Mr. A. A. Joffe still continues to be the target of anti-Bolshevists in the country and, of course, Viscount Goto, Mayor of Tokio, at whose invitation Mr. Joffe arrived in Japan, is receiving more attention from the anti-Reds here than the head of the metropolitan municipality cares to court. After a few days in Tokio, Mr. Joffe left for Atami, a hot-spring resort some five hours' journey from the capital. The morning following his arrival, the little town of Atami woke up to find its Main Street and every available billboard, stone wall and tree placarded with diatribes against the "Soviet devil who is here to organize a communistic movement and ruin Japan and the bonehead Mayor that Fate has inflicted on us." To Mr. Joffe, perhaps, these manifestations of ill-will are nothing new and he does not seem to worry much, but the Mayor of Tokio has launched into vigorous press campaigns defending his action.
One of the latest persons to add to the woes of Tokio's Mayor is Mr. S. Merkulov, till recently head of the puppet government that was functioning in Vladivostok. In a long interview with Japanese pressmen, he expressed considerable anxiety for Japan's future, hinting that the presence here of Mr. Joffe, '"'a member of a plotting gang," is not conducive wards the welfare of this nation.
BUDDHISM ¥, ROMP, Catholic students in Japanese universities are beginning to hit back at the Buddhisis who were instrumental in the recent agitation whereby the proposal of the Government to station a diplomatic envoy from these islands at the Holy See came to naught, when the appropriation for the additional expense was overwhelmingly defeated in the Lower House of the Diet. From the moment the agitation started, it was a foregone conclusion that the enormous influence and power wielded by the Buddhist hierarchy would win and that a representative from Japan would not—at least this year—proceed to the Vatican. Although the Foreign Office insisted that the matter was not a religious affair, but purely a wise diplomatic move, the Buddhist priests refused to view the question thus and from the outset ex-plaited the matter as an issue of Catholicism versus Buddhism. It must be said, though, that the press generally and the majority of the nation who were willing to see through the mists of religious prejudice strongly condemned the action of the Buddhists.
The Catholic students of several of Tokio's largest universities now propose enlightening the public as to the position of Roman Catholicism, particularly seeking to rebut the' assertion made by the Buddhists that Roman Catholicism is incompatible with the fabric on which Japanese society has been based. Pamphlets have been distributed widely to members of the Diet-Government offices, schools throughout the city and the general public, refuting the arguments of the Buddhists and declaring that Japan stands to gain considerably through the stationing of a representative at the Papal Court.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.