--'I, for one, agree with you that the charge is certainly unfair,' said the duchess, 'and besides, I repeat I do not agree with those who say that the Japanese have no religion. The very ideals which they hold up as models for their soldiers cannot but be a religion, as I said the other day. What does a "religion" mean? It means a conscientious preparedness and practice for the suppression of one's lower nature. Man has all sorts of wishes and desires, temptations and tendencies, which the experience of generations knows must be restrained. Wisdom comes in and teaches him to control such weakness, and the teaching, if systematised at all, becomes a "religion," a cult, if one prefers to call it by that appellation. For instance, man likes to live (what creature likes to die if left to his natural desire), and if he prefers to give up his life for some ideal, is it not an act of self-repression, or indeed of self-sacrifice, and if it forms a characteristic of a nation, does it not become the "religion" of that nation? Some say the Japanese despise life, because they like death for its own sake: I call that a nonsensical observation. On the contrary, I see a religion in the very fact of the Japanese being so patriotic as to so cheerfully sacrifice their lives for their country and for their emperor. A remark which I have read in a paper as having been uttered by General Nogi certainly contains, to my idea, a strong religious strain. It was: '"Now that my two sons have sacrificed their lives and I am a childless man, I may with an easier conscience face the parents of those thousands of young men who have likewise offered up their lives under my command."