Militarism's Wane:, Flouted by Students: Elephant's Terrible Life: Raid on Communists: Suicide by Example From Our Own Correspondent, "Tokio, July 25.
A group of students of the Waseda University, an educational institution in Tokio with over 10,000 students, is to-day in regulation military barracks, learning the art of fighting. Last week-end, the youngsters, decked in ill-fitting, baggy, khaki uniforms, were given lessons in the use of field gums and several hundreds turned out to see them.
The group numbers about 30 only and nearly all the other 9,000 students of the University are unwaveringly opposed to any attempt that seeks to use their schoo].hours or their leisure for purposes of. military training. When the scheme to train schoolboys in military matters was first propounded, there was a memorable scene enacted in the campus of the university, hundreds of the. boys openly ridiculing the military men and jeering at those of the faculty who backed the proposal. Military men were never so shocked as they were at the hostile reception they received when they goose-stepped into the grounds of Waseda University, resplendent in gold braid and shining buttons, to instil martial ardour into the hearts of the students, Groans, coat-calls, hisses and at regular intervals epithets like "Look at the Murderers"; "Evem now their swords are dripping Blood"; "Down with the Militarists," and similar phrases were hurled at the visiting military men.
The matter has more than a local significance. Militarism is on the wane in Japan and- the open flouting by school-boys of a scheme carefully laid by the Army General Staff, im collusion with the faculty. showed clearly that anti-militarism, although recent growth. was none the less in a flourishing condition. There ig a very real, though not as yet powerful, body of Liberal thought in Japan. The guns of the Allies that blew the auto-erades of the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs sky-high ushered it' in, and it has now reached a point at which even military officers are ashamed to travel in uniform, and seek every possible opportunity to doff the trappings of the professional fighter and wear the more dignified mufti of the civilian instead. The attempt to introduce militarism into Waseda University and its sorry results—only 30 out of 10.000 students paying any heed to the admonitions and entreaties of the faculty and of: representatives of the War Department—ig really a desperate plunge that the losing cause of militarism in Japan has taken. Militarism is not dead yet, but there are not wanting signs that the militarists may be unhorsed soon and the Waseda University incident is one of the most encouraging of these indications
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.