provement, in Northern Japan particularly, not to speak of
Hokkaido.[294] But it is not so much the details of improvement that
seem urgently to need attention. It is the general principles. I have
been assured again and again by prefectural governors and agricultural
experts--and in talking to a foreigner they would hardly be likely to
exaggerate--that considered plans for the prevention of disastrous
floods, for the breaking up of new land, for the provision of loans
and for the development of public intelligence and well-being were
hindered in their areas by lack of money alone. The degree to which
rural improvements, with which the best interests of Japan now and in
the future are bound up, may have been arrested and may still be
arrested by erroneous conceptions of national progress and of the ends
to which public energy and public funds[295] may be wisely devoted is
a matter for patriotic reflection.[296] No impression I have gained
in Japan is sharper than an impression of ardent patriotism. For good
or ill, patriotism is the outstanding Japanese virtue. What some
patriots here and elsewhere do not seem to realise, however, is what a
quiet, homely, everyday thing true patriotism is. The Japanese, with
so many talents, so many natural and fortuitous advantages, and with
opportunities, such as no other nation has enjoyed, of being able to
profit by the social, economic and international experience of States
that have bought their experience dearly and have much to rue, cannot
fairly expect to be lightly judged by contemporaries or by history. If
the course taken by Japan towards national greatness is at times
uncertain, it is due no doubt to the fascinations of many
will-o'-the-wisps. There can be one basis only for the enlightened
judgment of the world on the Japanese people: the degree to which they
are able to distinguish the true from the mediocre and the resolution
and common-sense with which they take their own way."

"Our rural problems," a sober-minded young professor added, after one
of those pauses which are usual in conversations in Japan, "is not a
technical problem, not even an economic problem. It is, as you have
realised, a sociological problem. It is bound up with the mental
attitude of our people--and with the mental attitude of the whole
world."

FOOTNOTES:

[273] A high authority assured me that 100 million yen (pre-War
figures) could be laid out to advantage. A Japanese economist's
comment w