tensive charter announced by the new Company will be permitted to operate and develop. It would be pleasant to believe and share in Mr. Kodama's optimism of an international market but a careful scrutiny of the economic and political portents fails to reveal anything beyond what everybody knows—that such is not Japan's present intention.
Japanese Ban Hamlet The English literary world continues t6 be occupied trying to solve the mystery of Shakespeare but a more fruitful field of enquiry might be trying to fathom the stale of mind which prompted the Japanese authorities to ban "Hamlet." It is reported that the Osaka police have forbidden the production of the play, which was the first of the poet's works to be translated into Japanese. No reason has been given but the suggestion Is made that the ban may have been inspired by the twofold beliefs that royalty is portrayed in an unfavourable manner and Hamlet enunciated "dangerous thoughts." Whatever political motives the melancholy Dane may have conceived, like many other of Shakespeare's plays, they were highly moralistic from a national point of view and were directed at repairing a grievous. wrong although by violent means in accordance with the standards of the time, Any restrictive action by the Japanese authorities, therefore, becomes even more strange because nobody could accuse Shakespeare of disrespect for royalty for he was a monarchist Jat heart and received ample favours from this bountiful fountain of patronage sp the Elizabethan age. Shakespeare's monarchical views were the subject of reference by a critic on the recent production of a modernized version of Hamlet at the Old Vie. He wrote:
'The dynastic struggle is the very founda-ton' of the tragedy. A. believer, It seems, in absolute monarchy and the divine right of kings, 'Shakespeare felt' deeply about usurpation and regicide: os deeply perhaps as the modern Englishman feels about freedom and democracy. Usurpation is the theme of a disproportionate number of his play—Macbeth, King John, Richard If, Richard TH, Julius Caesar, King Lear, As You Like 'It and 'The Tempest' being among that number. It ts impossible to believe that the Danished Duke—always, be it noted, a good man "and the regicide were simply dramatic Yenlences. To Shakespeare, clearly, usurpation was sacrilege:
Regarded in this manner from which there will be little dissent, what greater form of dramatic appeal could be made to a people whose own code of moral behaviour and reference for the throne is so high that there Great Man Dies Kemal the First Turk, Kemal the Conqueror, were the titles which the great man who now awaits burial in Turkey claimed for himeelf and locke Ing back over his history for the past. nineteen years mo one will aay" that his clalma were unfounded. in 1919 Turkey was helpless Before "the victorious Powers who were planning to dismember her and bring her Under western control, Ter Arab territories twere to be divided into mandated areas, while Jot Turkey proper Greece was to have "had Thrace and? Smyrna, aly Adalla, the. United States were to be asked to accept mandates for Constantinople and" Armenia, while lite but the Black Sea coast and the inner highlands lor Anatolia would have been Weft tothe defeated nation. But they had not thought of JGeneral Mustapha 'Kemal, known asia capable leommander but. otherwise thought to be. Tite recount. He, in July 1919, summoned National Assembly. to prepare for resistance fo' the. plans of the Powers. 'Constantinople ordered "his" arrest, and" corthinly noone realized at the Ume that what this man had done. was the beginning of a new Turkey. With is" indomitable will and. ruthless energy, he succeeded in establishing his own power' and Dutting through a remarkable programme of Feform, abolishing "the weak Sultanate est: abliching. the Republic of Turkey and. becoming its President. The world. wa apt to smile When he abolished the fes, was more. than a Tile surprised when he tore the vell from the women's faces, "uprooted "Arabic culture, als Phabet and names. He ordered his people to fake Turkish names, to become 'Turks frst and last' and all the: time, while with all this he worked unrelentingly' to modernize industry, agriculture, law, finance, "the army, indeed everything' to make the whole motion anew.
"in all that he wan a type not unfamiliar in these ays" writes W. N. Bwer. in the. "Dally Herate."" "put whereas most dictators have been was man of eppiten well nigh an Sovage" moar Poetiten well nigh a savage" an 'Asa young man he had been notorious even tu' Constantinople. He never changed hiy habits, "Ho would alternate between periods of furious work snd almost os furious gaiety Hie would work at his desk all eay, then dance and' play poker and drink alt night unt all his ferpanio were ses and the "Grey Wot dawn. "And then to work again, erect, could sino grimly a
Foreigners who saw marvelled thst any man could stand the double strain. ils own folfowore marvelled, too, fearing' that the. end. must be oon. But one. dared protest, or warn him Now the. inevitable her come: The" man Was Made of toughened ses, but li hav "mapped What now? For fifteen years this titanic man hag forced nation Into Rew wave of devising, has remoutded it according to his own frmperious wit. Have ftcen years sufficed? Wil the work endure? Cen hin sucoemors, bend [That question can only be answered by time, out itis quite certain that Kemal Ataturk. will bean outstanding Agure in the history of his country, which was rescued from sub-division, kept whole and scurried on to heights which ik wae never thought possible for the Turkey of ithe wor ever to attain.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.