fault with the enthusiastic singing of "Onward, Christian Soldier" and the tense attention paid to the story of David and Goliath. Doubtless, both these things made a strong patriotic appeal to the native Christians. Koreans are human beings "under the skin," and the loss of their nationality was a bitter grief to them. Their history, like that of the Jews, the Czechs, the Poles, the Alsatians, the Schleswig Danes, thrown into the lime-light again by the Great War, has emphasized this truth: to keep alive nationality, and, for that matter, personality, it is only necessary to deny its expression. Forbid a people their language, their customs; take away from them the right of freedom to travel, free public meetings, freedom of the press, of speech; discriminate against them in their daily life because of their nationality, they will then fail to realize, no matter how obvious it may be, that under the new rule they are safer in purse and person; that they are economically, physically, and in educational opportunities far better off than they were under native rule. Under conditions like these the spirit of a nation never dies. It may sleep. Sometime it will awaken.

In the dozen or so years that have elapsed since Japan assumed the protectorate of Korea she has done much for the physical, mental, and economic well-being of the people, more, indeed, than Korea accomplished for herself in her previous three thousand years of civilization, even with the aid of the wisdom and the capital of European and American advisers in the quarter of a century immediately preceding Japanese control. Yet the hatred of Korea for Japan is far greater now than it was in the middle ages that gave it birth.

In 1916 there were in Korea 65 Shinto preaching-houses, with 103 preachers; 209 Buddhist preaching-houses, with 282 preachers; and 49 Buddhist temples, with 31 priests. In the same year there were 3164 Christian churches and mission houses, with 6690 ministers.

I happened to travel from Japan to Seul in the company of the Buddhist archbishop and his priests, sent from Japan to reconvert Korea. At every

station they were greeted by a few of the faithful, mostly Japanese. They were obviously cultivated and intelligent and worldly-wise gentlemen; but their coming was the answer of Japan to the missionaries, mostly Americans, who had sympathized, only at first, with the Koreans against Japanese aggressions. Nevertheless, many Japanese realize the advantage of Christianity to the Koreans. Prince Ito gave yearly ten thousand yen to the Y. M. C. A., and gifts have been given to the Salvation Army out of the public treasury.

The religious history of Korea is most interesting. Buddhism had been introduced there in the fourth century. In the sixth their missionaries passed it on to Japan. In both countries, for many centuries, it walked hand and hand with civilization. But in the "Golden Age of Korean Morals," in the sixteenth century, it fell into deserved disrepute. Confucianism took its place. From this time until the Japanese invasion no Buddhist priests were allowed within the walls of the cities. Socially, they ranked just above the slayers of cattle.

Admirable as a code of ethics, Confucianism did not feed the religious needs of the emotional Koreans. Its strongest hold over them was in the laws providing for ancestor worship. Degenerating into superstitions, these bound them with iron chains even to the present time.

From corrupted Buddhism they had acquired a belief in all sorts of demons. They tried to propitiate them with prayers. The fantastic figures, so common on roofs, still bear witness to their belief in numerous and active devils. Altogether their religious beliefs were terrifying instead of consoling.

The earlier Catholic missionaries made the mistake of showing active intolerance of ancestor worship. They failed utterly. That they might have succeeded is shown by the respect that the Chinese still show to the memory of Ricci. He taught them that reverence for one's ancestors need not interfere with a belief in God. In consequence of his liberal thought, the mission he founded is still a vital factor in the religious and social life of Pekin.

After the opening of Korea to the world, Protestant missionaries from England, America, Canada, and Australia flocked there. They had been preceded by French Catholics. Naturally, Naturally, the earlier and most numerous converts were to the Catholic Church. Even now no other single branch of the church has so many members. Among the Protestants, Presbyterians and Methodists lead.

The rapidity with which Korea has become Christianized is due not only to their antagonism to Japan and to their love for the missionaries, but also to several other factors of which the following, perhaps, is the most important: Korea is the only Oriental country whose people are able to read the Bible in the vernacular. This is due to the invention of one of the Korean kings, living in the fifteenth century. It is called on-mun, a Korean alphabet, said to be the most perfect in the world. It was so easy to acquire that it opened the world of books not only to the literati, but to every one. Indeed, for many years it was despised because it was "so easy that even women can learn it in a month."

All this is now ancient history. Korea has cost Japan over thirty-five years of incessant toil, a civil war (the Satsuma Rebellion), and two expensive foreign wars. She is worth all that she has cost, but the end is not yet. Again Japan stands at the parting of the ways. She has seen the defeat of Germany. Yet Germany had all the advantages that enabled little Japan to conquer great Russia: (1) highly centralized political power, (2) a thoroughly militarized population, (3) remarkable national solidarity, (4) thorough preparation. In a word, Japan has witnessed the complete failure of efficient autocracy and militarism. Will she listen now to her own democrats, who beg her to heed the voice of the

people, or will she answer that the failure of Germany was due primarily to the fact that her centralization and militarism were inferior to that of Japan? It is true. Japan? It is true. In Japan the real power is in the hands of the Genro, a small group of men without legal status or any responsibility to the people, and also in those of a sovereign worshiped as a demigod, proclaimed by his people a ruler by divine right. Contrast such power with that of William Hohenzollern, almost alone, even in the height of his power, in believing that God had anything to do with his kingship. In Japan, again, the people are martial by instinct and from long inheritance. Feudalism, the spirit of knighthood, was their atmosphere within the memory of men yet living. "The cherryblossom among flowers; among men the warrior," still expresses their real sentiment. But in Germany the feudal spirit belonged to a remote past. The mass of the people were militarized almost by force. At the best they obeyed from a dull sense of duty. Their martial spirit was an acquired characteristic, not a birthright.

It would be absurd to expect sudden and sweeping changes in the spirit of Japan. But while she is trying to find her soul, it is to be hoped that Western nations, especially our own country, will refrain from saying and doing things that may crystallize her pride instead of freeing her from its domination. We must remember that it was Russian interference that forced Japan into the war that ended finally, against the best judgment of many of her statesmen, in the annexation of Korea. Whatever actual good may have come to Korea in consequence, only an incurable optimist can fail to see much harm to Japan herself, to China, and to the rest of the world, should the Japanese be pushed into a position in which, to protect themselves, they must be aggressive.

H

E stood there under the thatched eaves of a lowclass sake-shop and held out a hand as we passed. It was raining, not the casual downpour of America, or the "business-as-usual" sort of England, but in the sad Japanese fashion that brings mists thronging to temple-tops, like doubts and despairs to an appeaseless mind.

He was garbed in clothes as tattered as his beard: coat and trousers that hung loosely down, as if heavy with shame; shoes that had evidently not been bought by him; a hat serving for little except partly to conceal long-uncombed hair, on which the rain, trickling from the roof, dripped with disheartening certainty. Yet what was most striking about him was that he was indubitably and somehow distinguishedly American.

Lowry

In the kuruma with me was Mrs. Neilson, the piquant widow of my former commandant, who was now living in Yokohama and who, I confess, was the chief attraction of my stop-over in Japan. We were making a train for Tokio, off for a reception at the embassy.

For either of us to have tossed the beggar a coin from under wraps and umbrellas would not have been easy; yet I supposed my companion, who uttered a quick, pained "Oh!" was merely too shocked or startled to do so. Nor did the pallor of her face, as the strawsandaled feet of our kurumayas

Illustrations by W. C. Dexter

stopped at the station, suggest more to me. As for the disturbing bounder himself, I am sure his look had been only one of bleared, fatal, smiling misery.

My disgust at the mischance, nevertheless, led me to pause in the stationdoor and look back. That he was, or had been, one of our own kind doubly irritated me. Why could n't such degenerates keep their degradation out of the way of decent people with a day's freedom ashore? Should the prodigal only inherit the earth?

The truth is also that I particularly wanted Mrs. Neilson to be in her happiest mood. Her loveliness, aloof and uncompromising as it was, had intrigued me from time to time for several years, and I had quite made up my mind-well, to mention matrimony. But this rotter, a disgrace to his sex, seemed to have stirred some memory of the masculine in her that was not likely to improve my chances. It was hugely provoking.

"See here," I said, catching up with her, "it's too bad-that beastly derelict, I mean."

"Yes," she answered, standing strangely motionless, her face turned away from me.

"An American begging, and of all places here in Yokohama!"

"Yes," she agreed again, but in a tone of such unmistakable bitterness and shame as gave me pause. For while passing a down-and-out is not pleasant, and while no one likes to have

"On the streets," she began, "begging! Oh, it 's horrible!"

"But, my dear lady, why so horrible? He's only a—"

"No; he 's more, more!" she cried, rising from her place and almost sobbing the words. Then she turned toward me, with hands pressed against her breast. "You'll have to forgive me," she said, as I waited for enlightenment, "but I can't go to Tokio."

There was stern distress, almost anger in her note, as well as disappointment.

"But tell me I protested.

"It's a shame," she broke out. "It is! it is! But something must be done. I must go back. Or perhaps you would -oh, would you?"

The change in her face was a revelation to me as she again sank to her seat. Her accustomed poise was wholly gone. Her eyes, always a little hard, were haunted; her lips strained and drawn. The black aigret in her crimson hat was trembling. She had, it became manifest to me, known him somewhere, tragically, before. And now he had turned up, like an evil card in the deck of Fortune, and with that suddenness which makes the securest life seem to rest on quicksand.

The compartment-door was still open. Despite distaste for such mixups and of provocation at the prospect

of my lost holiday and opportunity with her, I quietly closed it.

"Surely I'll go," I said through the open window. "An American can't let another stand begging at a Japanese pot-house without doing something."

I had put it objectively to ease the complexity; but she was a woman whose self-control, once shaken, is more easily broken by another's selfpossession than by calamity.

"Go, for God's sake!" she urged, quite undone. "I can't bear to think of him there. His name is Lowry. Go, and tell him-oh, get him away from here, out of Yokohama, anywhere,

or

The rest of her words did not reach me, for the train was drawing slowly out of the station. My last glimpse of her distorted face revealed it with a map of Japan framed, ironically, it seemed to me, above it.

WHEN I got back to the sake-shop the disheveled Lowry still stood there. But now his smile was sharp and mocking, for Charity had evidently passed by on the other side.

As I approached, he recognized me as a recent passer-by who had failed to give, and instinctively lowered his outstretched hand. It was, I could see, one thing to be tossed a casual coin and forgotten, but to be approached and spoken to by a fellow-countryman was quite another matter. Pride is sometimes stronger than honor or decency, or even than the unbearable thirst of dissipation.

"Will you come with me?" I said curtly enough.

"And where, my friend?" he answered, with a polite, disconcerting irony, which seemed to express contempt for any assumption of superiority on my part, as well as for existence in general.

"To get some clothes," I said, "and food; and, if you must, a drink.”

Our eyes met squarely. In the exchange I could feel a vitiated soul trying to meet mine as an equal.

"And why this Christian charity?" he mocked, shrugging his rags, and shivering in the wet air of a somewhat chilly summer day.