time over her development, the final results may be better for her and for the world.  I have not noticed that Japanese rural people who have departed from a simple way of life through the acquirement of many farms or the receipt of factory dividends have become worthier.  On the question of the alleged over-population of rural Japan, one Japanese investigator has suggested to me that as many as 20 per cent. could be advantageously spared from agricultural labour.  But he was not himself an agriculturist or an ex-agriculturist.  He was not even a rural resident.  Further, he conceived his 20 per cent. as entering rural rather than urban industry.

“A great deal of afforestation and better use of a large proportion of forest land, much more co-operation for borrowing and buying, improved implements where improved implements can be profitably used, animal and mechanical power where they can be employed to advantage, paddy adjustment to the limit of the practical, more intelligent manuring, a wider use of better seeds,[293] the bringing in of new land which is capable of yielding a profit when an adequate expenditure is made upon it, a mental and physical education which is ever improving—­all these, joined to better ways of life generally, are obvious avenues of improvement, in Northern Japan particularly, not to speak of Hokkaido.[294] But it is not so much the details of improvement that seem urgently to need attention.  It is the general principles.  I have been assured again and again by prefectural governors and agricultural experts—­and in talking to a foreigner they would hardly be likely to exaggerate—­that considered plans for the prevention of disastrous floods, for the breaking up of new land, for the provision of loans and for the development of public intelligence and well-being were hindered in their areas by lack of money alone.  The degree to which rural improvements, with which the best interests of Japan now and in the future are bound up, may have been arrested and may still be arrested by erroneous conceptions of national progress and of the ends to which public energy and public funds[295] may be wisely devoted is a matter for patriotic reflection.[296] No impression I have gained in Japan is sharper than an impression of ardent patriotism.  For good or ill, patriotism is the outstanding Japanese virtue.  What some patriots here and elsewhere do not seem to realise, however, is what a quiet, homely, everyday thing true patriotism is.  The Japanese, with so many talents, so many natural and fortuitous advantages, and with opportunities, such as no other nation has enjoyed, of being able to profit by the social, economic and international experience of States that have bought their experience dearly and have much to rue, cannot fairly expect to be lightly judged by contemporaries or by history.  If the course taken by Japan towards national greatness is at times uncertain, it is due no doubt to the fascinations of many will-o’-the-wisps.  There can be one basis only for the enlightened judgment of the world on the Japanese people:  the degree to which they are able to distinguish the true from the mediocre and the resolution and common-sense with which they take their own way.”