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sources. In any case, so long as American activities in China are confined to economic spheres, and no attempts are made by America to play a political role such as may clash with our legitimate position and interest in that country, there is no reason whatever to fear any occasion for a rupture with America. And we have too much confidence in the sense and judgment of the American people to believe them liable to fatal blunders like that. As for the problem of the unfair discriminations practised against our countrymen in some parts of America, delicate and annoying as it is, it will never be suffered to occasion breach of peace between the two countries. For the rest it will require provocations of the most aggravating character to plunge them into war with each other, for leaders of thought and affairs on both sides know perfectly well that neither nation will gain anything by fighting the other.

There is thus no possible common enemy in sight, and without such common danger, the Alliance would be devoid of all practical value or justification. The only conceivable advantage of its renewal will be a negative one of avoiding a possible sense of estrangement that might result from the discontinuances of the pact. Against this negative advantage of doubtful value, there must be set up disadvantages and inconveniences of a serious import.

The first obvious inconvenience or injury resulting from the renewal of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance will be the suspicion it will inevitably create among Americans that it is ultimately directed against them. That America does not enter into the consideration of either the Japanese or British Government as a possible future

enemy, we do not entertain the slightest doubt. It is still fresh in the memory of all students of international politics that, when Great Britain concluded with America an arbitration treaty which subsequently failed to be ratified by the Senate, she proposed to Japan with remarkable haste to modify the then existing treaty of Alliance by excluding from the scope of its provisions all countries with which either contracting party had entered into a treaty of arbitration. Japanese showed equal promptness in accepting the proposal, thus proving to the whole world how sincerely anxious both Powers were to satisfy the United States as to the entire absence on their part of all intentions to utilize the treaty of Alliance against that country. An entirely new situation, it is true, has since been developed as the result of the elimination of Germany as Britain's chief competitor for empire and trade. In a sense that competition has now been transferred between Britain and the United States. In naval armament the latter bids fair in a few years to outstrip the former, a prospect which is as soothing to American pride as it is disquieting to the British people for whom supremacy on the sea is a necessary condition of empire. To them it is a matter of life and death.

From this and other obvious causes, the relations between Great Britain and the United States are no longer what they used to be a few years ago. We hesitate to believe that the AngloAmerican rivalry, however keen it may develop (and it will undoubtedly become dangerously bitter), will ever precipitate an armed conflict between the two nations. In any case the situation between them is such that, however loudly the London Government may declare its friendliness to

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America, the renewal of the Alliance with Japan is bound to excite an unfortunate suspicion in America as to the real intentions of the signatory Powers. Such suspicion will naturally be strengthened by the fact, which is apparent to everybody, that apart from America there is no Power in sight who might be conceived as a possible antagonist against whom Britain might consider it necessary to be provided with an Ally. Supposing that the race for predominance on water was inevitable between Britain and America, it is easy to see that Japan's allegiance would be an advantage of great value to Britain. But it is less easy to discover what benefits might accrue to Japan from binding herself to a prospective enemy of the United States, with whom it. is necessary for her to be on the best of terms.

Another important reason that urges us to oppose the renewal of the Alliance, is the fact that the result will be such deep disappointments on both sides as probably to force the two nations to part as enemies. As we have endeavoured to make clear, there is no possible menace to the common interests of the two nations in Eastern Asia, and the Alliance renewed under the circumstances will possess no living force, it will at best be an ornament with no practical significance. This fact will be patent to all thinking men on both sides, and they will be free from disillusionment, for they will never attach much importance to the Alliance. But it will be different with the man in the street, who will have frequent occasion to grumble because he will expect from the Alliance what it was never meant to accomplish. When the time comes, as it must come, for the two Governments to drop

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the Alliance, the inevitable consequence will be an unfortunate estrangement between the two peoples. More or less unpleasantness must in any case result from the abrogation of the Alliance, but it will be many times more intense if it is postponed another round of years. Such a result will be sincerely deplored by all intelligent Japanese, for Alliance or no Alliance, we strongly wish that there should always exist a most cordial friendship between the two nations. The Japanese have a real and profound admiration for the British people on account of their sterling personal qualities, their high civilization, and their unique culture. English is destined to become almost our second national language, and it is from English history and English literature that we get some of our noblest inspirations for reform and progress. World-wide as is the British Empire, Japan is fortunately so far away from the centre of that Empire and our vital interests are trated within so narrow limits, that nowhere do the interests of the two countries come to an essential clash. We do not aspire to a dominant position as a maritime Power; nor do we intend to challenge British primacy in the field of world finance and trade. Japan and Britain can, therefore, be good friends without binding themselves by any written engagement, and it would be the height of folly to jeopardize this natural friendship by trying to bolster up an unnecessary and artificial framework of an alliance.

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The third and last ground of our objection to the renewal of the Alliance, is that it will interfere with the work of reconstruction which it is high time for Japan to carry out in all departments of her national

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life. We now need a period of selfintrospection and a fresh orientation of our national progress and development. Not the least important item of reform will consist in the proper subordination of the military to the civil power. A successful accom

plishment of reforms of this kind is conditional upon a certain frame of mind conductive to self-introspection on the part of the military. Such a frame of mind will be induced by a sense of new responsibilities consequent upon the Empire's complete diplomatic isolation. A survey of our situation will reveal to the dullest of intellects the important fact that our position is one of extreme strength and boundless possibilities, provided we follow a right course of policy. With an armament on land and sea

amply sufficient for purposes of defence, we can defy the whole world if we shape our policy according to justice and humanity. With the largest potential market in the world at our very door, we can successfully compete there with any rival on equal terms, and enrich ourselves beyond the dreams of avarice. With a fair and sympathetic attitude toward our fellow Asiatics, it will not be impossible for us to establish a claim for a moral ascendency over nearly half the human race. To make our claim good in this respect, the first requisite is a complete elimination of the sinister militarist influences from the domain of our domestic and foreign policy. And this desirable end can, as we have pointed out, be best promoted by a period of international isolation.

RACHEL

BY 'W'

[The hundreth anniversary of the birth of Rachel, perhaps the greatest tragic actress in the history of the French stage, has elicited numerous memoirs and notices in the European press.]

From Neue Frie Pressee, March 6 (VIENNA LIBERAL NATIONALIST DAILY)

Dr. Véron, for many years director of the Paris opera-and incidentally, first to recogize Meyerbeer's genius— relates: 'One beautiful warm summer evening, to be precise on June 12, 1838, I longed for shade and quiet, and so between eight and nine o'clock, dropped into the Theatre Français.' This theatre was so shunned by the general public that a person might well find there both refreshment from the heat and relief from the noise of the city. In particular, the Parisians had placed a popular ban on classic tragedies

and on the works of Corneille and Racine. So the pompous Alexandrines, which have been called the national misfortune of French literature, echoed with the monotonous melody of a machine running empty over the unoccupied benches. Paris seemed to have lost its ear for the poetry of 'the great century.' 'On that evening,' continues Véron, 'four spectators were already in the parquet. I made the fifth. The piece was Corneille's Horace and had already begun when I, the welcome fifth,

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took my seat. The heroine of the tragedy was already on the stage. She was a new actress, a debutante, blessed with but scanty physical attractions, hardly seventeen years old, half grown, under-sized, rather ugly than beautiful. But under the high arched brows flashed a pair of eyes that could play tragedy without the aid of a single word. When she began to speak, an electric shock shot through the few auditors; it was as though the tragic muse herself spoke through her lips. No violent cadences, no shrieking, no raving, but each tone true, pure, a truthful expression of eternal emotion welling up from the depths of the heart. All this was accompanied by a grace of gesture, by a natural, unconscious harmony of movement and nobility of pose, by a loftiness of manner, which suggested that the little creature had been born on the 'steps of a throne.'

The truth, indeed, was very different. Elise Rachel-Felix, who played for the first time that evening in the Théatre Français, and who was to become, under her stage name Rachel, the greatest tragedienne of the Nineteenth Century, was anything but a princess born to the purple. She was the daughter of a poor Jewish merchant of French birth, who peddled his wares from town to town, taking his family with him. Little Rachel, it chanced, was born in a village in the Swiss mountain canton of Aargau, on February 28, 1821, just a century ago. Her dramatic gifts revealed themselves very early, and she seems to have put them at once to use,-not, to be sure, on any famous stage, or even with the strolling players at annual fairs. One must go further back than that for the first appearance of this worldfamous artist, whose centenary is

being celebrated just now in Paris, She began as a street singer. Choron then a famous musical critic, who was conducting a singing school, chanced to hear her and liked her voice, a pleasing contralto. So he took her as a pupil. She might have become a second Giuditta Pasta if she hadn't lost her voice while attending this school, on account of improper training. Naturally I mean her only singing voice. Her speaking voice was unimpaired, and the theatrical blood which coursed in her

veins gave her no peace. By this time, her parents were back in Paris; and she sought her fortune, without a particle of previous preparation, in a little corner theater. Here she was again discovered, this time by members of the Theatre Français Company staff. She was put in a conservatory for a short time, but she did not get along well there. When but sixteen years old, she finally appeared before a real Paris public at the Gymnase Dramatique. Here, however, she was not in her place. The Gymnase, already known as 'the cradle of Scribe,' gave nothing but modern society plays, which offered no scope for the future tragedienne. None the less she attracted notice there. Jules Janin, later the herald of her fame and her most popular biographer, wrote even then that the child played with great emotion, sympathy, and intelligence, although with little training, that she never exaggerated, never strove for effect,'utmost economy of physical movement and facial expression, absence of ranting, a minimum of gestures, no hint of an effort to flatter the audience; on the contrary a certain aloofness and reserve; a suggestion of wild creature still untamed in her glance and pose: Voila Rachel.' About

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this time, she adopted her stage name. She still appeared as RachelFelix in the announcements, but within a year was merely Rachel, and this was the name under which she began her triumph in the Comedie Francaise.

At first it was merely a triumph behind the scenes. At her first appearance, as we have seen, there were no spectators. Her colleagues, her fellow actors and actresses, formed her only public. Without exception, they were delighted. They were listening to a new language instead of the conventional Alexandrine pathos, to a speech that was genuine, to lines spoken-not with the affected naturalness which makes great periods commonplace but with a finer, nobler sincerity, with that spontaneous ease which raises nature to the highest level of art. 'Unimpressive features and poor figure, but unbounded genius.' was the unanimous judgment of her fellow artists-a judgment endorsed almost at once by critics and even more speedily by the general public. Nevertheless, it was several months before her triumph was finally assured. Véron, who had been a theater manager and knew the importance of box office receipts, made a memorandum of the precise amount taken in the first night Rachel played. The sum was 753 francs, which was regarded as quite satisfactory. Classic tragedies, which under the law had to be presented at stated intervals in the government theaters, ordinarily brought in from 300 to 500 francs. To this point had literature sunk since the age of the Grand Monarch! We must bear in mind, however, that Paris was a much smaller city than today—its population was about 800,000 and that the romanticists, with Victor Hugo at their head, ruled

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the town. They had banished the old tragedies and their Greek unities,— as was supposed-for all time to come. Then suddenly this new light blazed up. This Star of the Eastand the public crowded the theater to the doors. However, fortune was at first a trifle coy. For a short period after Rachel's debut, the receipts fell back to the old figures. However, they rose again two months later, when Jules Janin devoted a whole supplement to the new artiste, and speedily mounted to thousands of francs. Hereupon, a second herald of her fame arose; no less a person than Alfred de Musset, who wrote enthusiastically of the young actress in the Revue des deux Mondes. Thereafter the receipts of the Comédie Française speedily arose to 5,000 and 6,000 francs, at which they remained for many years. At the touch of this artist, classic tragedy, whose obsequies it was thought had already been pronounced, was called back to life-the little unimpressive creature had performed a miracle!

Naturally the applause of her colleagues, whose salaries rose with the mounting box office receipts, grew with the admiration of the public. Among them, Rachel found the teacher whom she needed. She had grown up with practically no education. She could hardly read and write. She replied laughing to one of her over-enthusiastic admirers, who insisted that she had rescued not only tragedy but the French language: "That's very strange, for I never learned the language.' She now came under the hands of a master. Samson, the ranking member of the Comédie, who was remarkable both as an actor and a trainer of actors, undertook to instruct her. He studied all her roles with her, and gave her an insight

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