hundred and fifty years before Commodore Perry's visit, there was no nation on earth that could compare with Japan for the peace habit. While Europe and America were in the midst of long years of bitter wars, revolutions, and mutual slaughters, there was for two hundred and fifty years neither internal nor external disturbance of peace in the empire of Japan. Your sweeping judgment of the national character is that they have the war habit. Probably you did not know that, when Perry opened Japan to the knowledge of Western history, one thing that shocked the Japanese was the awfully bloody histories of the nations on this side of the globe; and one of their greatest moralists, Yokoi Shonan, expressed this wide feeling when he begged his government to send him on a mission to the West, that he might plead with those nations to put an end to the brutal wars which two hundred and fifty years of peace had made Japan profoundly dislike. I take it that you neither read nor speak the Japanese language and so have only second-hand avenues into the literature and history of Japan. So, in your hasty tour through a section of Japan, you could not have noticed that at the entrance of countless towns and villages a high flagstaff stands, at the base of which is written: "Peace Be to This Village." Have you ever compared the national hymn of Japan with those of the nations of the West? Her hymn is of very recent date, hardly thirty years old, and you would expect to find something of "the war habit" that has grown "for eight hundred years" in this hymn. For hymns, to be national, must express the deepest and strongest sentiment of the nation. Not a shadow of war here. We of the West have to

be careful how we sing our national hymns where representatives of different nations are gathered. But Japan's national hymn is so absolutely without the war spirit that it can be sung anywhere in the world without giving offence. Your vivid imagination led you to picture the millions of China, too, as virtually possessed with this same war habit, and you painted in fiery colours those four hundred millions of yellow men, "whose countless soldiers could shoot as straight as we can, and could live on one-tenth of what we should need," descending on our Pacific Coast with irresistible force. Are you not as far afield here as in Japan? I had the honour recently of an interview with the Hon. John W. Foster, who kindly presented me with a copy of his Present Conditions in China. With his lengthy diplomatic service in the East, whose people he knows, and whose trusted adviser he has been for decades, he has a right to say in this pamphlet: "For many generations China has been the least warlike of any of the great nations. Her most venerated philosopher and statesman, Confucius, taught her people that nations as well as individuals should settle their differences by appeals to right and justice." In view of these facts, it seemed to me that you had somehow got the wrong perspective, and that you should have reversed your vision and told your audience that we Westerners have the war habit badly, and might well learn something from those oldest and most peaceful nations of the East. I was in Manchuria as a guest of the army for six weeks, and was given in my passport the grade of a colonel. I had letters of introduction from the Premier, Count Katsura, to all the generals and

Marshal Oyama. The Premier is a general of the regular army, and he said to me in all solemnity: “I am a soldier, but I hate war. I tried every possible way to come to a settlement with Russia through peaceful means and, after six months of useless diplomatic correspondence, we simply had to fight for our national existence." This is a true expression of the heart of Japan's generals. Mr. Foster is right in his estimate of the peaceful character of the peoples of the East. What he says agrees with the conclusions I have reached, after thirty-three years of residence there.

After quoting President Taft, then Secretary of War, our Ambassador to Japan, Luke Wright, and Elihu Root, then Secretary of State, as to the entirely peaceful attitude of the Japanese government, Mr. De Forest continues:

These gentlemen are your superiors in everything that pertains to first-hand information on diplomatic matters, and their statements are unequivocally the opposite of yours. I will quote some others who are also very superior to you in their knowledge of the people of Japan. I refer to the missionaries who speak the Japanese language, live with the people, have strong friendships among the educated classes, read the papers, and are agreed on this one vital point— the way the Japanese think about us. They have watched not without anxiety the irresponsible jingo utterances of a section of the American press and their slanders of Japan. They have openly sent their formal message to the people of the United States; and, in view of such utterances as yours, the public should

have the saner views of men who have first-class opportunities for knowing what you can get only in less direct ways. Here is their message:

"While we, as missionaries, have nothing to do with questions of national economics or international politics, yet in matters affecting the mutual good-will of nations, we, as messengers of God's universal Fatherhood and man's universal Brotherhood, are peculiarly interested; and, as Americans now residing in Japan, we feel bound to do all that is in our power to remove misunderstandings and suspicions which are tending to interrupt the long-standing friendship between this nation and our own. Hence, we wish to bear testimony to the sobriety, sense of international justice, and freedom from aggressive designs exhibited by the great majority of the Japanese people and to their faith in the traditional justice and equity of the United States. Moreover, we desire to place on record our profound appreciation of the kind treatment which we experience at the hands of both government and people; our belief that the alleged belligerent attitude of the Japanese does not represent the real sentiments of the nation; and our ardent hope that local and spasmodic misunderstandings may not be allowed to affect in the slightest degree the natural and historic friendship of the two neighbours on opposite sides of the Pacific.”

This document is signed by over a hundred men, many of whom have lived in Japan over a quarter of a century. Every one of these men would repudiate without hesitation every one of your assertions to which I have referred. You said with violent gesture that the Japanese attitude towards us "is awful and

wicked." You who evidently know nothing of their press call it "bitter. For the sake of my country's fair name, I want to say publicly that your sweeping and baseless misstatements show colossal ignorance of the character of the Japanese. If our people were not too sensible to take you seriously, if you could carry the majority of our people with you, your words would surely imperil the peace of the world, the large part of which you cruelly insulted. As a citizen of the United States I protest against your "awful and wicked" and "bitter" accusations of a great and friendly nation. For the sake of Japan, whose people I respect and love, and whose spirit I believe will bring generous help to the world in the peaceful solution of the greatest of all the twentieth century problems, the coming together of the East and West, I openly affirm that your statements about the war habit of the Japanese, and their war designs on our Republic, have no better foundation than that furnished by your ignorance of history and of diplomatic usages between governments.

In an article in the Independent, Dr. De Forest later said:

Nothing has so amazed Japan as have the insinuations and even charges that she was only watching for a chance to attack us, knowing that she was fully prepared, while we were in no position to defend our island possessions of the Pacific. What Japan has endured of astonishment, of pain, of bitter disappointment, of rising resentment, it would be hard to tell. For, not only has our Republic been her best friend and her "beloved teacher" for half a century, but