years suffered from the same confusion practiced on a large scale by her nearest neighbor-the United States.

Both Russia and Japan have Military now evacuated the Chinese territory of Manchuria in less than the limit of time fixed by the Treaty of Portsmouth. One might have expected this of punctilious Japan. But, wonderful to relate, the hitherto procrastinating Russia was the first to leave. The difference in Russia's present action and her promised action some years ago in this very matter is striking and significant. Her evasion and delay at that time formed one of the contributory causes of the Japanese war. Russia's gratifying present celerity has now been followed by an exhibition of celerity from a far slower-moving nation. Close upon the evacuation came an Imperial Chinese Edict creating a new form of government for Manchuria. A startling change from the usual custom is noted. Although the Imperial family is Manchu, the chief offices in the new Manchurian Government are intrusted to Chinese. Moreover, the new officials are credited with being militarists. The Chinese northern army already numbers seventy thousand men, and is being continually increased. But the Government's plan for the Empire contemplates a national army of a million and a half of men. For centuries a deep prejudice has existed in China against military service. To overcome this, the Throne has ordered that military instruction shall be compulsory in the public schools, that criminals, opium-smokers, and unworthy persons shall not be accepted for enlistment, that the local authorities shall present a sufficient number of eligibles on pain of severe penalties for failure, that enlisted men shall receive a scale of pay of heretofore unknown liberality, that their families shall be exempt from the land tax, that all nobles and officials shall send one or more of their sons to the new Peking military academy, and, finally, that in social standing army officers shall be assimilated to the class of Mandarins. changes would be remarkable if for nothing else than as confirming the Gov

These

ernment's new attitude when it recently established national schools with international instruction, thus discouraging. the age-long notion that a thorough knowledge of the Chinese classics was sufficient for any emergency. The army organization is practically that of the Japanese, with minor changes to suit certain Chinese conditions.

Irish Opposition

to the

Irish Councils Bill

At a Convention of the Irish National party 'held in Dublin last week, the Irish Councils Bill, brought forward by the British Prime Minister, and reported at length in these columns two weeks ago, was unanimously rejected. The hall in the Mansion House building was packed by two thousand delegates, including a large number of Roman Catholic priests, and the meeting was presided over by Mr. Redmond, who also moved the rejection of the bill. In a vigorous speech against the acceptance of the bill he declared himself unalterably in favor of Home Rule; protested that, although the bill was better than Lord Dunraven's, it was inadequate; that his advice had been rejected; that the provisions of the measure were not workable; denied any alliance between the Liberal and Irish parties, and said that no such alliance was possible until Home Rule was again in the front rank of the Liberal programme. The Liberal Government must drop the Rosebery idea and take up again the Gladstone idea before such alliance was possible. There were several Irish-Americans present, among them Mr. Richard Croker. The resolution which summed up the sentiment calls upon the Irish party to oppose the bill in the House of Commons, and to urge upon the Government the introduction of a measure for the establishment of a native Parliament, having power over all purely Irish affairs, and calls upon all the nationalistic forces of the country to unite and support their representatives in Parliament. On the night when this bill was introduced it was generally felt that it would satisfy neither conservative Englishmen nor radical Irishmen, but no one expected that the Irish would turn

from it with such unanimity; and the action of the Convention is very questionable from the standpoint of the interests of Ireland. The presentation of a measure establishing an Irish Parliament, with a responsible executive and jurisdiction over all Irish affairs, cannot be made by the Liberal Ministry without dividing it, three of the most important members, Mr. Asquith, Sir Edward Grey, and Mr. Haldane, having definitely announced that before conceding a distinct Irish Legislature they would resign. The Premier undoubtedly believes in Home Rule, and has offered Ireland the best that he could. It looks as if the Irish National ists, under Mr. Redmond's leadership, instead of taking advantage of the short step forward, have put their Liberal friends in an embarrassing position and have taken a barren attitude themselves. It is well known that Mr. Redmond was constantly consulted by members of the Ministry while the measure which he now unqualifiedly condemns was in process of elaboration, and Liberals are at a loss to understand how Mr. Redmond can consistently take the position he has now assumed. It is suggested that the provision which places the control of education in the hands of Catholic laymen has awakened the vigorous opposition of the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland, and that it was the influence of the Roman Catholic bishops that secured the defeat of the bill. It is not easy to believe that the Irish bishops so thoroughly distrust all Irish laymen. Priests, whether Catholic or Protestant, Christian or non-Christian, have a great and important part to play in the world, but they are very rarely wise political lead

ers.

Their function lies in a different field; their service to humanity is of a different kind. The Irish Nationalists materially helped to swell the great Liberal majority at the last election, but they have refused to accept the best measure that the head of the Liberal Cabinet could offer, and they have now taken the position of accepting the whole loaf or none, with no prospect of getting the whole loaf in the near future. As an expression of feeling, the action of the Dublin Convention was dramatic; as a way of dealing with practical affairs

of the highest importance its wisdom is very questionable. The Irish-Americans in the Convention who took the liberty of defining the policy of this country towards Great Britain furnished the only element of Irish humor reported on this occasion.

Japan and America

The enthusiasm with which General Kuroki has been received everywhere was an expression of the real feeling of the great body of Americans towards the Japanese people as a people; and one fortunate result of the visit of the distinguished soldier is the formation of a Japan Society, with Dr. John H. Finley, President of the College of the City of New York, at its head, for the purpose of promoting friendly relations between. this country and Japan. What the two sides of the world most greatly need is fuller and more intimate acquaintance. It is highly probable that the historian. of three centuries hence will note as the most significant fact of the twentieth century the coming together of the East and the West. It is a commonly accepted doctrine in some quarters that these two parts of the world, separated for centuries by infrequent intercourse and by fundamentally divergent views of truth, of practical philosophy, and habits and modes of. life, cannot understand each other.

This is a curious reflection on the intelligence of the East and the West. It is as absurd to indict the East as untrustworthy, indirect, subtle, and deceitful, as to indict the West as wholly commercial, entirely lacking in ideals, wholly given over to the worship of money. The East needs clearer insight into the spirit of the West, and the West sorely needs a broader and more intelligent view of the East. The Occidental and the Oriental must learn to live together with mutual self-respect; that is written on the blackboard as one of the great lessons of this century. Those who learn it most quickly will get the benefit which always comes with knowledge; those who refuse to learn it will suffer the penalties which always follow ignorance.

That there are very undesirable Japanese is beyond question, and it is equally beyond question that there are eminently undesirable Americans. That Japanese immigration may need direction and control is quite possible; these questions are matters of detail; but the notion held by some provincial Americans that the Eastern peoples are inferior peoples must be taken out, root and branch, by an educational process. Americans as a whole do not subscribe to any such doctrine; they are too well informed. They know too much about the extraordinary ability of the Chinese, the Japanese, the Hindu, and the Persian; but there is still in this country, as among Western peoples generally, an ancient sense of superiority, which has no basis in fact; as there is in the East a general sense of superiority to the West, which has equally small basis in fact.

It ought to be a part of the business of every teacher in every school to teach the right racial attitude; to implant deep in the minds of children the equality of the great races; to make them understand the immense contributions of Far Eastern countries to the sum total of civilization, the enormous accumulations of capital in the arts, industries, and general intelligence which these peoples have contributed to the common wealth of the world. A great deal of mischief has been done by the partisan teaching of history. Antagonism to England was kept up for years by the partial statements in regard to the war of the Revolution. Since these chapters in our school histories have been amended there has been a marked disappearance of the old prejudices and misconceptions. Such antagonisms belong to the past ages as much as the thumb-screw and the rack. They were pardonable in our ancestors, because our ancestors did not understand, but they are unpardonable in us. Every child in every school in America ought to be given a right view of the rank of the great peoples of the Far East. The halt in their progress, the imperfections of their civilization, ought to be pointed out, but it ought also to be suggested that Western progress has not been without its drawbacks,

and that Western civilization is not yet an entirely harmonious creation.

As for the talk about war, it can only be said that it is mischievous if it is serious, and it is in very bad taste if it is a mere form of political humor. There is an element in this country which is always ready for war. Its sleep is haunted by nightmares of German invasion, of the violation of the Monroe Doctrine in South America, of combinations in Europe to hinder the development of American trade. Only a few years ago many gentlemen went about as if possessed of inside information, and declared with bated breath that we should be at war with Germany within three years. These gentlemen were perfectly familiar with the subtle schemes of the Emperor; they could predict to a date the time of his descent on South America; they could give almost the hour of the declaration of war. These prophets have now given place to another group of gentlemen who are confident that Japan is waiting for the opportunity of administering a fatal blow to American institutions, crippling American commerce and humiliating the American spirit. Disregarding all tangible and visible evidence of the Japanese attitude and temper, they insist that the recent triumph of a nation which had to stand up for its existence has so inflamed Japanese pride that nothing short of a devastating triumph over the United States will meet the national desires. Nothing could have been more irrational, mischievous, and silly than the war talk in which these gentlemen promptly indulged when the school situation, which Mr. Kennan describes on another page, arose. The Japanese are being as grossly misrepresented by these men as were Americans by the larger part of Europe before and during the Spanish War. If any one had believed many leading European journals at that time, America had started on a career of conquest.

She meant to seize and keep Cuba; she was meditating a descent on the coast of Spain; she had gotten a footing in the Philippines simply for the purpose of founding an Oriental Empire. In short, she was brute force and insolent selfishness incarnate. Europe has awakened from this ridiculous nightmare.

Americans ought to know better, by reason of injustice which has been done them, than to take the same ignorant attitude and pursue the same mischievous policy in regard to a great friendly people.

If the Japan Society helps in any way to give people more information, broader views, and the right feeling toward Japan, it will render a real service. From the beginning of its intercourse with the world, Japan had nothing but friendship from this Government. The confidence and friendly feeling secured so far are of inestimable importance in ways which short-sighted demagogues and labor leaders do not understand.

Reformed Fudaism

Among the many hundred Jewish congregations in this country a few hold regular services on Sunday at the usual hour of worship. This is practically all that Christian churches and the general public are aware of concerning one of the most interesting and significant religious movements of our time--the reform movement in Judaism. An impulse toward it was given in the eighteenth century by Moses Mendelssohn, as the apostle of culture among the Jews, in sympathy with the general movement historically known as the Aufklärung, or enlightenment. The effect of this upon the petrified usages of the synagogue appeared in 1815 at Berlin, in the gathering of a congregation for worship with choir-singing, organ music, and a sermon and prayers in the vernacular-innovations stoutly resisted. The same resistance opposed a similar venture at Charleston, South Carolina, in 1824. It was not till 1842 that the first reformed congregation was permanently organized at Baltimore, next after which, in 1845, came Emanu-El in New York, now the largest in the country. In the congenial air of this Republic the Jewish reformation has obtained a freer and fuller development than in its birthplace, so that there are few congregations of note which have not been more or less affected by it.

The distinctive affirmation of the reformers is that Judaism is not a ritual, or a dogma, but a life, and a Messianic mission to bring mankind to the knowledge of God and his righteousness. Only the moral and religious precepts of the Old Testament are held to be permanently valid, all the merely ceremonial ordinances that are incompatible with modern civilization being discarded. As in the English Puritan movement, the sermon, not the ritual, is the dominant element in religious services. The attitude of the reform rabbi to the Talmud and other rabbinical literature is precisely the same as that of the Protestant theologian to the works of the early Christian Fathers-respectful but independent. The attitude of each to the Scriptures has been similarly modified by the results of modern historical criticism. The supply of scholarly rabbis is well provided for by such institutions as the Union College at Cincinnati and the Jewish Theological School at New York.

The reform movement has effected a great change in the position assigned to women: from Oriental it has become Occidental. The "women's gallery" is no more; mixed choirs and family pews have come instead. A confirmation service at Pentecost has been introduced, in which no longer boys alone, but boys and girls, come forward. In a number of congregations women enjoy full membership in equality of rights with men. Since 1893 the Council of Jewish Women has taken an active part in the social religious life.

There are, however, only about sixteen congregations, all in the larger cities, in which, because of the difficulty of a strict observance of the Saturday Sabbath, the Sunday service has been instituted, but merely as a supplementary provision for religious needs, like the mid-week meetings of churches. In 1887 the congregation of Dr. Hirsch, in Chicago, transferred its Sabbath service to Sunday. Some have sympathized with this sacrifice of the letter to the spirit, but it has had no followers till now, when the Free Synagogue in New York is to do so. As long as some Christian sects insist on the seventh-day Sabbath, it is not

strange that the Jewish reformer clings to it. Yet his central aim-identical with Paul's, to universalize a national religion logically tends to the ultimate transfer of the Mosaic Sabbath to the modern rest-day, on the Pauline principle that whatever interferes with the central aim must be suffered to go. On this principle the Central Conference of Rabbis in 1892 set aside the immemorial requirement of circumcision, as the sacramental initiation of a Gentile convert into the house of Israel.

Between the reformed and the orthodox Jews, who have been heavily reinforced of late by immigrants from eastern Europe and are wedded to Levitical rites and rabbinical traditions, there is little in common but the racial spirit. The orthodox still expect the advent of a personal Messiah of the house of David. The reformed, renouncing this, expect the ancient hope to be fulfilled by Israel as the Messianic people, with a mission to establish justice, truth, and peace on earth. Within the comprehensiveness of Judaism extreme differences in doctrine are as compatible now as when it was roomy enough for the antagonistic sects of Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes to dwell together. This comprehensiveness is favored by the decentralized polity of Judaism. Each local congregation is autonomous. None may excommunicate another. No ban is in store for heresy. Each rabbi is accorded the independence due to a scholar and theologian, with a larger

"to solve on the basis of justice and righteousness the problems presented by the contrasts and evils of the present organization of society." Reaffirming this, Dr. Hirsch, of Chicago, says: "He is the loyal Jew who strives to make righteousness real in all the relations between man and man." The Mosaic books represent a fraternal democracy as the social ideal of Israel. This the Free Synagogue reasserts. Discarding fixed dues and pew rents for voluntary contributions, it welcomes poor and rich to membership on equal terms. "Social service building upon the rock of social justice" is its watchword. There are tens of thousands of Jews without synagogue anchorage, whom it is its primary hope thus to reach by a ministry equally divided between the East Side and the central district of the city. From both rich and poor its rabbi, Dr. Stephen S. Wise, a man of high personal qualities, has already gathered numbers and pledges assuring a permanent and growing work when it sets forward after the summer pause. The Free Synagogue, says Dr. Wise, will be "as free as the ancient prophets of Israel" in applying eternal principles to the problems of the time. Reformed Judaism has certainly a hereditary part in the moral leadership of the community. The Free Synagogue is a clear accession to the mobilized moral forces of the city.

Christian churches.

Signs show here and there something like that temporary arrest of development which overtook the Lutheran reformation in the post-Lutheran age. That modernized worship and intellectual culture for the well-to-do are not its goal is attested by the recent organization of the Free Synagogue in New York after three months of preparatory preaching. Free it is, not only to follow the torchbearers of modern learning, but also for the true prophetic work announced by Isaiah, and by Jesus in Isaiah's words at Nazareth. This basal note of reformed Judaism was struck at the Pittsburg Conference of Rabbis in 1885

Heart

That the idea of personality held by many people is crude and narrow is evident to all who read books or hear addresses and sermons. It is often written and talked about as if it were a simple assertion of individual passions, appetites, and desires, an elementary putting forth of personal energy. There are many men and women who live in America (though it is a misuse of language to call them Americans) whose idea of liberty is to do precisely what they please, without reference to the health, comfort, peace, or even life of