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truths. It is quite good for a religion if all superstitions and ignorance in it can be cleared away by science. We are hampered in our thinking of a future life by our traditions, prejudices, deep ignorance, and poor mental strength and training, and much energy is needed in the world for present service. Some have thought of an immortality in which a man's sincere influence, his unselfish manifestations, those things which are the essences of a man's existence, will live on; in other words, that the best of a life is immortal, but not in the way of ghosts. As to the memory, example, and achievement of the dead, it is sure that we are aided by them.

Governor. If we sacrifice ourselves for the public good, it is the best that we can do in this world. But are you composed at the sad news concerning the Lusitania? If you think that that event was directed by divine destiny, then you may be composed and may not complain.

Myself. Such an accident may be by divine destiny in the sense that everything in this world, the saddest misery, the greatest misfortunes are suffered in the development of mankind, so that this war is for the final betterment of the whole world.

Governor. Sensei [teacher, instructor] will please say what is God.

Myself. Many of my countrymen have been taught that God is 'Spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.' There are those who would say that God may be the total developing or bettering energy, and that we are all part of God. Some people have a personal conception of God, the sum of all goodness. May not his Excellency consider the peasant's idea of the governor of a prefecture? The peasant's idea of a governor is greater than that of any particular governor. His Excellency's good works

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are done, not by himself alone, but by all the good energies inherent in the Governorship. Those energies are unseen, but real. The Japanese army and navy triumphed by the virtue of the Emperor - by the virtue of ideas.

Governor. The thought of Sensei is quite Oriental.

Myself. All religions are from Asia. Governor. This world, where stars move, flowers blossom and decay, spring and autumn come, and people are born and die, is too full of mystery; but I can feel some intelligence working through it, though incomprehensible.

Myself. Alas, people will try to explain that Incomprehensibleness.

Governor. What you have said is quite reasonable, clear, and logical, but I seek for a warmer interpretation of the world, for a more heartfelt relation with cosmos. Several of my officials themselves lost their dear children recently. They cannot accept their loss with heart and brain, and ask my direction.

Myself. In the New Testament it is taught that God is Love. We can be composed if we feel that God is Love.

Governor. We must solve a great problem by ourselves.

Myself. We have opportunities of doing some good works in this life. Therefore we must go on till we die, and we must be content at being able to do something good, directly or indirectly, in however small measure.

Governor. I think of Napoleon dying tormented in St. Helena, and the peaceful attitude of Socrates, though being poisoned by enemies. Socrates had done many good things, yet he was poisoned.

Myself. Socrates had done what he could for his country and the world, yet by his death he could do one thing more.

The Governor said that he 'got comfort' from our talk, but this did not perfectly reassure me. The next evening, however, I found a parboiled Governor alone in the bath, and he

greeted me very warmly. Without our interpreter, we could say nothing that mattered; but we were glad of this further meeting in the friendly hot water. It seemed that our talk would be memorable to both of us.

The following various dicta on religion and morals were delivered to me by Japanese at various times during my sojourn in Japan:

A. In Japan all religions have been turned into sentiment-or æstheticism.

B (after speaking appreciatively of the ideas animating many Japanese Christians): All the same, I do not feel quite safe about trusting the future of Japan to those people.

C (in answer to my suggestion that possibly a Quakerism which compromised on war, as John Bright's male descendants did, might gain many adherents in Japan). Other sects may have a smaller ultimate chance than Quakerism. One mistake made by the Quakers was in going to work first among the poorer classes. The Quakers ought to have begun with the intellectual classes, for every movement in Japan is from the top.

D. You will notice what a number of the gods of Japan are deified men. There is a good side to the earth earthy, but many Japanese seem unable to worship anything higher than human beings. The readiest key to the religious feele ings of Japanese is the religious life of the Greeks. The more I study the Greeks, the more I see our resemblance to them, except in two points lack of philosophy and our lack of physical comeliness.

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E. I conduct certain classes which the clerks of my bank must attend. The teaching I give is based on Confucian,

Christian, and Buddhist principles. I try to make the young men more manful.

F (a septuagenarian ex-daimyo). Confucianism is the basis of my life, but I conduct a Buddhist service in my house morning and evening, and twice a month I serve at my Shinto shrine. It is necessary to make the profession that Buddha saves us. I do not believe in paradise. It is paradise if, when I die, I have a peaceful mind due to a feeling that I have done my duty in life and that my sons are not bad men. If I am not peaceful on my deathbed I cannot perish or reach peace, but must struggle on. Therefore, my sons must be good. I myself tried to be filial, and I have always said to my sons, 'Fathers may not be fathers, but sons must be sons.'

G. I wish foreigners had a juster idea about 'idols.' There is a difference between frequenters of the temples believing the figures to be holy and believing them to be gods. Every morning mother serves before her shrine of Buddha, but she does not believe our figure of Buddha to be God. She would not soil or irreverently handle our Buddha, but it is only holy as a symbol, as an image of a holy being. My mother has said to me: 'Buddha is our father. He looks after us always. I cannot but thank him. If there be after-life, Buddha will lead me to Paradise.' My mother is composed and peaceful. All through her life she has met calamities and troubles serenely. I admire her very much. She is a good example of how Buddha's influence makes one peaceful and spiritual. But such religious experience may not be grasped from the outside by foreigners.

AMERICA vs. EUROPE

BY AUGUST HAMON

[The author of the following interesting Socialist interpretation of the present world-situation is a distinguished French economist; but is better known, perhaps, as a translator and interpreter of Bernard Shaw.]

From El Socialista, May 20
(MADRID OFFICIAL SOCIALIST LABOR DAILY)

THE government of France, which in turn is more or less governed by a clan of iron and steel capitalists, is endeavoring to use the Treaty of Versailles to dominate the iron and steel market of the world; just as England is using the same treaty to extend its control over the maritime commerce of the world. These are the two central points around which all the great events of world-politics to-day revolve. It is enough to recall the difficulties that surrounded the drafting of this treaty, to appreciate these facts.

So incessant and so serious have been the crises which have ensued since that treaty was adopted, that it is almost impossible to weigh properly the significance of each succeeding incident. Fortunately, one of its makers has now published its history, and his own defense. This is the book of André Tardieu entitled The Peace, in which he analyzes the motives and causes which controlled the Conference, and shows clearly that the Treaty of Versailles is the work of a group of employees of the capitalist powers, who are trying to destroy or render helpless their competitors.

From the French standpoint, it is an iron-and-steel peace. From the English standpoint, it is a merchant-marine peace. The Americans were worked to the limit and left in the lurch. It would be incomprehensible for such a false

peace to be made by statesmen; that is to say, by men who have a scientific theory of government and international relations, which they are seeking to clothe with reality. It is quite comprehensible, however, as the product of politicians: in other words, of men actuated by the single motive of staying in office and hanging on to the material and sentimental perquisites which accompany political honor.

We have a striking account of French politicians in two recent books: Mes Prisons, by Caillaux, and Mon Crime, by Malvy. The Clemenceau of 1914– 1920 is exactly the Clemenceau of Cornelius Hertz-Reinach. Capitalists understand how to retain able, astute, and persistent employees. They must be well paid. It is easy to pay liberally when you use the money of others for that purpose.

The Americans were routed; and in fact they did not make much resistance. They felt that they held the reins, since they were the most powerful group of capitalists in the world, whose resources in gold and raw materials far exceeded those of their European competitors. They waited for their hour to come. And now it has arrived. Our French capitalists thought they might beguile these rivals by sending an ambassador extraordinary to America in the person of M. Viviani. This bearer of kind words was received with kind words.

But their only purpose was mutual deception. Domestic and foreign policies are to-day founded on interminable lying, on perfect bluff. Rulers fancy themselves very shrewd. But the truth is, no one believes their yarns. No one is taken in by their bluff. Its only effect is occasionally to cloud the truth for a brief period.

We have a striking example of this transient deluding in what the rulers of Germany accomplished during the war. It has been illustrated repeatedly, since 1919, by the rulers of Great Britain and France. When will they realize that the best way to govern men and to run governments is to tell the truth and be frank? While they are learning that lesson, their lies have not deceived American capitalists. The latter are not so gullible after all. They are pursuing their own objects and those exclusively. Among the latter is to prevent the economic and industrial collapse of Germany, for the sole profit of English commerce and French steel kings.

That explains why the United States government is willing to associate itself again with the various councils and commissions that are trying to run Europe. American newspapers publish this object from more or less official sources. At the same time, the Americans insist that the European powers, which are so heavily indebted to the United States, must defer to their country in such matters. There is a veiled threat in all this.

Germany's rulers appreciate the situation perfectly; but their genius for doing the wrong thing impels them to act in a way which embarrasses rather than promotes American policy.

Meanwhile the leading men of England welcome America's resumed interest in Europe. They hope to employ the Yankees to strangle their French rivals. After that, they will settle other

things. 'Wait and see' is the ancient tradition of their foreign policy; a most successful tradition because the British are adepts at compromise an art which the French utterly fail to understand. However, the Americans rival their transatlantic cousins in this kind of strategy.

So we find the Yankees ready to share again in reorganizing Europe. American interests logically compel the government of the United States to veto the schemes of French capitalists to make themselves the metallurgical dictators of the world; and therefore they must save Germany from economic servitude. What America decrees is right and just in respect to Germany; and must be accepted by the rulers of France whether they like it or not.

The Treaty of Versailles is dead. The government of the United States has not ratified it; and since that government has resumed its seat in the Councils of the Powers, the treaty's execution has become impossible. That is the inexorable logic of the situation. There is no use in trying to conceal from others or from ourselves the inevitable consequences of a separate peace between the United States and Germany, accompanied as it is by the reappearance of all-powerful America in the political councils of the world.

In defending the interests of American capitalists, the government of the United States is being forced to put into effect the vague idealism which Wilson summarized in his famous Fourteen Points. And, in truth, peace in Europe and in the world at large cannot exist and continue until these Fourteen Points, and what logically flows from them, have been actually applied. I pointed this out in detail during my lectures at the University of London in 1916, even before Wilson made his celebrated address.

All Americans - capitalists and com

mon people alike want peace. To get that, we must have disarmament. If we have disarmament, freedom of the seas follows by a process of unescapable logic. But when there is perfect equality on the seas, ports and harbors will tend to become international, free trade will follow as a matter of course, and in the footsteps of these reforms comes logically the right of nations to group themselves under such governments as they will. That end cannot be attained until we have a federation of free and democratic governments.

Mr. Harding's administration will be forced by the logic of events to pursue this object, if it is to serve the interests of the money kings and the masses of

the United States. Unless the President chooses that course, he will find himself drawn by an equally irresistible current into a war with Japan, in order to win room for the free expansion of American capitalism and a more enduring world-peace. There is no third way. Which will he choose? That depends on one factor-England's policy. And the latter, in turn, is largely influenced by events in Russia and Asia.

After studying closely the situation here and public opinion in Great Britain, as voiced by the recent letters of Asquith, Keynes, and Lord Robert Cecil, I am inclined to think that a pacifist policy will triumph in America, and that Mr. Harding will become the executor of the policy of Mr. Wilson.

CHOPIN: THE SOUL OF POLAND

BY G. JEAN-AUBRY

From The Chesterian
(ENGLISH MUSICAL JOURNAL)

Ar the age of twenty, when he left Warsaw, pursued by a strange presentiment that he was never to return, Frédéric Chopin carried with him a silver cup; loving friends had filled it with a little of the earth of Poland. Less than twenty years later, this handful of earth was tenderly thrown on his bier.

Each one of the works of Chopin bears the impress of this spirit. The chasing which adorns it, the incident it reveals, the emotions it suggests, the feelings it reflects, must not let us forget that, in such work, as at the bottom of this cup, beats the heart itself, the presence of his far-away land, the glowing love from which nothing could alienate.

Music is the flower of the earth itself; the humbler she is, the deeper go her roots into that life-giving soil; and be she great, it is there again that she draws the sap of her fruitfulness. She may seem free from these earthly ties, she may reach the essence of human pain or joy, and carry through all the universe the confession of a burning soul or a heart in anguish; but from the depths of her waters rise the reflections of the race that gave her birth.

With a heart full of woe, two months before his departure, Chopin wrote: 'If I leave Warsaw, I shall see my home no more; I shall die in a distant land.' But he goes away; he needs must be

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