes automatically under the supervision
of the Street-Cleaning Department--and whatever else that Department may
leave lying around the New York streets, it does not leave them littered
with defunct strangers. Space in our city is too valuable.

The visitor arriving in New York with a letter of introduction to some
gentleman who is important, or who believes he is, may expect a few
minutes' talk with the gentleman in his office, and may regard it as a
delicate attention if his host refrains from fidgeting.

Should the stranger have some information which the New Yorker desires
to possess, he may find himself invited out to lunch. They will lunch at
a club in the top of a down-town skyscraper. Or if the letter of
introduction has a social flavour, the outlander will presently receive
by mail, at his hotel, a guest's card to a club up-town.

Let him make bold to visit this club and he will find there no one to
speak to save a rigid doorman and some waiters. The doorman will tell
him coldly where to check his hat and coat. He will see a few members in
the club, but will not know them, nor will they desire to know him. All
New Yorkers know more people than they want to, anyway. The stranger
with a guest's card to a New York club is as comfortable there as a cat
in a cathedral.

In the West it is different.

And again it is different in Japan.

Those who go well introduced to Japan meet there an experience such as
is hardly to be encountered in any other land. Japanese courtesy and
hospitality are fairly stupefying to the average Anglo-Saxon. The
Occidental mind is staggered by the mere externals.

You see two Japanese meet--two gentlemen, two ladies, or a lady and a
gentleman. They face each other at fairly close range. Then, as though
at some signal unperceived by the foreigner, they bow deeply from the
waist, their heads passing with so small a space between that one half
expects them to bump. Three times in succession they bow in this way,
simultaneously, their hands slipping up and down their thighs, in front,
like pistons attached to the walking-beam of a side-wheeler.

In conjunction with this profound and protracted bowing, especially when
the bowers are Japanese of the old school, or are unaccustomed to
associate with foreigners, the bystander will oftentimes hear a sibilant
sound made by the drawing in of air through the lips. According to the
Japanese idea, such sounds denote appreciation as of some delicious
spiritual flavour. This ancient form of politeness is, however, being
discarded by sophisticated young Japan for the reason that foreigners
find it peculiar; and the practice of audibly sucking in food as an
expression of gustatory ecstasy is also going out of fashion for the
same reason. The old ways are, nevertheless, held to by many an
aristocrat of middle age, or older.

The American, accustomed to regard hissing as a sign of disapproval, and
noisy eating as ill-bred, is naturally startled on first encountering
these manifestations. Japanese bowing, when directed at him, he finds
disconcerting. He may wish to be as polite as the politest, but he has
in his repertory nothing adequate to offer in return for such an
obeisance.

In this country we have never taken to bowing as practised in some other
lands. Our men look askance at Latin males when they lift their hats to
one another in salutation, and it may be observed that some of us tend
to slight the lifting of the hat a little bit even when saluting ladies,
clutching furtively at the brim and perhaps loosening the hat upon the
head, then hastily jamming it back in place.

The fact is that very few American men have polished manners. We rebel
at anything resembling courtliness. It makes us feel "silly." The
dancing school bow we were compelled to practise in the days of our
otherwise happy youth was a nightmare to us, and now in our maturity we
have a sense of doing something utterly inane when, at a formal dinner
party, it devolves upon us to present an arm to a lady, as if to assure
her of protection through the perils of the voyage from drawing room to
table. We much prefer to amble helter-skelter to the dining room.

In these matters, then, as in so many others, we find ourselves at the
opposite pole from the Japanese; and though Americans of the class
willing to appreciate merits of kinds they themselves do not possess
feel nothing but admiration for Japanese courtesy in its perfection, it
sometimes happens, lamentably enough, that others, less intelligent,
going to the Orient, utterly misread the meaning of Japanese politeness,
mistaking it for servility, which it most emphatically is not. Far from
being servile it is a proud politeness--a politeness grounded upon
custom, sensitiveness of nature, delicacy of feeling, which cause the
possessor to expect in others a like sensitiveness and delicacy and to
make him wish to outdo them in tact and consideration.

Nor does the failure of certain Americans to appreciate Japanese
courtesy and hospitality for what it is, stop here. Our yellow press and
organized Japanese-haters, aware that the higher hospitality of Japan
has oftentimes an official or semi-official character, are not satisfied
to seek a simple explanation for the fact, but prefer to discern in it
something artful and sinister.

It is perfectly true that the stranger going to Japan with good letters
of introduction meets a group composed almost entirely of government
officials, big business men, and their families. It is also true that he
is likely to meet a selected group of such men. The reason for this is
simple. While English is the second language taught in Japanese schools,
and while many Japanese can speak some broken English, there are still
relatively few men, and still fewer women, who have been educated abroad
and are sufficiently familiar with foreign languages, customs, and ideas
to feel easy when entertaining foreigners. This class is, moreover,
still further limited by the financial burden of extensive entertaining.

Thus it happens that there exists in Japan a social group which may be
likened to a loosely organized entertainment committee, with the result
that most Americans who are entertained in that country meet, broadly
speaking, the same set of people.

The Japanese are entirely frank in their desire to interest the world in
Japan. The Government maintains a bureau for the purpose of encouraging
tourists to visit the country and making travel easy for them. The great
Japanese steamship companies, the Toyo Kisen Kaisha and Nippon Yusen
Kaisha, are energetic in seeking passenger business. Journalists,
authors, men of affairs and others likely to have influence at home, are
especially encouraged to visit Japan. The feeling of the Japanese is
that there exists in the United States a prejudice against them, and
that the best way to overcome this is to show Japan to Americans and let
them form their own conclusions. They are proud of their country and
they believe that those who become acquainted with it will think well of
it.

Some Americans charge them with endeavouring to show things at their
best, as if to do that were a sly sin.

The attitude of the Japanese in this matter may be likened to that of a
man who owns a home in some not very accessible region, the advantages
of which are doubted by his friends. Being proud of his place the owner
is hospitable. He urges those he knows to come and see it.

When his guests arrive he does not begin by taking them to look at the
sick cow, or the corner behind the barn where refuse is dumped, but
marches them to the west verandah--the verandah with the wonderful view.

To the average person such a procedure would seem entirely normal. Yet
there are critics of Japan who do not see it in that light. Their
attitude might be likened to that of someone who, when taken to the
verandah to see the view, declares that the view is being shown not on
its own merits, but because the host has cut the butler's throat and
does not wish his guests to notice the body lying under the parlour
table.

Let an American of any influence go to Japan, be cordially received
there, form his impressions, and return with a good word to say for the
islands and the people, and the professional Japanese-haters have their
answer ready. The man has been victimized by "propaganda." He has been
flattered by social attentions, fuddled with food and drink, reduced to
a state of idiocy, and in that state "personally conducted" through
Japan in a manner so crafty as to prevent his stumbling upon the
"Truth."

The precise nature of this "Truth" is never revealed. It is merely
indicated as some vague awfulness behind a curtain carefully kept drawn.

Having so often heard these rumours I went to Japan in a suspicious
frame of mind. Arriving there, I made it my business to dive behind
whatever looked like a veil of mystery. As the reader who has followed
me thus far will be aware, I found a number of mysteries--the
fascinating mysteries of an old and peculiar civilization, out of which
an interesting modernism had rapidly grown.

I was considerably entertained in Japan; my sightseeing was oftentimes
facilitated by Japanese friends; but the significant fact is that no one
ever tried to prevent my seeing anything I wished to. And I wished to
see everything, good and bad. I visited the lowest slums, a
penitentiary, a poorhouse, a hospital, and some factories. I asked
questions. Sometimes they were embarrassing questions--about militarism
in Japan, about Shantung, about Korea and Formosa, about Manchuria and
Siberia. And though I do not expect any Japanese-hater to believe me, I
wish to declare here, in justice to the Japanese, that they gave me the
information I asked, even though to do so sometimes pained them.

I saw and learned things creditable to Japan and things discreditable,
just as in other lands one sees and learns things in both categories. I
found the Japanese neither angels nor devils. They are human beings like
the rest of us, having their virtues and their defects.

I came away liking and respecting them as a people. This fact I proclaim
with the full knowledge that those who do not like them will accept it,
not as a sign of any merit in the Japanese, but as proof of my
incompetence, or worse.

"But you have not been to China," some of my friends say. "You would
like the Chinese better than the Japanese."

That may be true or it may not. I am inclined to believe that there is,
on the surface, more natural sympathy and understanding between
Americans and Chinamen than between Americans and Japanese. The Chinaman
is more easily comprehensible to us. Also he is meek. We can talk down
to him. He will do as we tell him to. He is not a contender--as the
Japanese very definitely is--and is therefore easier to get along with.
As an individual he has many qualities to recommend him, though neither
patriotism nor cleanliness seems to be among them.

If I ever go to China I shall hope and expect not to fall into the
mental grooves which lead travellers in the Orient generally to feel
that if they like a Chinaman they cannot like a Japanese, and vice
versa. I hereby reserve the right to like both.

China appears to be an amiable, flaccid, sleepy giant who has long
allowed himself to be bullied, victimized, and robbed. Japan, on the
other hand, is a small, well-knit, pugnacious individual, well able to
look after himself, and profoundly engaged in doing so. Naturally the
two do not get on well together, and equally naturally the impotent
giant comes off the worse. One is, to that extent, sorry for him, but
one can hardly respect him as one would were he to rise up and assert
himself. One may, on the other hand, wish the little Japanese less
obstreperous, but one is bound to respect him for his prowess.
Physically and materially he has earned for himself the undisputed
leadership of the Far East. There remains, however, the question whether
he is spiritually great enough to become, as well, a moral leader. In
that question is bound up the future of the Orient. Some signs are
hopeful, some are not. The answer is locked in the vaults of time to
come.

It is not surprising that the Japanese are proud of the leadership they
have already attained. Being relatively new members of the hair-pulling,
hobnailed family we call the Family of Nations, and having rapidly
become important members, they are inclined to harp more than necessary
upon this importance, so novel and so gratifying to them. They like to
talk about it. They delight in proclaiming themselves a "first-class
power." They rejoice exceedingly in their alliance with Great Britain,
not because the alliance itself has any very real importance (in view of
the attitude of Australia and Canada toward Japan, and of Britain's
regard for American sentiment, it cannot have), but because of the
flattering association. Japan likes to be seen walking with the big
fellows. In this she reminds one somewhat of a youth in all the pride
and self-consciousness of his first pair of "long pants."

Now there is this to be remembered about a youth in his first "long
pants": he requires careful handling. If you treat him like a child,
either patronizing or ignoring him, you will offend him mortally, and
not impossibly drive him to some furious action in assertion of his
manhood. But if, on the other hand, you are misled by his appearance of
maturity, and expect of him all that you would expect of a thoroughly
ripened man, then you are very likely to find yourself disappointed.

There is but one course to be pursued with a youth in this intermediate
stage. He must be managed with tact, firmness, and patience. In dealing
with the young, many adults fail to understand this, and in dealing with
a nation in a corresponding state of evolution, other nations are as a
rule even stupider than adult individuals.

Britain, wisest of all the world in international affairs, has not made
this mistake in her relations with Japan. The alliance is one proof of
it. The visit of the Crown Prince of Japan to England in the spring of
1921, is another. Nor was the tact of Britain in this situation ever
better displayed than in King George's speech, when, toasting the
Imperial guest, he said:

"Because he is our friend we are not afraid for him to see our troubles.
We know his sympathy is with us and that he will understand."

Would that the United States might draw the simple lesson from these two
short sentences spoken by England's king. Would that we might learn to
take that amiable tone. Would that Americans might understand how
instantly the Japanese--yes, and all other nations--respond to such
approaches.

The problem of maintaining friendly relations with this neighbour on the
other side of the Pacific is not, in truth, nearly so difficult as many
of our other problems. It has been rendered difficult chiefly by our own
incredible bungling.

Among men a bungler is oftentimes feared and disliked exactly as if he
were malevolent, and among nations the situation is the same. No nation,
however strong, can afford to give offence unnecessarily to other great
powers; and the United States can least of all afford to irritate
needlessly those powers with which her front yard and her back yard are
shared: namely, Britain and Japan. Yet we are constantly annoying these
two nations without accomplishing any counterbalancing good purpose.

Britain, feeling, as we do, the tie of consanguinity, and having,
moreover, a shrewd eye to her own interest, forgives us, or at least
appears to. But in the case of Japan we are dealing with a very
different situation. There is no blood relationship to ease the strain;
nor is there always in Tokyo the calm, phlegmatic, self-interested
statesmanship of London. Tokyo is sometimes temperamental.

If we continue to bungle we shall ultimately gain the lasting ill-will