Well, let me say that no sane, fair-minded man who knows anything whatever of his subject would ever dream of accusing the whole Japanese people of a lack of commercial morality. All this talk about a cordon being drawn round the treaty ports is rubbish. No such barrier exists, save perhaps in the imagination of a few who cannot shake off the prejudices and disabilities of the past. The idea sounds absurd to me, knowing, as I do know, that all the go-ahead firms have been doing their utmost for some time past to open up connections in the principal cities. Mr. Longford seems to think that business is conducted in Japan to-day just as it was twenty years ago. He apparently does not know that some foreign houses have trusted clerks or travellers all over the country; that some foreign business men run up to Osaka and Tokio daily; and that business journeys to Maidzuru--the great, fortified naval base on the Sea of Japan--Nagoya Sasebo, Hiroshima, and other important centres, are matters of everyday experience now. In the same number of the same journal is also published an important article from the pen of Sir Tollemache Sinclair, Bart., concerning Bishop Awdry's letter published in the _Times_. Sir Tollemache strongly repudiates the accuracy of the bishop's charge of dishonesty and immorality against the Japanese, which Sir Tollemache calls the bishop's 'utterly erroneous accusations,' basing his contention upon an elaborate comparison of the statistical facts of Japan and many other nations relating to several important subjects having bearing on the question. Among other things, he writes:-- This clerical censor, who endeavours to find a mote in his Japanese brother's eye, but does not see the beam in his English brother's eye, cut the ground from under his own feet on the subject of the imaginary dishonesty of Japanese traders, for he tells us that a house was built for him by Japanese tradesmen admirably without any contract, and at a moderate expense; and I should like to know, if any Englishman did the same thing in England, whether he would not be unmercifully fleeced. Bishop Awdry says he is a friend of the Japanese, but they will probably say to him, after reading his letter, 'Save us from our friends, as to our enemies we will take care of them ourselves.' And he winds up the article with these words:-- What excuse has he to offer for the gross and discreditable and unfounded insults which he has heaped on the heads of those under whose protection, and in the enjoyment of whose hospitality, he resides.... In short, it may justly be said of the letter written by this superfluous bishop, 'what is true is not new, and what is new is not true.' INDEX