ALL-AMERICAN

By process of evolution the hermit Japanese of the early cartographer became the "inscrutable Jap." of modern fiction. And lest the tradition of his baffling incomprehensibility be momentarily forgotten there arrives the news that Crown Prince Hirohito has be-stowed the high noble and hereditary title of count upon one Hasakura, dead these past three hundred years. By one command of the mighty Regent the mouldering ambassador" and his entombed descendants rise from their plebeian ashes to trail the clouds of their new nobility. The only parallel in the Western World is the tri-centennial crowning of Bacon with the laurels of Shakespeare.

But the touch that apparently makes Oriental and Occidental kin is the announcement of Reverend Potter's suggestion that an All-American bible be written. By one literary tour de force the life and writings of the smuggler Hancock become enshrined in the American Genesis; Daniel Boone becomes the leader of the lost in a new wilderness wandering; and the debates of Congress furnish the tediousness of a new Numbers. But the discussion that is already arising over the proposal that Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" be designated the American Psalms gives an indication of the keen competition that faces aspirants for a position in this modernistic All-American.

Reverend Potter does not recommend, however, that the full paraphernalia of Japanese ancestor worship be adopted. An American touch is to be gained by substituting extensive use of the radio for periodical visits to tombs and shrines. And were only the Eastern mystery of an ancestral fetish to be considered, there could be no doubt as to the popularity of this new radio religion. Inasmuch as it may be interpreted as thinly disguised propaganda for the intensive study of American history it seems, at least among the "rising generation" foredoomed to failure.