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gence or integrity. . The Olympic Games have brought to light many ugly things as well as many fine ones.

The suggestion that England cease to participate in the Games hereafter was not well received by British athletes and sportsmen. R. Salisbury Woods, ex-President of the Cambridge University Athletic Club, wrote to say:

Those of us who have recently returned from the 'Stadium competitions' in track and field athletics feel strongly that this branch of the Games' of 1924 has been conducted in a spirit of friendly rivalry and real sportsmanship not approached in any of the preceding Olympiads. The most cordial relations were fostered between the competitors and officials of all the Englishspeaking peoples, and the very complete harmony which now exists between our athletes and those of the U. S. A. in particular is, in my humble opinion, more than a sufficient offset to any 'incidents' in other sections, such as boxing and fencing.

Lord Cadogan, Chairman of the Council of the British Olympic Association, criticized vigorously in a letter to the same newspaper its correspondent's account of the friction at Paris as 'un-English and unsportsmanlike.'

A contributor to The Nation and the Athenæum also regards these contests with a more favorable eye. Speaking of the football tournament, he says: "The whole long series of ties was carried through in a spirit of sporting friendship vastly creditable to players, organizers, and officials alike,' and he declares that the track and field events were regarded by the contestants with 'the same enthusiasm, the same genuine international emotion.'

It is clear to anyone who talks to them that the gathering of the teams is the symbol of a world-wide movement that has touched the spirit of the democracies in east and west, in north and south. Whatever they may be, whatever their defects,

the Olympic Games are not a fake; they are intensely sincere and intensely alive.

If all this be true, why should there ever have been hostility in England to the Olympic Games? It is hard to say. The ideal is British; it is, indeed, a typical part of the contribution made by Britons to the civilization of our day. Perhaps the hostility is a relic of the disappearing sentiment which Mr. Shaw puts into the mouth of Master John de Stogumber: 'No Englishman is ever beaten fairly.' A generation ago, no doubt, we all believed that no foreigner could be a sportsman. We are getting over that delusion. Our experience in international sport has taught us to know, to understand, and therefore to respect our foreign opponents. The truth is why not recognize it? - that there is nothing so effectual as sport in making the mass of people in one country respect the people of another. another. Who really doubts that nine Englishmen in ten would look with quite other eyes on Uruguay if they realized what is the fact that the Uruguayan team played football in the Paris Tournament which in skill, courage, and endurance no English amateurs could hope to rival?

FURTHER REVERBERATIONS FROM JAPAN

By the middle of July the Big Four of the Japanese cinema world, the Shochiku, Nikkatsu, Teikine, and Makino companies, who are the largest producers and exhibitors in Japan, lifted the boycott they had enforced against American films since the passage of our immigration-restriction law. They did so because they were losing patronage, for the Japanese flocked to the independent theatres that still used American plays. One reason for the failure of this boycott, according to the Tokyo press, was the unwillingness of the Japanese to have their patriotic sentiments exploited by private commercial organizations.

Yamato, an influential and soberminded journal, ascribes the declining interest in the immigration issue to ‘a trait peculiar to the Japanese, whose

irritable and touchy temper soon subsides with the lapse of time.'

The Lower House of the Japanese Parliament has adopted a bill laid before it by the Cabinet that amends the law of nationality so that Japanese born in foreign countries and acquiring citizenship there shall be officially recognized as having ceased to be subjects of Japan. Tokyo Asahi welcomes this legislation, even though it is belated, because Japan's insistence upon the principle once the Mikado's subject always his subject' goes far to explain, in its opinion, the suspicions cherished against her by America that bore fruit in the exclusion law. Writing before the adoption of the amendment, that journal said:

Although Japanese are denied the right of naturalization, yet citizenship is granted to those born in the United States, according to a provision of the United States Constitution. But our Government requires their parents to report soon after their birth to a Japanese Consulate located in their vicinity, where the child's name must be registered in the official records as a Japanese subject. For the present Japanese nationality law provides that Japanese born in foreign countries cannot repudiate their Japanese nationality unless they have served in the Imperial army or unless they have passed the age for military service.

Among the amusing proposals that the lively discussion of emigration has brought forth, is one suggested by Count Otani Kozui, formerly abbot of a great Japanese temple, in the popular Tokyo review, Kokumin. He classifies emigration under three heads: emigration of capital, emigration of labor, and last of all, under his own proposal, enforced emigration of drones. In other words, he would make more room for thrifty, industrious Japanese in their own country by shipping the idle rich out of it. Among the arguments he advances in favor of this novel suggestion are the following:

The greatest consumers are the drones. These must be compelled to emigrate. They must be evicted from the country. One consumer neutralizes the results of the efforts of ten producers. The greatest need of the moment is, therefore, the eviction of these drones. The idle rich are not producers. They have no direct control of their property. They invest their money either in the shares of companies or in land, or they deposit it in banks. Wherever they may live, they are entitled to the yield of their investments. By remaining in Japan and doing nothing except consuming goods, they are doing their country ill service, as their presence contributes to the rise in prices. They are nevertheless law-abiding

people, and by no means inclined to mis

deeds. Indeed, they believe that they form the cream of the population, and even talk of guiding popular ideas along the right path. They can, however, do little toward the professed wise guidance of the popular ideas, except by leaving Japan.

Peers come under the category of the drones of whom I am writing. If they lived abroad, their change of environment might turn them into a sort of producer. At any rate, Japan can profit considerably by getting rid of elements who do nothing but of some consume goods at home. Being men property and some knowledge, there is no fear of their acting abroad in a manner which would gravely reflect upon the honor of their country. On the contrary, there is reason to believe that they would endeavor to enhance the reputation of their country. The Japanese Government must devise means to encourage or compel them to go abroad to live. For these drones China supplies the best place for settling down. Especially adapted is the territory south of the Yangtze. As they are not very rich, places where low prices prevail must be chosen. From this point of view, China is preferable to Europe or the South Seas. The districts south of the Yangtze are fertile and the climate is as moderate as that of Kyushu.

MINOR NOTES

THE Berlin anti-Bolshevist daily, Dni, publishes a report from Manchuria

that illustrates the commercial rivalries underlying the recent negotiations between China and Russia. Formerly Russian steamboats had the right to ply upon the Sungari River, a tributary of the Amur, and the Chinese-Eastern Railway operated until last year a considerable fleet upon that waterway. A number of farming and lumbering communities have sprung up along the river that afforded considerable business for this line. After the Allies withdrew from Siberia, Chinese steamboats tried to compete for this trade, but with little success, because the Railway's boats had an established business and charged lower freights. Finally Chang Tso-lin, the Mukden Tuchun, prohibited the Russian steamers from navigating the river; but the Chinese boats took advantage of this to charge such extortionate rates as to strangle the traffic, and at the time of the recent conference over 150,000 tons of cargo were reported to be piled up on the river landings, which the owners could not or would not ship out of the country under existing conditions.

ACCORDING to Lloyd's new Register, the carrying capacity of the world's merchant fleets decreased nearly 1,143,000 tons last year, in spite of the new ships built during that period. Our own merchant marine is declining rapidly, while those of Germany and Japan are forging ahead relatively faster than their rivals. Though we still rank second in merchant tonnage, thanks to the marvelous expansion of the war period, Germany threatens to oust us from that position. As generally happens in a period of curtailment and reorganization, the decline in carrying capacity is partly compensated by the greater efficiency of the surviving units. The average size of vessels is increasing. More than two thirds of the vessels now at sea employ oil instead of coal for fuel, and motordriven vessels are multiplying significantly. The change from coal to oil is modifying sea routes, for oil-burners are far less dependent upon intermediate refueling stations than are coalburning steamships of any type hitherto designed.

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[The article that follows is composed of two clever sketches on advertising published on the occasion of the International Advertising Conference in London last July. Advertising is a subject in which every consumer, as well as every producer, in these days of parlous propaganda, is directly interested.]

From the Manchester Guardian Advertising Review, July 16
(LIBERAL DAILY SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT)

I

How forcible are right words! - JOB: VI, 25.

Copy is the written word. In advertisements copy plays an important part because upon its shoulders, often slender so far as space is concerned, falls the responsibility of turning the curiosity or interest aroused by picture and 'layout' into conviction. Copy is not only the word-part of an advertisement. It is the last word, and its success is determined by its capacity to make converts for the cause of the goods or services or ideas advertised. It may use, and at its best does use, all the devices of the art of writing, but it must employ two of those devices in greater measure than is necessary in any other branch of letters. These two devices are velocity and persuasiveness: velocity, to arrest the passing glance of the reader, and persuasiveness, to establish confidence without which business is difficult or impossible.

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graduation must be made steeper and the progress accelerated. In order to keep pace with these conditions, greater and greater demands have been made upon the clinching-power of the copy, with the result that copy-writing, the latest-born child of the literary arts, has already acquired at the hands of the expert much of the nervous energy and temperamental force which are usually associated with the older branches of persuasive and forensic letters.

It is sometimes questioned whether advertisement copy-writing should be permitted a place in the temple of literature. Such an objection is made up in equal parts of quibble and snobbishness. If we understand literature as written expression in its most appropriate form, then copy-writing is entitled to its place in the literary sun. As a matter of fact all that range of indisputable literature associated with special pleading of one kind or another is authentic copy. Every writer who seeks to bend opinion towards his own views, whether he be a theologian or a politician, a moralist or a scientist, employs the arts of the copy-writer. Goods are as necessary to life as ideas and ideals. The advertisement of goods in the best

sense, that is, of the best goods in the most appropriate way, is therefore important to mankind and not unworthy the genius of letters.

Considered from this legitimate angle, good copy may be found, without stretching the bounds of the above definition, in the most exalted books. In fact, the better the book the better the copy. There is no more perfect piece of copy-writing than the ad

vertisement of Wisdom in Proverbs iii, 13-18:

Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold.

She is more precious than rubies: and all things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honour.

Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and happy is every one that retaineth her.

The apathetic attitude of the public towards Wisdom might have been reduced had this admirable piece of copy been suitably displayed every now and then in the advertisement columns of the press. It is, however, only one of the many excellent examples of copy-writing which may be found in the Scriptures; another is the immortal exposition of Faith, Hope, and Love in I Corinthians xiii. Shakespeare may also be trawled with equally good results.

But, as it may be argued that such examples are too remote from the mundane purposes of commercial publicity, a few examples of good copy from less exalted sources may be cited. No better advertisement of tobacco has ever been written than that put into the mouth of Yeo by Charles Kingsley, in Westward Ho!:

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When all things were made none was made better than this; to be a lone man's companion, a bachelor's friend, a hungry man's food, a sad man's cordial, a wakeful man's sleep, and a chilly man's fire, Sir; while for staunching of wounds, purging of rheum, and settling of the stomach, there's no herb like unto it under the canopy of heaven.

Here is a good piece of copy for a publisher's announcement of a series of classical reprints. It is from Macaulay's Essay on Francis Bacon:

These are the old friends who are never seen with new faces, who are the same in wealth and in poverty, in glory and in obscurity. With the dead there is no rivalry. In the dead there is no change. Plato is never sullen. Cervantes is never petulant. Demosthenes never comes unseasonably. Dante never stays too long. No difference of political opinion can alienate Cicero. No heresy can excite the horror of Bossuet.

Such copy might move the shyest of the book-shy to form a library and even to read the old masters. In recent years there has been a notable improvement in the copy of furnishing advertisements, but the modern style of copy-writing was long since anticipated by the poet Edgar Allan Poe, and such sentences as these, from his essay on the Philosophy of Furniture, might have been taken from the publicity pages of a contemporary journal:

The soul of the apartment is the carpet. From it are deduced not only the hues but the forms of all objects incumbent. A judge at common law may be an ordinary man; a good judge of a carpet must be a genius. A statuette of a faun, particularly if a replica of a Greek masterpiece, might sell in large numbers if announced with the literary grace of Nathaniel Hawthorne in his novel, Transformation:

Only a sculptor of the finest imagination, the most delicate taste, the sweetest feeling, and the rarest artistic skill in a word,

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