Audiences in Japan differ, as they do everywhere, in dependence on the
social classes which compose them, their culture, varying points of
view; and their more immediate or remoter interests. They all have,
however, certain characteristics in common; and the more prominent of
these seem to be of racial origin and significance. Perhaps the most
obvious thing to the experienced and observing foreigner is a certain
“secretiveness,” or demeanour due to trained habit of repressing the
emotions, at least until they break forth into more emphatic or even
extravagant form because of long-continued repression. This habit was
acquired by the _Samurai_ in his control of the passion of anger. He
was taught as a boy to receive injury and insult from others with an
appearance of calm; and not to draw his sword until he had determined
that either he, or his insulter, or both, must pay the penalty with
death. I have already told how “du calme” was given to General Jan
Hamilton as the most important qualification for a field marshal or
general in command of a grand army in time of battle. But this habit
of repression is not confined to the more explosive of the emotions.
It is the testimony of those who witnessed the behaviour of the two
combatants during the Russo-Japanese war,--in battle, and when wounded
or dying,--that the Japanese were generally quiet and the Russians
more noisy and demonstrative. The same thing is true of expressions of
appreciation and gratitude.
In this connection I recall with pleasure two or three incidents in
my own experience. At the close of an engagement in one of the larger
cities, the President of the Government institution in whose behalf
most of the lectures had been given, said to me in a voice choked with
emotion: “You know, of course, that we Japanese are trained to repress
our feelings. I do not know whether it is a good thing or not; but it
is so. And I cannot tell you what we all feel.” On parting from one
of my favourite pupils, who had spent several years in study in this
country, he said: “I do not know how to say at all what I feel; but
Confucius taught that the gratitude and affection of the pupil toward
his teacher stand next to those of the son toward his father.” In
reality the teacher who succeeds with his Japanese pupils receives a
reward of these much coveted friendly bonds, which it is difficult or
impossible to hope for even, anywhere else in the world. The foreigner,
therefore, who enters into scholastic relations with Japanese students,
if he is competent, devoted and tactful, need not concern himself
greatly about this part of the returns from his labours; it will
surely follow in due time. And there is still enough left in Japan of
the Confucian style of arranging social classes in the scale of their
values, which has--theoretically at least--prevailed for centuries
in China; and which places the scholar at the head of the list and
relegates the money-maker to the bottom of the scale. Indeed, it is
only very recently that Japanese “men of honour” would have anything to
do with business; or that the sons and daughters of the higher classes
would intermarry with the business classes. This is undoubtedly one
reason for the partially justifiable, but on the whole exaggerated,
low estimate of the business morals of the Japanese. It remains to be
seen, however, whether the good or the evil results of the change of
attitude toward the money-getter, which is now taking place with such
rapidity, will prevail; and whether the net results will elevate or
degrade the prevalent standards of morality. Certainly, neither Europe
nor America has much to boast of, as respects these standards, on a
fair comparison with Japan.
This attitude of secretiveness, born of the habit of repressing
all appearance of emotional excitement, is further emphasised by
the desire, sometimes only to appear and sometimes really to be,
independent and critical. The tendency to revolt from authority and
to appeal to the rational judgment of the individual has been the
inevitable accompaniment of the transition from the “Old” to the “New”
Japan. Naturally and properly, too, this tendency has been greatest
and most conspicuous among the student classes. As a result affecting
the relations of teacher and pupils in the higher institutions of
learning, and even among more popular audiences, a certain coolness
of demeanour is deemed appropriate. In certain audiences--notably
those of such institutions as the Young Men’s Christian Association,
or of the missionary schools, or of other native schools that imitate
foreign ways, approval is expressed by clapping of hands or by other
similar means. But this is not characteristically Japanese. The truly
native manner of listening is an unflinchingly patient, polite, and
respectful, but silent attention. The disadvantage, therefore, under
which the occasional speaker or more constant lecturer before Japanese
audiences suffers, is this: he may be utterly unaware, or completely
deceived, as to the way in which his audience is taking him. It is
entirely possible, and indeed has happened to more than one missionary
or other teacher, to remain for years self-deceived concerning the
estimate his pupils were holding, both of his person and of his
instruction.
Another marked characteristic of Japanese audiences is their
extraordinary patience in listening. Whatever the subject, and whoever
the speaker, and whether his treatment is interesting or dull or even
totally unintelligible, the listeners seem to feel the obligation
to maintain the same attitude of attention to the very end of the
discourse. This endurance on the part of his hearers makes the call
for endurance on the part of the speaker who is determined to interest
and instruct them, all the more imperative and even exhausting. While
lecturing in India, I came regularly to expect that a considerable
percentage of the audience would melt away--not always by any means as
silently as the snow goes in a Spring day of genial sunshine--before
the talk was half or two-thirds over. In Korea, it needed only one
or two experiences to learn that, perhaps, the larger portion of the
audience came to look, and see (indeed, to “look-see” is the current
native phrase). But in Japan, under circumstances most trying to the
patience of both speaker and hearers, I have never known more than a
handful or two of individuals to steal quietly away, until the proper
and exactly ceremonial time for leaving the room had fully arrived. And
in such cases it was usually thought necessary for some one to explain
the engagement which had made necessary such a breach of etiquette.
So far as native habits and influences still remain in control, this
characteristic of patience in listening seems to belong to all kinds of
audiences, in both town and country, and both cultured and relatively
uninstructed. In the Imperial Universities of Tokyo and Kyoto, and in
the Government Colleges of Trade and Commerce, my lectures were given
in English and were not interpreted. This was not allowed, however,
to shorten greatly the entire period covered by the exercises; for a
double lecture--fifty minutes’ talk, then ten minutes for a cup of tea,
and then fifty minutes more of talk--was the order of the half-day. In
the case of the lectures before the teachers, under the auspices of the
Imperial Educational Association, or the similar Associations under the
presidency of the Governors of the various Ken, the necessity of having
the English done into Japanese operated to stretch out each engagement
to even greater length. Of this more than two hours of speaking and
listening, somewhat less than one-half was usually occupied by the
lecture in English; while the Japanese paraphrase, in order to make all
clear, required the remainder of the allotted time. The tax upon the
patience of the audience must have been increased by the fact that,
ordinarily, for a large part of the whole period they were listening
to a language which they either understood very imperfectly or did not
understand at all. For the customary method was to divide the entire
address into five or six parts of about ten minutes each; and then
lecturer and interpreter alternated in regular order. In some cases,
however, as, for example, the course of lectures given at Doshisha
in 1892, Mr. Kazutami Ukita, now Professor of Sociology in Waseda
University,--the most skilful interpreter I have ever known,--at the
close of the English lecture, rendered it entire into fluent and
elegant Japanese, preserving as far as the great differences in the
structure and genius of the two languages make possible, the exact
turns of speech and the illustrations of the original.
What is true of these more scholastic audiences is equally true of
those which are more popular. Indeed, it is probably the fact that
the non-scholastic audiences in the smaller cities and in the country
places are hitherto much less infected with the Western spirit of
impatience, which masquerades under the claim to be a sacred regard
for the value of time, but which is often anything but that, than are
the student classes in the crowded centres of education. At Osaka,
in 1892, nearly one thousand officials and business men gathered on
a distressingly hot summer’s afternoon and sat without any show of
desire to escape, listening for more than two hours to an address on
a topic in ethics. In Kyoto, in 1907, on invitation of the Governor
of the Ken, and of the mayor of the city, fifteen hundred of the
so-called “leading citizens” packed the Assembly Hall of the District
Legislature, galleries included, and sitting Japanese fashion on the
floor listened for three mortal hours, to a speech of introduction, to
a biographical address, to a talk on “Japan from the Point of View of a
Foreign Friend,” and its interpretation, to an address of thanks and to
a response by the person who had been thanked.
[Illustration: “CLASS AND TEACHER ALWAYS HAD TO BE PHOTOGRAPHED”]
Nor is this characteristic great patience exhausted by a single
occasion. In Tokyo a class of more than four hundred teachers
continued, substantially undiminished, through a course of thirty
lectures on the “Teacher’s Practical Philosophy”; the class in Kyoto
which entered for a course of twenty hours on the same subject numbered
rather more than eight hundred, and of these nearly seven hundred and
fifty received certificates for constancy in attendance. At Nagasaki,
Sendai, and other places, similar classes obtained and kept an average
attendance of from four hundred to six hundred. At the close of each
of these engagements, the class, together with their foreign teacher,
always had to be photographed.
It is well known to all travellers in Japan, and to all readers of
books on Japan, how much the Japanese, in their intercourse with each
other, insist upon a formal and elaborate politeness; and how careful
the better classes, and even the body of the common people, are to
practice this virtue, so esteemed by them, in all their intercourse
with foreigners. But it is far from being generally or sufficiently
recognised, how unfortunate and even positively shocking, the
disregard--not of their particular forms, but of all attempts at the
polite treatment of others, seems to them, as they are so constantly
forced to notice its prevalence among foreigners. That a fair degree
of genuineness attaches itself to these formal and conventional
observances, no one who knows the nation at all thoroughly can for
an instant entertain a doubt. Of course, on the other hand, neither
non-compliance nor the most exact compliance, mean the same thing
with us as with the Japanese. With them, not to treat a person--even
a coolie--politely, is positively to insult him. The foreigner who
should treat the native domestic servant, when the latter approached on
his knees and bowing his head constantly to the floor, with an insult
or a blow, might pay the penalty with his life. But the old-fashioned
politeness is being put to a difficult test by the conditions of modern
life, and by the changes of costume and of customs which are being
introduced from abroad. It may seem strange that I speak of changes
in costume as influencing the rules for polite social intercourse.
But, for example, the Japanese kimono forms a fitting and convenient
clothing for ladies who, on indoor festal occasions, salute each other
by hitching along the floor on their knees, bowing the head as low as
possible at frequent intervals. It is decidedly not so fitting and
convenient, however, where courtesy while standing is demanded by
politeness; or where it is desired to dance with decency and elegance.
On the other hand, the modern gown, whether with or without train,
is even less well adapted to the practice of the requirements of the
native social ceremonial.
According to the Japanese ideas, a proper respect for the teacher
requires that the pupil should receive and salute him, while standing.
This rule characterises the ceremonial adopted by audiences of all
sizes and as composed of different classes of hearers. In all the
lectures before audiences composed principally of teachers--since
they were, of course, for the time being regarded as the pupils of
the lecturer--the procedure was as follows: A select few, such as the
President of the Imperial or of the local Teacher’s Association, the
Mayor of the city, or his representative, and one or more members
of the Committee who had the affair in charge, were gathered some
time before the lecture-hour for tea-drinking in the reception room,
with the lecturer. At the appointed time--usually a little after,
and sometimes much after--this party of the select few proceeds to
the audience-room. On their entering the room, the entire audience
rises to its feet and remains standing until the speaker has mounted
the platform, bows have been interchanged with him, and he has sat
down. At the close of the address, the audience rises, bows are again
interchanged, and the “teacher,” unless some special arrangement has
been made and announced for him to remain for further exercises, or
to be introduced, leaves the hall first. The audience is expected to
remain standing until he has disappeared through the door; it would
be very impolite for them to begin sooner to disperse. Indeed, I have
never seen my friend, Baron T--, so excited by anything else as he was
on one occasion, when the assembly of teachers began to move from their
ranks, with the appearance of breaking up, while I was only half-way
between the platform and the door.
It would be a great mistake, however, to infer from such passivity
and enduring patience in attention that Japanese audiences are ready
to accept with complaisance whatever any one may choose to tell them
for truth; or, indeed, to regard the _ipse dixit_ of their authorised
instructors as of itself, a sufficient authority. On the contrary,
no small portion of the “Young Japan,” especially among the student
classes, is inclined to an extreme of bumptiousness. Considering the
circumstances of the present and the experiences of the recent past,
this is not strange; in view of the characteristics of the race and
its history in the more remote times, it is not unnatural. Moreover,
science, scholarship, and inventive talents, cannot be subjected
promptly in Japan to the same severe and decisive tests, which are
available to some extent in this country, but to a far greater extent
in most countries of Europe. But surely, in this country to-day the
difference between pretence or quackery and real merit or unusual
attainments, is not so well recognised, either by the people, or
by the press, or even by the executive officers of our educational
institutions, as to enable us to throw stones at the Japanese,--or for
that matter at any other civilised nation.
Perhaps there is no larger proportion of any Japanese audience, who
have perfect confidence in the superiority of their own views, or in
the originality and conclusiveness of their own trains of thinking,
or in their infallibility of judgment and loftiness of point of
standing, than would be the case with an audience similarly gathered
and constituted in America. I do not mean to say that Japanese student
audiences are lacking in docility or difficult to teach. On the
contrary, I think they are much more eager to hear about the last
things in science, politics, philosophy, and religion, than are the
college and university students in this country. And they certainly are
on the whole much more in deadly earnest in the matter of getting an
education. Something--probably much--of the old Samurai spirit still
lingers, which forbade the boy to rest or sleep until he had finished
his appointed task. I have had more than one of my own pupils tell me
how he had studied on through the night, applying wet bandages to his
head, or placing some sharp instrument so as to prick his forehead, if,
overcome by sleepiness, he nodded in his task.
This earnestness of demeanour, joined with the full confidence in an
ability to judge or even to discover for one’s self, undoubtedly makes
the audiences of students in Japan the more exacting. Besides, they
are prompt, severe, and even extreme,--oftentimes--in their judgments
concerning the ability and moral character of their teachers. It is a
by no means unusual occurrence for the students in private or even in
the Government institutions, to demand the removal of some teacher,
about whom they have made up their minds that he is either incompetent
as a scholar or unsafe and misleading as a guide. I have repeatedly
heard of “strikes” among the students to enforce such a demand; but I
have yet to hear of a strike or a “call-off” in the interests of fewer
hours or easier lessons. Indeed, nine-tenths of the students in the
Imperial University of Tokyo are probably, in their ignorant enthusiasm
to master quickly the whole realm of learning, taking a much larger
_quotum_ of lecture-hours than is for the good of sound scholarship,
or than should be permitted by the University.
As underlying or supporting or modifying all the other characteristic
features of the task attempted by the foreigner who expects to be
really successful in treating of serious themes with a Japanese
audience, is the high value placed on education by the nation at large.
At the period of first excitement over the action of the School Board
of San Francisco, in 1906, a Japanese friend of mine, a professor in
the Imperial University of Tokyo, who had spent some fifteen years of
his earlier life in this country, remarked to me with extreme concern
and sadness, that now his countrymen were wounded by us at their most
sensitive point. “Nothing else,” he added, “do all our common people
prize so much, for their children and for themselves, as education.”
In spite of its comparative poverty, and of the feeling which--wisely
or unwisely--it shares with America and Europe, that the lion’s part
of its resources must go to the support of the army and navy, there
is none of these nations which is giving so much official attention
to the education of all its people as is Japan. As has already been
pointed out in another connection, the minister of Education takes
rank with the other members of the Ministry. The President of the
Imperial Teacher’s Association is a member of the House of Peers;
he is a permanent officer and his office is not a merely honorary
position, is in no respect a sinecure. As I know very well, his
active administration includes the care of the details, physical and
intellectual, of the various meetings of the Association. The case is
as though some Government official of high rank--for example like the
late Senator Hoar of Massachusetts--were to be the permanent president
and active manager of the general Teachers’ Association of the United
States. The Professors of the Imperial Universities have court rank,
in accordance with the length of the time and the distinction of
their services. Distinguished men of science and of literature are
appointed members of the Upper House or are decorated by the Emperor,
in recognition of their services to the country and of the value of
their presence, as men who may be reasonably supposed to know what they
are talking about, in the councils of the nation. Diplomats, even of
the lower ranks, must be educated in the languages and history of the
countries in which they are to be stationed as members of the foreign
service. The ability to read, speak, and write English is required of
all the graduates of the Government Schools of Trade and Commerce.
There is a larger proportion of the children in the public schools
than in any other country, with the possible exception of Germany. The
proportion of illiterates to the entire population is much less than it
is in this country. And in spite of the meagreness of equipment, the
incompetence of much of the teaching force, the large amount of crude
experimenting, and the numerous and serious deficiencies, which still
afflict the system of public education in Japan, the recognition of
the absolute necessity and supreme value of education in determining
the conditions of national prosperity and even of continued national
existence, is intelligent, sincere, and practically operative among all
classes throughout Japan.
Now this esteem of the importance of instruction has a profound, if
not consciously recognised, influence on the attitude of all sorts of
Japanese audiences toward the person who is addressing them. He is
assumed to be telling them something which is true and which they need
to know. Talks by foreigners, that are _merely_ for entertainment or
amusement are, in general, an insoluble puzzle to the average Japanese
audience. Of course this failure to appreciate such efforts is in part
due to the wide difference in the spirit and structure of the two
languages,--that of the speaker and that of his hearers. But it is
even more largely due to something which lies far deeper. The Oriental
story-teller and professional joker has his place in the estimate of
the educated and even of the common people. It is side by side with the
juggler or performer with marionettes. To consider such a person as a
teacher would be foreign to the conception,--a scandalous profanation
of a sacred term. On the other hand, if one can--and this must come
only after a considerable period of testing--win and hold the claim in
its highest meaning, he may, as simply a teacher, wield an influence
in Japan which is comparable to that to be gained in the same way in
no other civilised land. For have not the greatly and permanently
influential benefactors of the race always been teachers? Were not
Confucius, and Sakya-Muni, and Jesus, all teachers? And in Japan
itself, only a few years ago, did not a certain man who had refused
offers of government positions deemed higher by most, in order that
he might remain a teacher of Japanese youth, when his work was ended,
have his coffin attended to its resting-place by ten thousand of his
fellow citizens of all classes, walking bareheaded through the rain?
Even now, when the appreciation of the importance and value of wealth,
for the individual and for the nation, is rising, and the appreciation
of the importance and value of intelligence and character is, I fear,
relatively declining, it is still possible for the truly successful
teacher to gain the esteem and influence over Japanese audiences which
are implied in the very word _Sensei_, or its equivalent. And if the
title is used with its full, old-fashioned significance, it will have
much the same meaning as the word “Master” in the New Testament usage.
[Illustration: “THE BEARING OF THE BOYS AND GIRLS IS SERIOUS,
RESPECTFUL AND AFFECTIONATE”]
At the time of my last visit to Japan, in 1906 and 1907, the temper of
the entire nation was particularly and indeed uniquely interesting.
They had just been through a terrible struggle with what had, at
the beginning of the struggle, been quite generally regarded as an
invincible European power. They had been, indeed, uniformly victorious;
but at the cost of enormous treasure and of the outpouring of the blood
of the flower of their youth. The nation was heavily burdened with
debt; and its credit, in spite of the fact that the financing of the
war had been conducted with very unusual honesty, frankness, and skill,
was low for purposes of borrowing large additional sums of money. The
great body of the people, who did not know what His Majesty, the
Genro, and the most intimate circle of advisers knew perfectly well,
considered the nation humiliated and defrauded by the unfavourable
terms on which the Portsmouth Treaty of Peace was concluded. As
I can testify, there was an almost complete absence of those
manifestations of elation and headiness, amounting to over-confidence
and excessive self-conceit, which prevailed so widely at the end of
the Chino-Japanese war. On the contrary, the great body of the people,
especially outside of Tokyo and the ports of Yokohama and Kobe, were in
a thoughtful, serious, and even anxious state of mind. This condition
could not fail to make itself felt upon the attitude of the audiences
toward those who addressed them, in correspondingly thoughtful and
serious fashion, on themes of education, morals, and religion. Even
in the public schools of the primary grade, the bearing of the boys
and girls toward their work is serious; and toward their teachers,
respectful and even affectionate.
Indeed, in the year after the war with Russia ended, the demand
everywhere in Japan was for the discussion of moral problems; and of
educational, economic, and political problems, as affected by moral
conditions and moral principles. The lectures to the teachers which
were most eagerly welcomed and which made by far the most profound
impression, spoke of the teacher’s function, equipment, ideals, and
relations to society and to the state, from the ethical point of view.
A course of lectures on the “Doctrine of the Virtues as applied to
Modern Business” was called for by the Government Business Colleges.
On my accepting an invitation to speak to the boys in the Fisheries
Institute, and asking for the topic which was preferred for the
address, the reply was given without hesitation: “Tell them that they
must be ‘good men,’ and how they may serve their country better by
becoming good men. Most of these boys come from low-class families,
whose morals are very bad, and they have not been well brought up; but
we wish them to become honest and virtuous men.”
Nor was this interest, amounting in many cases to anxiety, about the
moral condition and future moral welfare of the nation, confined to
educational circles. The Eleventh of February is a national holiday
in Japan, corresponding more exactly than any other of its national
holidays to our Fourth of July. This is the traditional date of the
founding of the Empire. On this date, in 1889, the “Constitution
was promulgated by the Emperor in person, with solemn and gorgeous
ceremony, in the throne-room of the Imperial Palace,--and its
proclamation was followed by national rejoicings and festivities.”
In 1907 the _Asahi Shimbun_, a leading paper of the large commercial
city of Osaka, undertook to commemorate the day by a public meeting
in the Hall of the Assembly of the District, and by a banquet in
the neighbouring hotel. In the afternoon I addressed an audience of
more than twelve hundred on the “Conditions of National Prosperity,”
dwelling chiefly on those conditions which are dominatingly moral and
religious in character. The banquet in the evening was attended by
about one hundred and fifty persons, and was fairly representative
of all the most influential citizens of various classes. After the
customary exchange of complimentary addresses, opportunity was
given for others to speak. A venerable gentleman, one of the most
distinguished physicians of the city, was the first to rise. With
great seriousness he made, in substance, the following comments on
the exercises of the afternoon,--which were, however, not interpreted
for me until a full fortnight later. He had been much impressed
by what the speaker had said at the afternoon meeting about the
dependence of national prosperity upon the nation’s morality; but
he had asked himself: “Why are such things said to us? We are not
‘rice merchants’ (a term of opprobrium); we are the leading and most
respectable citizens of Osaka.” He had, however, at once reminded
himself that this is precisely what their own great teacher, Confucius,
taught them centuries ago. And then he had asked himself: “Why do
the ancient Oriental teacher, and the modern teacher, both teach
the same thing,--namely, that nations can have genuine and lasting
prosperity only on condition that they continue to pattern themselves
after the eternal principles of righteousness?” His answer was: “They
tell us this, because it is so.” And “surely,” he added with much
impressiveness, “it is time that we were all governing our actions in
accordance with so important a truth.”
After the aged speaker had taken his seat again, a much younger man,
the Vice-Mayor of the city, arose; and beginning by expressing his
hearty agreement with the sentiments of the last speaker, he proceeded
to emphasise the truth with passionate fervour, and wound up his
address by saying: “There are enough of us, one hundred and fifty
leading citizens of Osaka, seated around this table here to-night, to
change the whole moral condition of the city, and to redeem it from
its deservedly bad reputation, if only we truly and fixedly will to
have it so.”
Several months later I had another similar experience, which I mention
here, because it illustrates so well the extraordinary interest in
moral issues which characterised the disposition of the nation at the
close of the Russo-Japanese war, and which made itself felt in so
powerful a way upon all the audiences which I addressed during the year
of my stay. Toward the close of the course of lectures and addresses
at Sendai, I was invited to visit the barracks where twenty-five or
thirty thousand of the recruits for the Japanese army are regularly
undergoing their preparation for service. After I had been shown about
the entire establishment by an escort of under-officers, the General
in command, a distinguished veteran of the Russo-Japanese war, called
me into his private office. There, he first of all assured me that
he had followed the accounts of the lectures and addresses as they
had been published in the various papers, and then thanked me for
what had been done in general for the good of his country; but, more
particularly, for the assistance rendered to him personally in his work
of training the young men for the Japanese army. Upon surprise being
expressed as to how such a thing could be, the General began to explain
his statement as follows: His great difficulty was not in teaching
the manual of arms or the proper way to manœuvre upon the field of
battle. His great difficulty was in giving these recruits the necessary
“spiritual” training (I use his word, and explain it to mean,--The
moral spirit which animates the upright and knightly soldier, the
spirit which, in the Japanese language, is called “Bushidō”). At this I
again expressed surprise and a wish for further light upon his kindly
remark. He then went on to say that since the Government had reduced
the term of required service from three years to two, the time was
more than ever all too short to inculcate and enforce the right moral
spirit on youths, many of whom came from homes in which this spirit
by no means prevailed. But a profound moral impression had been made
upon the teachers in the public schools all over the land; the teachers
would take these moral teachings and impress them upon the pupils under
their charge; and “these are the boys that will later come to me.” When
my thoughts turned homeward--as, of course, they were bound promptly
to do,--they awakened a strange mixture of feelings of amusement and
of concern; of the former, when the effort was made to imagine any
remotely similar conversation occurring with a General or a recruiting
officer there; and of concern, at the obvious decline of the spirit
of patriotism in the United States, as evinced by the almost purely
mercenary way in which all branches of the public service have come to
be regarded by the body of the people. That it is difficult to keep
the ranks of our small standing army filled by offers of big pay, much
leisure, and opportunities for foreign travel, is significant, not
so much because of a growing and, perhaps, reasonable distaste for a
military career, as of a prevalent conviction that the nation is bound
to serve individual and class interests rather than the individual and
the class to serve the interests of the nation.
The most thoughtful leaders of Japan are at present exceedingly
fearful that those more serious and self-reliant traits, which I have
chiefly selected to characterise, may succumb to the incoming flood of
commercial avarice, and of the love of comfort and luxury. And they
have grave reasons to be afraid. But I leave on record my testimony
to the truth that immediately after the close of the great war with
Russia, the nation of Japan was not only willing to hear, but even
coveted to hear, how it might prepare itself by intelligent adherence
to sound moral principles--in education, in business, in the army and
navy,--for an era of genuine and lasting prosperity, at peace with the
rest of the world.