his influence is the more to be dreaded because the Japanese
are so impressionable and so prone to accept anything which they are
convinced is superior to their own. They have very little of the Chinese
passion for what has been made sacred by long usage. They have high
regard for their ancestors, but very little reverence for their customs
and opinions. This lack of veneration is shown in striking fashion by
those Japanese students who come to this country to gain an education.
These young men are as eager as the ancient Athenians for any new thing,
and when they return to their old homes each is a center of Occidental
influence. This is frequently not for the best interests of their
countrymen, who have not had their own opportunities of observation and
comparison.

The qualities in which the Japanese excel are the very qualities in
which so many Americans are deficient. Personal courage and loyalty are
the traits which Professor Scherer, a distinguished expert, regards as
the fundamental traits of the Japanese character. That these qualities
have not been weakened materially was shown in the recent war with
Russia. In that tremendous struggle was demonstrated the power of a
small nation, in which everyone--men, women and children--were united
in a passionate devotion to their country. No similar spectacle was
ever shown in modern history. The men who went cheerfully to certain
death before Port Arthur revealed no higher loyalty than the wives at
home who committed suicide that their husbands might not be called upon
to choose between personal devotion to their family and absolute
loyalty to the nation. The foreign correspondents, who were on
two-hundred-and-three-metre hill before Port Arthur, have told of the
Japanese soldiers in the ranks who tied ropes to their feet in order
that their comrades might pull their bodies back into the trenches. All
those who were drafted to make the assaults on the Russian works in
that awful series of encounters (which make the charge of the Light
Brigade at Balaklava seem cheap and theatrical) knew they were going to
certain death. Yet these foreign observers have left on record that the
only sentiment among those who remained in the trenches was envy that
they had not been so fortunate as to be selected to show this supreme
loyalty to their country. General Nogi, who recently committed suicide
with his wife on the day of the funeral of the late Emperor, had two
sons dash to this c