Слике страница
PDF
ePub

interests in China's franchises. I believe Baron Goto's party entertains this sense of financial compromise.

It is true that Nippon under Baron Hayashi's advice, once refused Secretary of State Knox's and E. H. Harriman's request for American participation in Manchurian railways, but Nippon explains that intriguing Germany had put China "up to" forcing on America a franchise from Kinchou on the Liao-tung Gulf, up through Mongolia and Siberia to Tsitsikar and Aigun, in competition with Nippon's Manchurian Railways, that were not paying overwell.

"What's the use of having cut-throat competition," said Nippon. This seems a reasonable explanation.

It is true that Professor Tsurutaro at one time was proTeuton academically, but almost everybody except the German is open to conversion and conviction! Editor Tokutomi has at times been anti-American in his journal the Kokumin, but doubtless Germany was lying to him about us!

M. Wakamiya has at times been anti-Caucasian, but so have some of us in our haste been anti-Nipponite! I possess my own share of vituperative vocabulary and sins of generalization! Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in

illis!

The Bourbon wing of the Terauchi party once demanded twenty-one monopolies from China, but if they thus outplayed German intrigue and meant to share with the Allies, it is all right; also providing that China received her due royalties, and would not waste the said receipts on purchases in Germany! Since the Chinese masses cannot read, China needs the supporting hand of both America and Nippon, America supplying the sentiment and Nippon supplying the police arm when necessary.

I. Nobutaro and the Taivo magazine at times were obstinate in objecting to Nippon giving maritime help to the Allies in the submarined zone, but deeds speak louder than words, and Nippon has sent many ships to help us, partially through a little economic pressure that America put upon the Obstructionists by delaying shipments of steel plates to

This

Nippon, till the ships were sent to do Nippon's share! is what is known as "American shirt-sleeve diplomacy," and it has its uses with Obstructionists! I can recite three instances where ex-President Roosevelt, my esteemed friend, has used the same kind of diplomacy with Obstructionists in Germany, Nippon and even in Britain! Sometimes a son must speak "up and out," even to his father!

Baron Megata once objected to sending a Nipponese army to Europe, but other Nipponese more powerful have taken the other side, for instance Baron Okuma! Kotaro Monchizuki once said in the Diet that "America should clear out of the Philippines," but responsible members of the Diet have told me that he is a humorist, and was only trying to force us to offer an alliance, which we now cordially do offer!

Katayama's, Nishakawa's, Kinoshita's, and Abé's Socialist party in Nippon is disorganized in war time and therefore does not come into this discussion.

Dr. Iyenaga, official spokesman in America for Nippon (East and West Advertising Bureau), at one time offered psychologic reasons why Nippon's armies should not be sent to Europe, and General Oshima, minister of war, at one time also opposed. Dr. Terao said: "Send no army.' Dr. Senaga said: "Nippon's first aim should be commercial gain out of the war." Kinnosuke said practically the same thing, but then he is often facetious! Viscount Uchida thinks the Bolsheviki may infect Germany, and he waits and watches. But "watchful waiting" has been a success no where in this war; it lost Serbia and Rumania; it lost Bulgaria; it sacrificed Russia; it did all it could to lose Nippon.

But so have we all varied and fluttered in opinion, before we settled down to courageous and statesmanlike policies. Professor Ninagawa-Shin of Doshisha University, Kyoto, says in the Nichon Nihonjin magazine: "Nippon and the Allies should attack on the eastern front, even if Russia becomes a permanent foe, so as to prevent the Teutons withdrawing men for the western front." There speaks a real statesman of strategy and psychology, and with him I

dream a dream as follows, a dream which could have been effected in 1914-1915, if the Fiasco Cliques had acted courageously on the first diagnosis of the world war.

The final break must be made by a Nipponese army before Moscow, joining an Allied army finally at Vienna, and forcing and inducing and encouraging Bohemia, Turkey, Bulgaria, variable Ukraine, Hungary, Saxony whom Bismarck ravaged, Poland, Greece, Serbia, Rumania and Central Russia, to all work with us and choke off and ring round the mad north-German, Wodan-worshipping barbarian, thus ushering in a new type of civilization, based on the freedom and the league of race units, which (in a worldconfederation) observe and fight for international law.

Like two samurai, Nippon and America face each other across the Pacific and on the other side of the Pacific (we are in the Philippines). May the crowd who look on, never shout out: "Abunaizo! Batto Shita" (look out! they are unsheathing their swords), unless those swords are unsheathed as partners against the common enemy.

THE INFLUENCE OF INDIA ON WESTERN

CIVILIZATION IN MODERN TIMES1

By Benoy Kumar Sarkar, Professor, National Council of Education, Bengal

Modern civilization begins in 1776 with the publication of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Its formative period may be taken to have closed with 1815, when the fall of the Napoleonic empire, on the one hand, and the almost assured success of the "industrial revolution" on the other were laying the foundations of a new inter-political system and a new socio-economic order throughout the world. Ever since the year 1 of this new culture India has been in intimate touch with the West; for by the Regulating Act of 1772, the year of the partition of Poland, England took charge of the administration of the eastern provinces of the present British India.

It goes without saying that the achievements of the Occidental world in industry, science, philosophy and the fine arts during the nineteenth century have profoundly influenced the thoughts and activities of the people of India, as of other regions in Asia. But what is most likely to be missed by the student of culture-history is the fact that even the ancient and medieval civilization of the Hindus has been one of the feeders of this modern civilization itself; i.e., that the cultural movements in Europe and America since 1776 have been affected to an appreciable extent by the achievements of free India down to that period.

1. NAVAL ARCHITECTURE

In the days of the sailing ships and oaken vessels the naval engineering of the Hindus was efficient and advanced enough to be drawn upon with confidence for European 1 Lecture delivered at Columbia University, New York, April, 1918.

shipping. At Madapollum, for example, on the Madras Coast, many English merchants used to have their vessels yearly built. The Hindu ship-architects could ingeniously perform all sorts of iron work, e.g., spikes, bolts, anchors, etc. "Very expert master-builders there are several here," says the English traveler, Thomas Bowrey in his Geographical Account of Countries Round the Bay of Bengal (1669–1675); "they build very well, and launch with as much discretion as I have seen in any part of the world. They have an excellent way of making shrouds, stays, or any other riggings for ships" (p. 72, etc.).

Writing even so late as 1789, on the eve of the industrial revolution in Europe, Solvyns, the French traveler, could still recommend, in his Les Hindous, the Hindu method of uniting the planks as "not unworthy of the imitation of Europeans" (Vol. III, sixth number, ed. 1811). He says: "In ancient times the Hindus excelled in the art of constructing vessels, and the present Hindus can in this respect still offer models to Europe." (Ed. 1789, cited by Mookerji in his History of Indian Shipping, p. 250.)

In the building of a boat the Hindus began by choosing a large piece of timber which they bent as they pleased. To the two ends of this they attached another piece thicker than it, and covered this simple frame with planks; "but they have a particular manner of joining these planks to each other, by flat cramps with two points which enter the boards to be joined, and use common nails only to join the planks to the knee. For the sides of the boat they have pieces of wood which outpass the planks. This method is as solid as it is simple." (Solvyns, Vol. III, sixth number, ed. 1811.)

Some of the Hindu methods were actually assimilated by the Europeans. Thus, as the French writer observes: "The English, attentive to everything which relates to naval architecture, have borrowed from the Hindus many improvements which they have adopted with success to their own shipping." ((Mookerji, p. 251.) Further, the Portuguese "imitated" the pointed prow in their India-ships. This was a characteristic feature of the grab, a Hindu ship

« ПретходнаНастави »