A story told of the late Premier Kato that bears repetition at the present time shows the dislike he always entertained towards publicity. When the late Premier Hara, appointed him to head Japan's delegation to the Washington Conference, Admiral Kato was in the south of Japan. He forthwith returned to Tokio, but knew that an ordeal with press representatives and camera men was in store for him if those indefatigable gentlemen found him in the train. So he drew the hood of his cloak over his head in such a manner as completely to cover his face, hid all his marks of rank, got into a third-class carriage and lay at full length on the seat as though asleep. The reporters boarded the train, and made a search for him everywhere, but—as they thought—without success. They declared that he must have missed the train he intended travelling by.
Just: before leaving Japan for Washington, a squad of press photographers managed to hem in the Admiral and one of the latter asked him to smile for a picture. No, I cannot smile," he declared, for there is nothing to smile at." That is charaoteristic of the late Premier Kato. He could not talk when there was nothing to talk about, nor smile unless there was something to smile at. Kato was a very tacit turn man. He was a stranger to the methods of the old diplomacy and had none of the furtive predilection for secrecy which was a marked feature of previous Pre-miners. Even at Cabinet meetings, he preferred to listen rather than talk, and when he talked he never said much, but his words were the result of sound judgment and intelligent study.
The ability of the late Premier to concentrate all his energies on one particular subject when it became necessary for him to do so was surprising. Whatever the subject, whether a matter of statecraft or a knotty point in
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.