JAPANESE IDEALS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Will you kindly allow me space to assure Mr. Norman (Spectator, January 9th) that a willingness to abandon British supremacy in India is no sequel to a disagreement with his views about Japan, and that he is altogether mistaken if he imagines he has detected such a consequence ? And as regards Indian students in Japan who are plotting, or would like to be plotting, sedition, why should the Japanese be accountable for their presence ? Sneakingly disloyal Indian students I have myself met both in Japan and elsewhere. It is well that somebody who is competent, as Mr. Norman is, should look into and inform us what they are really doing, silly though their scheming may be, as he assures us. But any sympathy they may meet with in Japan will be greatly and justly increased if the Japanese find that their own country is harshly judged by the English, if they have occasion to com- plain that " all their faults are observed, set in a notebook, learned and conned by rote." Finally, as regards Mr. Darmapala's disloyal utterances, what did the Japanese do more than give them a patient bearing, and were they not of only incidental occurrence ? Between a patient hearing and a practical acquiescence there is a wide difference. Other- wise, how could both sides of a question be fairly heard ? It is to Mr. Darmapala, and not to his Japanese audience, that the strictures in the Japan Mail refer.—I am, Sir, &c., J. N. SEYMOUR.
Previous page
