THE SPIRIT OF THE PEOPLE

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LIII, Issue 13, 16 February 1932, Page 4

THE SPIRIT OF THE PEOPLE

"There never has existed a country where education is so appreciated as in -Japan, and a multitude of students and children are struggling and striving to surpass the rest of the world for the renown of their country and the honour of their Emperor," the Times correspondent adds. "It is the spirit of the Old Japan—the original root of the grafted tree —that supplies this vast vital force. The difficulties would be insuperable were it not for the unquenchable flame of patriotism, the devotion to duty, the personal sacrifice. When a national crisis arises the Japanese people, while neglecting no useful material measure that they have learned from the West, reverts in spirit to its Eastern origin. There is no sacrifice that the people are not prepared to make. It is an attitude that is in many respects admirable. In still more ways it is disconcerting, for the responsibilities that in their Western attitude they accepted they appear at times in their Eastern spirit to be prepared to discard, even to the point of sacrificing what they have acquired for what they have inherited—to gamble the reputation of the New Japan rather than imperil the honour of the Old. Their attitude resembles that of" the English duellist of the past, who was prepared to risk the legal consequences of his act when he considered that his honour was at stake. To live up to two ideals is not impossible, but it is at times inconvenient much, but on earlier models so mucn, and liable to misinterpretation."