THE DAILY MESSENGER, LATE GALIGNANI'S MESSENGER,

ESTABLISHED 1814.

The Editor of THE ARENA,

167 RUE SAINT HONORE,

PARIS, October 22, 1897.

DEAR SIR: I see from a copy of The Literary Digest which found its way to our office that the July number of THE ARENA contains an article comparing the points of the constitutions of the French and American republics. The name attached to the article is Niels Grön. Permit me to say that I am the writer of that article. The proof of this statement is contained in letters of Mr. Grön which I hold in my possession, and which I shall at once submit to you in case you deem it necessary. The information upon which the article is based was used by me in the first instance in my leaders for The Daily Messenger. How then did Mr. Grön come by the article? That gentleman was introduced to me in Paris, I think by ex-Governor Sprague of Rhode Island. Shortly afterward he asked me to write him an article for some New York syndicate. The article in question having been ready at hand, I sold him the use of it, but never for a moment dreamt that he would substitute his name for mine. It now turns out that not only has he not paid for the article, but he has had it published in THE ARENA over his own name. As the latter act implies a species of literary immorality to which I can lend no countenance I must ask you to publish this letter in THE ARENA at your earliest convenience. Stealing the product of another man's brains and palming it off as though it were one's own is not only an injury to the victim, but a fraud upon the public. I mean to use the substance of the article in question as a chapter of a book upon which I am working, and therefore there is all the more necessity of making you aware of the facts of the case now.

I am, dear sir,

Faithfully yours,

JOHN JOSEPH CONWAY,

Editor Paris Daily Messenger.

THE EDITOR'S EVENING.

Sir Thomas Kho on Education.

T was at Manila, the capital of the Philippines, that I took passage on the good ship Southern Cross bound

IT

from Shanghai to Batavia. My wish was to look into the conditions of life in Malaysia, and the opportunity offered when the Southern Cross went by in that direction.

sea.

No place suggests the formation of easy new friendships so strongly as does the deck of a sailing vessel on a smooth The region should be the tropics, and the time should be evening. Hesperus should hang low in the west, and the green outlines of islands, bordered with bamboo, should be seen not far to the east.

Among the passengers who came on board of the Southern Cross at Manila was Sir Thomas Kho, K. C. B.; and it is the substance of a conversation with this distinguished savant which I wish to record. I sought an introduction to Sir Thomas, and he was courteous enough to favor my advances. During our voyage we fell into talks about many questions; some trivial and some severe. Our intercourse grew to freedom in a few days, and I did not hesitate to query Sir Thomas of certain matters concerning which I did not doubt he was preeminently well-informed. As, for example, in a personal way I learned by inquiry that his old family estate in Borneo lay in the valley of the River Kapuas, about three hundred miles from the mouth of that stream. There his ancestors had resided as far back as the Feudal Ages.

Sir Thomas was a hale and hearty character, whom I found it most agreeable to know. His comments on aspects of

current civilization in the East and the West were direct and generally instructive. I made notes of his criticisms on the tendencies of civilization in Europe and America, and will venture to reproduce from my memoranda some of the things he said. In a philosophical way I made a special inquiry about his knightship's views on the subject of the higher education in its relations to progress.

On the evening of the 20th of May, 1894, we sat on board to a late hour enjoying the dim and fragrant seascape of the tropics. We were passing Palawan on the left. Sir Thomas threw his cigar over the gunwale and in response to my suggestion about the general effect of scholastic training said: “Ni lum khi du-tol mo chok Ham-rikky. Kroh lak tol piki um me ku whah til fee pum fum doo lik shu-ki. Doa mu kin pu dil um ooah Kooah shu-si-to-boo. Lan di hop kunder mag hoo san kschu-ly-doo-ly, un huoah bah spank-h."

I should have said that during my stay in the character of a student at the University of Bangkok I had made considerable progress in the languages of Oceanica and had given particular attention to Chimpanzee. It was therefore a delight to hear Sir Thomas in his vernacular. I should be glad to repeat all his remarks in the original, but for the sake of those of our readers who are not well versed in the higher Simian dialects I will English Sir Thomas's observations, giving the sense as nearly as may be in our imperfect forms of speech.

Sir Thomas's first remark, as reported above verbatim, signifies: "I have not been satisfied with the result of your education in America. It seems to me to work by contraries in this that the system puts the face of a man [um ooah Kooah] on the wrong side of him, so that he looks always backwards. I should prefer to have the face of an educated man set to the fore, as if he were going somewhere."

I was somewhat amused at Sir Thomas's first pass, and gave a little laugh in the Malay manner; but he was perfectly serious, and sending a whiff from his second cigar he continued (I translate):

"I know you call this thing of yours education. And you have, as I have learned, many colleges to promote it. The system seems to have been invented in Europe at a time when the only light came from an ignis fatuus (sto-ki-dum-li) in the rear. There was not at that time one fore-torch of knowledge or hope in the world. Middle Ages was not, I confess, that the past is a Big Thing. for not knowing that the past is

The man of your so-called much to blame for thinking How could he be censured only the remaining dust and

darkness of a dead world? It is only when living men, born in what they call an enlightened age, persist in educating their youth by twisting their faces around towards the dead world that I protest."

I told his knightship in answer that I thought his remark was too sweeping; that, though a collegian, I was not myself a devotee of the past; and that I knew another college man or two who believed that the future ought to be constructed out of new materials.

"Koon soa ki tum chin-ni khat mik," said Sir Thomas; that is, "There may be a few of that kind - but not many." "If my information be authentic," he continued, "your education consists mostly in teaching men how to stop. Nothing in Ham-rikky, I hear, is thought to be so inimical to a high standard of scholarship as a belief in the revolution of the earth on its axis. It is a great part of the higher learning to prevent the motion of the earth by denying it! One of your poets declares that The thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns,' but he did not learn this at college; he learned it when he was alone on the chalky crags of Dover communing with the sea.

"Your college men are as a rule in mortal dread of the 'process of the suns.' They consult their charts and find that according to Duns Scotus it is wrong for the sun to proceed; therefore the sun does not proceed- else the sun would disturb the existing order.

"The average college man," continued his knightship, "huddles down close to the wall and waits for some ancient dogcart to come along. As soon as a time-worn vehicle passes on its way back to the last camping-ground, he hails it and mounts. And on that 'safe and sound' dog-cart of reaction and retrogression and cant he rides the journey through."

Sir Thomas gave another puff and went on: "I have learned that nearly all your university productions are leagued with those social and political forces which drive backwards. It is said that your leaders of progress, the greater part of them, spring directly from the people, while your graduates are gathered into the silken folds of an apathetic aristocracy. Nine out of ten of them take refuge

under the cloak of organization, and the other one, if he venture into the open, is generally driven back! No doubt this is primarily a weakness, but in the language of your poet, to be weak is miserable."

"Your educated men turn to books instead of affairs, and out of books they seek to extract the mystery and majesty of life. They seem not to know that nearly all books are a rehash of other hash that was hashed in the first place out of superstition and ignorance. The evanescent character of your literature proves this to be true. How long do your books last? If one of them survives a season it is placarded as a prodigy. What has become of the books that have been produced during the nineteenth century? After Hugo, Buckle, and Darwin, who? One of these three went through college, and the other two were educated mostly by their mothers.

"Why do your educated men join themselves to the enemies of progress? Why do they conclude, even before graduation, that the principal work in the world is to govern mankind by means of institutions and opinions, the design of which is to prevent the governed from growth and emancipation? Do your scholars really believe that civilization is a stationary product of the past? Do they believe that wealth and slavery are the only two things to be worshipped? Do they know so little of history as not to be well aware that every single progressive movement of the human race has been the outgrowth and destruction of existing conditions? Was there ever a forward march that did not begin in revolution? Was there ever any advantage in standing still? Is not all life a process of bursting out from a humus which is the result of decomposed materials? Does nature ever try to revive a dead tree? Can you educate life into anything that is not germinal? It seems to me strange that the scholars of the West should combine their forces with the extinct order which the past has entailed on the present. The present ought to have an order of its own, and so ought the future.

"In Borneo," Sir Thomas continued, "we have a system of education quite different from that of Europe and America. Our leading institution is our Naturschule, or Nature Uni

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