tion of any new kind of government the government will either fall or rise. For instance, in the first Shogunate Government at the end of the third Shogunate, that Government practically came to an end. In the third generation of the second Shogunate the prospects became very bright, though Japan entered into her darkest period shortly afterward. Still this same Shogunate remained in power over two hundred and fifty years. In the third generation of the third Shogunate, which Shogunate began in 1603, the Government was strongly founded and ruled Japan nearly three hundred years. The real foundation of Japan was laid during the rule of the third Shogunate. This tradition seems to be not without foundation in Europe also. For instance, the Empire of Charlemagne was disintegrated under the rule of the third generation. In France Napoleon III witnessed the fall of the Empire. Kaiser Wilhelm is but another example.

Now Japan is about to enter upon a period of the rule of the third generation since the founding of modern Japan by the Emperor Mutsuhito. The present Emperor, being ill, is incapable of continuing administrative work, and may soon be succeeded by his son. The Crown Prince, who will therefore be the ruler of the third generation, has had democratic principles from boyhood. He has now grown to manhood, and after a sojourn of several months in Europe his boyhood ideas regarding the benefits of democracy have been strengthened.

Therefore the outlook in Japan is bright. Mr. Abbott overlooked this aspect. Now as to the Genro, at present there are but four: viz., Yamagata, Matsugata, Saionji, and Okuma. No one can deny that Yamagata is the moving spirit among the Genro. He is a gilt-edge militarist. However, he is aged and his days of influence are numbered. Matsugata is a financier who laid the foundation of the present system of currency in Japan. Therefore he is concerned not with militarism but with material improvement. Both he and his sons are interested in shipping and manufacturing. Saionji is a man who in early boyhood was educated in France. He is retiring in nature and devotes himself more to literary work than to politics. Marquis Okuma, formerly Count Okuma, is the greatest bluffer that Japan ever produced. The Japanese call him Taigen Haku, which means "the Bluffer Count." This is in strong contrast to the appe!lation applied to Prince Ito, who was known as Kempo Haku, "Count Constitution." Although the power of the Genro is steadily declining, still they even yet constitute the power behind the throne. The characteristics of these four Genro enable one to predict in a measure the future tendencies of Japan. Only one is strongly militaristic.

The present Premier, Hara, is the first Premier ever appointed by an Emperor of Japan from among the leaders of the political party controlling the House of Representatives in Japan. Although a comparison with Lloyd George would be

both audacious and far-fetched, still Hara is one of the strongest and most capable Premiers Japan has had since the adoption of the Constitution. He is thoroughly democratic in principle.

He

In conclusion, I should like to say a few words about the Japanese delegates to the Disarmament Conference. Prince Tokugawa, who heads the delegation, is the adopted son of the last Shogun of the third Shogunate Government, which fell in 1867. Soon after the change of government he went to England, where he received a university education. also visited America several times. He is a man of great common sense, and at present he is President of the House of Peers. The person next in prominence among the delegates is Admiral Kato. Although he is a military man, he is broad-minded and capable. Even before President Harding sent invitations to the Disarmament Conference, he advocated disarmament in Japan provided the United States would also take some step in that direction. Such being the case, the success of the Disarmament Conference in so far as Japan is concerned will, in my opinion, largely depend upon how much interest the United States manifests in affairs in China. I strongly desire that America bear in mind in all negotiations that China, as well as Japan, has a dual system of diplomacy.

Both of these systems are fully discussed in Chapter VII of "What Japan Wants." Yours very truly, YOSHI S. KUNO.

I have read Ernest Abbott's article on Japan and think well of it in almost all particulars. There are two points, however, upon which I would like to comment. On page 209 he says:

The United States may be envied and in some quarters disliked, but is not anywhere suspected of aggressive military ambitions.

This I do not think is correct. We are suspected of just such ambitions by many persons in Japan. I have had it out with highly intelligent Japanese who consider us militaristic and imperialistic. They look with alarm upon our large fleet and upon our naval building programme.

Although the Japanese fleet is weaker than hours numerically and in tonnage, it is better balanced, and, if it came to war, the Japanese fleet would be quite capable of taking care of itself. Naval opinion of the strength of the two fleets is to be found in Hector Bywater's "Sea Power in the Pacific," a new book (by an Englishman) which is sound so far as it goes.

Of course to say that the Japanese navy is better balanced than our own is not to cast any aspersions upon the intelligence, ability, and professional skill

of our naval officers. The fault lies with Congress and the American people.

Another thing: I do not think that the possibility of a future alliance between Russia, Japan, and Germany is as improbable as Mr. Abbott's hopeful anticipations would seem to indicate. It is to me a very real possibility. Whether or not such an alliance comes into being depends, I believe, largely on what our attitude toward Japan is to be, and what agreements can be reached.

As far as I can learn, the Japanese people are keen for a limitation of armament because it is hoped this will permit lower taxation. The militarists, of course, are not; and generally, since they control the Japanese press and hence Japanese public opinion, they have their own way. Perhaps they will not this time.

From the point of view of warfare, we are already at a great disadvantage in the Pacific as compared to Japan. In failing to construct naval bases at Guam and Samoa as well as on one of the Aleutian Islands we have been guilty of incredible folly. Under present conditions Japan could easily snatch the Philippines from us, and we should then be in the position of having to fight to get back something which many of us are

not very keen about having, anyhow. It is even doubtful whether, if we once lost them, we could get them back. Japan, with her better balanced navy, has at present large, fast battle-cruisers which can give or refuse battle with any existing American warships. If our ships were damaged in battle on the far side of the Pacific, they would, having no base to escape to, inevitably be lost. It may be observed also that Japan's new German islands cut off our main line to the Philippines. With her Imperial Government, Japan's naval policy, linked with her military policy, has been more intelligent and consistent than our own, and the result has placed us at a strategic disadvantage.

In my judgment, the present Conference will result in no effective limitation of armaments unless such limitation is based upon an organization of nations. It does not matter much whether this organization bear the title of "League" or "Association." Nor will it suffice for the nations, even if organized, to stop building up their armies and navies. The suspecting and quarreling must also be stopped. There must be a substantial understanding and purpose to remove ill Sincerely yours,

will.

T

HE time of the falling of leaves has come again. Once more in our morning walk we tread upon carpets of gold and crimson, of brown and bronze, woven by the winds or the rains out of these delicate textures while we slept.

How beautifully the leaves grow old! How full of light and color are their last days! There are exceptions, of course. The leaves of most of the fruit trees fade and wither and fall ingloriously. They bequeath their heritage of color to their fruit. Upon it they lavish the hues which other trees lavish upon their leaves. The pear tree is often an exception. I have seen pear orchards in October painting a hillside in hues of mingled bronze and gold. And well may the pear tree do this, it is so chary of color upon its fruit.

But in October what a feast to the eye our woods and groves present! The whole body of the air seems enriched by their calm, slow radiance. They are giving back the light they have been absorbing from the sun all summer.

The carpet of the newly fallen leaves looks so clean and delicate when it first covers the paths and the highways that one almost hesitates to walk upon it. Was it the gallant Raleigh who threw down his cloak for Queen Elizabeth to walk upon? See what a robe the maples have thrown down for you and me to walk upon! How one hesitates to soil it! The summer robes of the groves and the forests-more than robes, a vital part of themselves, the myriad living

nets with which they have captured, and through which they have absorbed, the energy of the solar rays. What a change when the leaves are gone, and what a change when they come again! A naked tree may be a dead tree. The dry, inert bark, the rough, wirelike twigs change but little from summer to winter. When the leaves come, what a transformation, what mobility, what sensitiveness, what expression! Ten thousand delicate veinèd hands reaching forth and waving a greeting to the air and light, making a union and compact with them, like a wedding ceremony. How young the old trees suddenly become, what suppleness and grace invest their branches! The leaves are a touch of immortal youth. As the cambium layer beneath the bark is the girdle of perennial youth, so the leaves are the facial expression of the same quality. The leaves have their day and die, but the last leaf that comes to the branch is as young as the first. The leaves and the blossom and the fruit of the tree come and go, yet they age not; under the magic touch of spring the miracle is repeated over and over.

The maples perhaps undergo the most complete transformation of all the forest trees. Their leaves fairly become luminous, as if they glowed with inward light. In October a maple tree before your window lights up your room like a great lamp. Even on cloudy days its presence helps to dispel the gloom. The elm, the oak, the beech, possess in a much less degree that quality of lumi

nosity, though certain species of oak at times are rich in shades of red and bronze. The leaves of the trees just named for the most part turn brown before they fall. The great leaves of the sycamore assume a rich tan color like fine leather.

The spider weaves a net out of her own vitals with which to capture her prey, but the net is not a part of her self as the leaf is a part of the tree. The spider repairs her damaged net, but the tree never repairs its leaves. It may put forth new leaves, but it never essays to patch up the old ones. Every tree has such a superabundance of leaves that a few more or less or a few torn and bruised ones do not seem to matter. When the leaf surface is seri ously curtailed, as it often is by some insect pest, or some form of leaf blight, or by the ravages of a hail-storm, the growth of the tree and the maturing of its fruit are seriously checked. To de nude a tree of its foliage three years in succession usually proves fatal. The vitality of the tree declines year by year till death ensues.

To me nothing else about a tree is so remarkable as the extreme delicacy of the mechanism by which it grows and lives, the fine hairlike rootlets at the bottom and the microscopical cells of the leaves at the top. The rootlets absorb the water charged with mineral salts from the soil, and the leaves absorb the sunbeams from the air. So it looks as if the tree were almost made of matter and spirit, like man; the ether

the

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with its vibrations, on the one hand, and the earth with its inorganic compounds, on the other-earth salts and sunlight. The sturdy oak, the gigantic sequoias, are each equally finely organized in these parts that take hold upon nature. We call certain plants gross feeders, and in a sense they are; but all are delicate feeders in their mechanism of absorption from the earth and air.

The tree touches the inorganic world at the two finest points of its structureat the rootlets and the leaves. These attack the great crude world of inorganic matter with weapons so fine that only the microscope can fully reveal them to us. The animal world seizes its food in masses little and big, and often gorges itself with it, but the vegetable, through the agency of the solvent power of water, absorbs its nourishment molecule by molecule.

A tree does not live by its big rootsthese are mainly for strength and to hold it to the ground. How they grip the rocks, fitting themselves to them, as Lowell says, like molten metal! The tree's life is in the fine hair-like rootlets hat spring from the roots. Darwin says those rootlets behave as if they had ninute brains in their extremities. They feel their way into the soil, they know the elements the plant wants; some select more lime, others more potash, others more magnesia. The wheat rootlets select more silica to make he stalk, the pea rootlets select more ime; the pea does not need the silica. The individuality of plants and trees in his respect is most remarkable. The cells of each seem to know what paricular elements they want from the oil, as of course they do.

The vital activity of the tree goes on at three points-in the leaves, in the rootlets, and in the cambium layer. The activity of leaf and rootlet furnishes he starchy deposit which forms this generative layer-the milky, mucilagious girdle of matter between the outer ark and the wood through which the ree grows and increases in size. Genration and regeneration take place hrough this layer. I have called it the girdle of perpetual youth. It never grows old. It is annually renewed. The heart of the old apple tree may lecay and disappear, indeed the tree nay be reduced to a mere shell and nany of its branches may die and fall, out the few apples which it still bears attest the fact that its cambium layer, at least over a part of its surface, is still youthful and doing its work. It is this layer that the yellow-bellied woodpecker, known as the sap-sucker, drills into and devours, thus drawing directly upon the vitality of the tree. But his ravages are rarely serious. Only in two instances have I seen dead branches on an apple tree that appeared to be the result of his drilling.

What we call the heart of a tree is in no sense the heart; it has no vital function, but only the mechanical one of strength and support. It adds to the tree's inertia and power to resist storms.

The trunk of a tree is like a community when only one generation at a time is engaged in active business, the great mass of the population being retired and adding solidity and permanence to the social organism. The rootlets of a plant or a tree are like the laborers in the field that produce for us the raw mate rial of our food, while the leaves are like our many devices for rendering it edible and nourishing. The rootlets continue their activity in the fall, after the leaves have fallen, and thus gorge the tree with fluid against the needs of the spring. In the growing tree or vine the sap, charged with nourishment, flows down from the top to the roots. In the spring it evidently flows upward, seeking the air through the leaves. Or rather, we may say that the crude sap always flows upward, while the nutritive sap flows downward, thus giving the tree a kind of double circulation.

A tree may be no more beautiful and wonderful when we have come to a knowledge of all its hidden processes, but it certainly is no less so. We do not think of the function of the leaves, or of the bark, or of the roots and rootlets, when we gaze upon a noble oak or an elm; we admire it for its form, its sturdiness, or its grace; it is akin to ourselves; it is the work of a vast community of cells like those that build up our own bodies; it is a fountain of living matter rising up out of the earth and splitting up and spreading out at its top in a spray of leaves and flowers; and if we could see its hidden processes we should realize how truly like a fountain it is. While in full leaf a current of water is constantly flowing through it, and flowing upward against gravity. This stream of water is truly its life current; it enters at the rootlets under the ground and escapes at the top through the leaves by a process called transpiration. All the mineral salts with which the tree builds up its woody tissues-its osseous system, so to speak -the instruments with which it imprisons and consolidates the carbon which it obtains from the air, are borne in solution in this stream of water. function is analogous to that of the rivers which bring the produce and other material to the great cities situated upon their banks. A cloud of invisible vapor rises from the top of every tree and a thousand invisible rills enter it through its myriad hairlike rootlets. The trees are thus conduits in the circuit of the waters from the earth to the clouds. Our own bodies and the bodies of all living things perform a similar function. Life cannot go on without water, but water is not a food; it makes the processes of metabolism possible; assimilation and elimination go on through its agency. Water and air are the two ties between the organic and the inorganic. The function of the one is mainly mechanical, that of the other is mainly chemical.

Its

As the water is drawn in at the roots, it flows out at the top, to which point it rises by capillary attraction and a proc

ess called osmosis. Neither of them are strictly vital processes, since they are found in the inorganic world; but they are in the service of what we call a vital principle. Some physicists and biochemists laugh at the idea of a vital principle. Huxley thought we might as well talk about the principle of aqueosity in water. We are the victims of words. The sun does not shoot out beams or rays, though the eye reports such; but it certainly sends forth energy; and it is as certain that there is a new activity in matter-some matter that we call vital.

Matter behaves in a new manner, builds up new compounds and begets myriads of new forms not found in the inorganic world, till it finally builds up the body and mind of man. Death puts an end to this activity alike in man and tree, and a new kind of activity sets in—a disorganizing activity, still with the aid of water and air and living organisms. It is like the compositor distributing his type after the book is printed. What stands for the compositor is these micro-organisms, but of a different kind from those which build up the body in the first instance. But the living body as a whole, with its complex of co-ordinating organs and functions what attended to that? The cells build the parts, but what builds the whole?

How many things we have in common with the trees! The same mysterious gift of life, to begin with; the same primary elements-carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and so on-in our bodies; and many of the same vital functionsrespiration, circulation, absorption, assimilation, reproduction. Protoplasm is the basis of life in both, and the cell is the architect that builds up the bodies of both. Trees are rooted men and men are walking trees. The tree absorbs its earth materials through the minute hairs on its rootlets, called fibrillæ, and the animal body absorbs its nutriment through analogous organs in the intestines, called lacteals.

Whitman's expression

The slumbering and liquid trees, often comes to my mind. They are the words of a poet who sees hidden relations and meanings everywhere. He knows how fluid and adaptive all animate nature is. The trees are wrapped in a kind of slumber in winter, and they are reservoirs of living currents in summer. If all living bodies came originally out of the sea, they brought a big dower of the sea with them. The human body is mainly a few pinches of earth salts held in solution by several gallons of water. The ashes of the living tree bulk small in comparison with the amount of water it holds. Yes, "the slumbering and liquid trees." They awaken from their slumber in the spring, the scales fall from their buds, the fountains within them are unsealed, and they again become streams of living energy, breaking into leaf and bloom and fruit under the magic of the sun's rays.