We left the Agricultural College and then proceeded to a High School, which is the name that is given to a first-grade school that precedes the University, and which at present stands in its place. We had in this school much the same experience. A Japanese teacher was teaching biology and was dissecting a river mussel. This was done in such a position that only two men could see what was going on. I wondered at this. Then we found out that he could not speak a word of Chinese. He dissected the {282} mussel and professed to give a lecture on its anatomy to a pupil who understood Japanese, and then the pupil delivered the lecture to the rest of the class. My Chinese interpreters were of opinion that very little could filter through the class in this way, but the Director of Education smiled sweetly. He obviously felt that in some mysterious way Western education was percolating to the pupils under his charge. As we returned along the corridor I glanced in. The biological lecture was over; I expect it was the only one of the session, and the pupils went away with admirable pictures of the river mussel. If the Japanese teachers only set up for teachers of drawing, I am certain they would have no equals in the world. A little further on in the same building there was a professed teacher of drawing. The class was not a selected class, they were drawing from a cast of a well-known Greek statue, and the work was simply admirable. I am confident that, except in an art school, you would not find better work in Europe. In the next room there was a science teacher. To impress the Director of Education, he rashly set a machine for demonstrating the vibration of sound at work. The machine would not demonstrate anything, much to the joy of my Chinese friends, solely for the reason that he had not wound it up. I should tire my readers if I were to go on describing room after room. I cannot of course be certain how far these Japanese teachers had taught science, but at any rate their pupils had not {283} acquired any knowledge, and I think we may easily be too hard on the Japanese. One must remember that they have to supply teachers for all their own schools. Is it likely that they will be either able or willing to send into other countries efficient teachers of Western education? It is not as if Western knowledge had been for long taught in Japan. Their schools are now many and they were few. I suppose no man, no great number of men at any rate, over thirty-five or forty, are equipped with an efficient Western education in Japan. One wonders why they allow their national reputation to be injured by supposing it to be possible for them to supply these teachers of Western knowledge. Political motive suggests itself as a reason why a country so proud and so ambitious as Japan should allow a course that must eventually injure her reputation as an enlightened power.