June To dub the Westerner a sordid materialist, lacking the deeper insight into Life and its meaning, has long been a popular pastime with Oriental _poets and philosophers. Rabindrinath, Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi, dwell on our failings in this] respect more in sorrow than, anger. Other Orient: Japanese among them, harsher and more contemptuous, in their condemnation, Yet, there are times when one is inclined to wonder whether the: peoples of the West have not a truer and more real idealism, than the peoples of the Ea:
The thought is inspired by the most interesting article from 0 correspondent, which ted on Saturday, on the Yasukuni Jinja festival, dedicated to the spirits of those who fell in battle, which concluded in Tokyo recently. Shintoism holds that those who} fall in the battlefield are] reincarnated ay gods. Moslems die happy in war in the belief, that a paradise of houris is} assured them by the manner of, their death.
General Horiuchi, a Japanese! soldier of considerable standing, is an avowed adherent of the Shinto doctrine, and argues from: it that Japan can never be whipped by a Christian nation. However more powerful the Christian nation may be than Japan, the fervour and fearless ness with which the Japanese soldier will fight, thanks to) Shintoism, will ensure the; victor}
How little the General can have assimilated of the history of European nations throughout} the ages. Mow little, indeed, can he have leal late world war, ai with which the Allie at least, entered into it.
If we take the General's argument at its face value, we may be excused for presuming] that the Japanese soldier lays down his life in battle in the hope and expectation of becoming a god. By the same, token, the Christian soldi dies for no such reason. Wh: then, does the Christian soldier go fo war at all? There can only be one answer to this question: first and foremost, love of country, and in the Great War, love of justice and: fairplay. Where in the East can one find truce idealism than this? Indeed, where in the East can one find idealism, of any sort carried to. a Jogieal conclusion? One has! Dut to take as an example the country in which we live. China possesses ide: thousand, but how many are to be found capable of carrying their ideals' through to the bitter end? All, or; nearly all, after going a certain distance," succumb to the: temptations of power and. wealth. We would not appear! to judge harshly. Innumerabte cases of humble silent heroism! might be quoted... No doubt Full many a flower is born to Blush unseen And waste it sweetness on the desert air fin public life, there seems|restrained, too incapable of charact madness of an age ancient and well established proa strange deficiency. individual' expression.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.