BY THEIR FRUITS--

Stephen Hall-King, in the current For nightly Review, points out the dangers in the condition of the apparently solid regime of Westernization in Japan. The imposition of modern systems and ideas from above has brought grave abuses and corresponding resentments.

The parliamentary system, which has no roots in the political nature of the people, is universally distrusted by those who seek reform. The representative assembly has been used by unrecognized politicians as a springboard to project them into the charmed circle of successful ringsters. The policies of the country are dictated by alternating clans, surviving from the old classification of nobles, who use the imperial throne as a shrouding curtain for their intrigues. But the most ominous political portent is not distrust in the obviously transplanted institution of parliament, but the total absence of any temperate party which looks to the ending of current abuses by political means and to the gradual modification of present institutions by pearceful methods. Political interest in Japan, excluding a majority of the workers who are not yet conscious of anything beyond the daily rice-basket, is divided between the rich, hereditary nobles, concentrating political and economic power in their hands, and the no less bitter Socialists who wish to destroy that power.

Mr. Hall-King believes that the only solution lies in decentralization, in relaxing the grip of the central government over the industrial and political life of the people; but the steps for accomplishing this undoubted good are too vague and too difficult. The only other outcome seems to be that western materialism, introduced by force, will be poisoned in root and branch by the concomitant virus of class-conscious hatreds.