I. G. EDITORIALS

EAST AND WEST1

ONCE again the stimulating contrast of the very new with the very old which the Far East presents, is thrust forcibly upon our minds. On Thursday last week the Dowager Empress of Japan died in the Numadzu Palace. Next day the lifeless body made its State entry into Tokyo with the same pomp and circumstance accorded to living majesty. It is not befitting for a member of the Imperial House to meet death outside the capital; and when death visits one of them beyond the walls, custom immemorial prescribes that the corpse shall be treated as a living person until it has been brought within the precincts where tradition ordains that Royalty may die. There is something magnificent in an etiquette which can ignore death itself something, too, quite inconceivable to our Western modes of thought. The whole Japanese people do homage to the amazing convention. In the Palace where the Empress had died her dead body gave farewell audiences. On its arrival at Tokyo, Princes and nobles, Ministers and officials, attended to receive it as though it lived. It was driven through the streets at a trot in the same carriage and with the same escort. The same troops lined the route and the same masses of people watched the procession on its way. Only their unbroken silence, as the State coach passed in the moonlight with its drawn blinds, showed that they knew the grim burden that it bore. Then came the most dreadful part of the strange ceremonial. At the door of the Imperial Palace the living Empress had to welcome as yet alive the poor remains of her dead relative. The function was not yet done. The corpse must be escorted into its apartments and put into possession of

1 From the London Times (Weekly Edition), April 17, 1914.

them. Then, and not till then, was it permissible to proclaim what the world knew, and to acknowledge that the Dowager Empress was no more. Within the Palace it was etiquette for

her to have died.

Like the messages which the most advanced of Chinese Republicans delivered at the Imperial tombs, like the attribution which Japanese heroes made of their successes in the war to the virtues of the reigning Emperor and of his sacred ancestors, like the declarations of the Emperor himself when the Constitution was established, and like the rites at his burial, this grim yet 'impressive ceremony reveals how immense is the gulf between the thoughts of the East and of the West. The news of the Empress's illness or death was sent by telephone. It was at the railway station that the great officers of State went through the ghastly form of paying to the dead the homage proper to the living. The Ministers who were present belong to one of the most enlightened and progressive Governments in the world. The troops which escorted the corpse are amongst the first and most highly trained of modern soldiers. In every detail of the story, as our Tokyo correspondent tells it, the most modern of the material discoveries of the West come sharply into contact with these customs of a civilization going back six-and-twenty centuries. The convention that members of the Imperial House must not die except within the appointed area is doubtless connected with the cardinal doctrine of Japanese religion and of Japanese patriotism, that the Emperor is the descendant of the gods, who sits upon "the throne of a lineal succession unbroken for ages eternal," and that to his virtues and the virtues of his ancestors the prosperity and the glory of the Empire are due. That is the faith upon which the greatness of Japan and of her people is built. The Emperor rules by divine right in a sense very different, and far more personal, than ever was claimed by the proudest of Christian Kings. The right is still freely and fully acknowledged by the immense majority of his subjects. The unanimity with which all classes have agreed in supporting the strange fiction that the dead yet lived, indicates how general the acknowledgment

still is, and how universal the obedience of Japan to received tradition. But the question inevitably presents itself how long these beliefs and feelings can resist unmodified the impact of Western learning and of Western habits of thought. That they must be affected by the new conception of all things which this learning is daily spreading in Japan amongst thousands of keen intellects seems certain. How they will be affected, what form they may ultimately adopt, what action in their altered form they may exercise on the mind of Asia, and what reaction on the mind of the West, are amongst the greatest problems of the future. We make no attempt to approach them even from afar. We only note the startling ceremonial of last week as a reminder that one of the most civilized and most brilliant nations of the world is passing through a pregnant phase in its development.

NOTHING worse in the form of legislation has been authoritatively proposed for a long while than the amendment to the Army Appropriation Bill which would forbid any army officer to serve as chief of staff unless he shall have served ten years as a commissioned officer of the line with rank below that of brigadier-general. This amendment did not appear, as we understand it, when the Army Appropriation Bill was originally before either house, but was brought forth only after the bill was submitted to the Conference Committee of both houses. There are four reasons why such an amendment should be regarded as pernicious. In the first place, such a piece of legislation ought to be offered on its merits. When a vital matter of this sort is presented as the rider of an appropriation bill, it may be assumed to be of the sort that cannot stand examination or debate. When legislators make it necessary to imperil a great appropriation bill in order to defeat a special proposal of this kind, it means that they are depending for success, not

1 The Outlook, June 8, 1912. (Vol. CI, p. 279.)

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upon the merits of the bill, but upon the necessities of the Government. In the second place, this special amendment bears all the earmarks of "personal legislation." The present Chief of Staff, Major-General Leonard Wood, did not serve ten years as commissioned officer below the rank of brigadier-general. He was made Brigadier-General of the United States Army in February, 1901, by President McKinley. In the course of his duties he has incurred the enmity of men of influence. If this Of course amendment was not devised to legislate him out of office, it has all the signs of having been devised to do so. any measure which is designed to make use of Congress as the means of serving personal grudges should not be tolerated for In the third place, this provision will impair the a moment. efficiency of the army. Not only would it legislate out of office the present Chief of Staff, but it would stand as an obstacle to the appointment of men who might on occasions be the most competent for the position. In a statement which Mr. Stimson, Secretary of War, has made, it is asserted that such a provision "would have rendered ineligible for service as Chief of Staff every one except four of the nineteen generals who have served as Chief of the American army since General Washington. It would have disqualified General Winfield Scott of the old army, and would also have disqualified Generals Sheridan, McClellan, McPherson, Meade, Warren, Halleck, Schofield, O. O. Howard, and Horace Porter, among others in the Union army of the Civil War; Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Beauregard, Forrest, and Joe Wheeler of the Confederacy. General Grant would barely have escaped its restriction by one year's service, and General Sherman by two months. Coming down to modern times, it permanently disqualifies practically the high honor men of West Point. the entire engineer corps It disqualifies, for example, General Goethals and all of his assistants on the Panama Canal; General Crozier, the Chief of Ordnance; General Funston, General Francis V. Greene, and this in some remany other officers." In the fourth place, spects is the most serious of all, the provision is a suggestion that Congress should encroach upon the authority of the Presi