Sea and Sailors; Malaya, Singapore WHEN ONE turns his back on the effete and moldy East W and embarks upon the sea, he emerges as it were from the stifling past and finds freedom and grateful refreshment. From the interior of China, where men still wring beggarly support from a reluctant soil, and where superstition has condemned so much of the earth's surface for burial purposes, the ocean, ever youthful, opens its welcoming arms: "Time writes no wrinkles on thine azure brow!" As the train haltingly moved through the province of Shantung, it seemed that half the ground consisted of mouldering mounds sacred against the plow, where the rude forefathers sleep and where the cult of ancestorworship holds the slavish mind to strange beliefs respecting the dead. The poet says that all who tread the earth are but a handful to those who sleep within its bosom, and, indeed, if every man had had a raised mound, enshrined by a pious purpose, agriculture would become an obsolete art, and we would all have to take our nourishment from the air. Herbert Spencer asserts that all primitive religions have their origin in dreams; men “see things." In dreams, the living, for instance, fancy that they communicate with their dead. It is as natural, certainly, as sun-worship, and in all creeds more fantastic things are constantly accepted. So it would be just as well to indulge the heathen if it did not interfere with the food supply and lead the maudlin Congress of the United States to vote the money of the sane and sanitary American to relieve the pangs of selfinflicted hunger. Famine, perhaps, should be the penalty for superstition. The fascination of the sea arises from its eternal freshness. It typifies as well the spirit of freedom and adventure. Borne upon its broad expanse, the hampering hindrances of man-made "laws and regulations" are dissipated like foam and spray. Three miles from shore the Captain is King, and he, bred to the sea, is always a personality cheerful and liberal, who believes in the good old maxim, “Who governs least, governs best," or the lawless rhyme: "Ship me somewhere east of Suez, where the best is like the worst, Where there ain't no ten commandments, an' a man can And yet it would be an injustice to leave such an impression wholly unqualified. For fifty days I have been sailing the sea. As a matter of fact in all important respects there is no better, good-natured discipline than on board a ship. No place is cleaner or more orderly; no work better nor more systematically done. Every man is at his post, and performs his task. It must, indeed, be a fine training for a city boy. Why should not our boys, when they will not take to the soil, take to the sea? The peoples of all lands bordering the water, except native Americans, look to the sea and go out upon it. Perhaps it is because we have been too busy subduing the virgin country where only one hundred and ten millions are thinly spread over a vast area, calling for development. In China there are four hundred million and in India three hundred and fifty million. They overflow. But commerce is the handmaiden of material growth. We had attained a certain evolutionary position at the time of the Spanish war, when our destiny apparently required us to look across the Pacific for new markets; and that is perhpas the secret of our country's desire to hold the Philippines. It gives us an interest and a voice in Far Eastern affairs, and helps to justify the existence of a merchant marine. When, during the World War, the United States determined on a policy of building and operating ships for the transportation of troops and supplies, and, ultimately, for commerce, it entered the lists of world competition. It cannot turn back. When Commodore Perry, doubtless following the instructions of President Millard Fillmore, coerced Japan in 1854 to open her doors to trade, the spirit of commerce, and, perhaps, good will and humanity, inspired the youthful Republic. But it was a bold step, and, notwithstanding the frequent platitudes, where oratorical unction smears the in cident with "ancient friendship," the Japanese hate us for it. They say smilingly that "we introduced them to the Western World," but it was very much the same way that a policeman might introduce a malefactor to the "third degree." A Japanese authority says: "The total intention of Perry's fleet was to threaten us and to take the Okinawa Islands by force in order to coerce this country if we did not obey his orders." This unfortunate move was the mother of the Japanese Navy and the cause of the ferment in the Pacific! Japan should have been opened by a diplomatic key, or not at all. In "Mississippi" Bay, near Uraga, Japan, I saw a monument commemorating the happy occasion! (The "Mississippi" was one of Perry's ships.) But the wound still rankles. The Japanese governmental railway administration has issued an official book (1914), which tells the story with a neatly turned "flail to its tail," rounded into caustic verse. It reads as follows: "Uraga is of special importance in modern history, for here arrived the American missions sent to Japan to demand the opening of the country to foreign commerce and intercourse, and here appeared the "black ships" of the United States, rudely awaking the inhabitants of these islands from the slumber of self-contented seclusion in which they had been indulging for centuries. A storm on Nippon one wet night Drove black ships by eight hundred manned; Were clad this bold barbarian band. The niggers toil down in the hold, The shaggy-bearded strangers bold, Shout "Hip, hurrah!" across the wave. Then to America they sped, With daikon (radishes) large as souvenirs, "The 'black ships' mentioned in the song were not Refused consideration, Perry departed to return the following year, when he brushed aside the protestations of the Shogunites, who, like the American Indians, as confided to Columbus, did not want to be discovered. The ostensible purpose of the Perry expedition was principally to protect the lives of shipwrecked sailors who had been maltreated in Japan. In 1849 the shipwrecked crew of an American vessel had been imprisoned for seventeen months, until released by an American sloop of war. Their offense was landing on the sacred shores of Nippon, although washed up by the sea, without a passport! They |