As different are the Japanese and Ainu in language. Years ago, Basil Hall Chamberlain drew up a detailed comparison between the two, pointing out fifteen points of difference, and he might have extended the list indefinitely. Nor are the differences he indicates of trifling significance. On the contrary they are vital and concern the most important constructional matters. Thus, in the Ainu, verbs have true passive forms like those of European languages, the Japanese in its most earnest effort to express a passive cannot get rid of an active viewpoint; the Ainu has many reflective verbs, the Japanese has none; “Ainu pronouns are used at every turn like the pronouns of modern European languages,” Japanese has no real and simple pronouns; in Ainu “honorifics” are lacking, in Japanese they abound. Mr. Batchelor’s little _Grammar of the Ainu Language_ is interesting reading, even if it does not convince the reader that Ainu is an “Aryan language.” Years ago the Japanese government of the Hokkaido published Mr. Batchelor’s _A Dictionary of the Ainu_, now long out of print. During the time that has since elapsed he had added enormously to the work and his present manuscript represents the labor of a quarter of a century. It is now complete and ought to be printed without delay. As long as it remains in manuscript it is in danger; once lost, it could never be replaced, even by the author, for the use of Ainu as a speech is passing. Who are the Ainu? Where did they come from? What is their past? They are surely a white people, not a yellow. They are more our brothers, though they live so far away, than brothers of the Japanese, to whom, in place, they are so near. That is not to say that all men are not brothers; our meaning we think clear. We, white men, are fond of assuming an air of great superiority, when we speak of other peoples. We take it for granted that all white men are better than any red ones, or black ones, or yellow ones. Yet here we find a _white race that has struggled and lost_! It has proved inferior in life’s battle to the more active, energetic, progressive, yellow people, with which it has come in contact. It may be that the Ainu are but a little fragment of a once widespread Asiatic white race. The Ghiliaks, the Mao-tse (“hairy”) of China, some small populations of southeastern Asia and the curious non-aggressive Todas of India with their great beards and strange customs, may be other fragments of that same old population. We cannot assert it; study and comparison will be necessary before the assertion would be warranted; but we believe such comparison may prove what we suggest. Should it do so, that old white race was broken and submerged by a great flood of active yellow Asiatics, who pressed eastward from their old home, perhaps in Mesopotamia. [Illustration: HOUSE IN DEMOLITION: SHIRAOI.]