I find it difficult to believe that the Bishop of South Tokio is right when he says that the Japanese do not trust one another; and I know that he is wrong if he in himself believes, as he implies, that the Japanese are not 'honest in trade.' But I quite admit that Englishmen who have long resided in Japan did not believe that it would be prudent for the _Times_ to adopt in Japan the instalment system of selling books, previously unknown there. When the representative of the _Times_ arrived in Japan to sell the _Encyclopædia_, he naturally asked English residents there what they thought of the project. With one exception the answer was: 'You cannot sell the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ here because almost every English and American resident has already obtained a copy from England, and, of course, the Japanese will not buy--fortunately for you, because if they did they would not pay.' The only English resident who did not say this said: 'Of course you can sell any number of _Encyclopædias_ to the Japanese, but you will never be able to collect the payments when they have once got the books. No Japanese will pay for the _Encyclopædia_ when he finds he can get it without payment.' In the face of this advice, the instalment plan of sale was adopted, with the results above described. I many add that the Japanese bought five times as many _Encyclopædias_ as were sold in France and Germany combined, fifty times as many as in Russia, more than in any other country except India, Australia, and the United States. When I see a bishop of the Church of England, who has lived in Japan since 1898, write with so little appreciation of the Japanese, I wonder whether some of our countrymen are not as blind as the Russian statesmen who, in the early days of the war, described the Japanese as 'yellow monkeys,' and as blind as the Ambassador of the Tsar who made the statement in Tokio, before the war, that the mobilisation of one army corps in Russia would frighten the Japanese into immediate submission. No one in the _Times_ office, at any rate, can doubt that the standard of integrity among the Japanese is so high that when young men, who have bought the Encyclopædia, abandoned their employment to go to the front, their families promptly paid the instalments due, under circumstances of the utmost difficulty.--I am, sir, your obedient servant, The Manager of Your Publication Department. Printing-house Square, E.C., _October 5_. [1] _The Magazine of Commerce_, August 1905. [2] See the note at the end of the volume. VII JAPAN AND FOREIGN CAPITAL[1] Japan, far from becoming antagonistic to the occidental nations, as it was prognosticated by some of the Continental journalists, has given another proof of her readiness for the identification of her economic interests with those of the occidental people.