August 8, 1904.}
of the elect, has to close its eyes to the unsavoury deeds of those who occupy high places. The Empress Dowager as Regent is under present conditions a necessity, and as such we can ever wish well to her reign. In the necessary intercourse of states the private life of a monarch for public reasons is not to be enquired into. Recent affairs have shown that under the recent rule of the Empress Dowager affairs have certainly progressed, and the people of the Empire are at once happier and better off nationally and individually than at any period for the last seventy years. This we are happy to allow has in the main been brought about by the strong character of the woman who occupies the place of the Throne, and who bas in that high. position shown herself a stronger and abler ruler than any of the descenda ts of he great Emperor K'ANG
bas no reason that the private life of the Empress should be ignored, and still less that that favour should be extended to her infamous surroundings. This is, how- ever, the phase of society most prominent in Peking at the moment. From a public point of view it is hardly consonant with the highest diplomacy; from a private it is not lecoming in the eyes, at least, of those who would fain see a nobler example set.
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ECONOMIC NUTRITION.
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CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT. physiologists, a large proportion of the COUNT. Those who have read My Religion matter we ent cannot be assimilated, and -one of the most plausible and yet mis- has to be reduced by bacterial and putre. taken commentaries on the New Testament factive processes-a fact which must arouse ever written-will remember that TOLSTOI, unhappy memories in the gourmand. "That in the usual way of the ill-balanced inquirer, fell disease which brought about such a arrived at the verge of pessimism and sui- dramatically sudden arrest of our King's cide simultaneously. He saved himself on " coronation preparations, appendicitis, the brink of the pit by embracing a senti "would be a thing of the past (says Mr. Cook) mental anthropomania; and by pouring the "if everybody would only swallow food that vials of his hate on the knowledge of science has been Fletcherised,' The last word, which had driven him into danger. In his was coined in America-notorious land of Confession, this great Russian philosopher, lightning lunches where a Mr. HORACE who has probably destroyed more natural FLETCHER has started a crusade with Mr. happiness thau NAPOLEON with his armies GLADSTONE's quoted dictumn as a notto. managed to do, denies to the natural sciences This crusade was deemed of sufficient all claim to usefulness, His unphilosophic importance for treatment in the Lancet, notions of science may be recognised where Dr. HARRY CAMPBELL, noting the in his Fruits of Enlightenment. He is wonderful results of Mr. FLETCHER's a notable exemplar of the vast army of methods, had much to say of mastication as BOUVARDS and PECUCHETS who deduce from a lost art. This is what he calls the " age science Siftings the guiding principles of of pap"; and he attributes much illness, many a grand mistake. TOLSTOI, with his the decline in the physical beauty of the oetic, vivid treatment of a mass of half- race, and the amazing multiplication of ruths, is more terrible than an army with dentists, to the modern vice of bolting food. banners. His adoption and partial perver- Appendicitis is more common, not because sion of the theme of ROUSSEAU isalike his it was, as some cynies have suggested, made sublimely unthinkable altruism, and unlike fashionable; but because (and Sir FREDE- his Buddhistic negation of all the human RICK TEEVES stands sponsor for this) meals instincts, a taking notion. Fortunately, in- are so much hurried over. It is not only stinct is a persistent motor, apt to outwear the business man who takes his meal all-mistaken morals and false philosophies. standing who is guilty; so are many good people who sit an hour and a half at table. The secret of their trouble is too much table-talk. They Lave to holt what they can between epigrams or worse. Growing children require generous feeding; older folk ouly think they do. There seems little doubt, however, that the gentle discipline of chowing would benefit everybody. We bave, it seems, to go to the row, not only for our food, but for the proper way to eat it.
TOLSTOI AND WAR.
(Daily Press, 3rd August.) SHAKESPEARE's inquiry "What's in a name?" has been answered. There is that in it which will induce a newspaper like the London Times to devote a full page and a half to sheer, stark, staring nonsense,, mis- chievous drivel. We allude, of course, to the anti-war adumbrations of TOLSTOI, some of which we reproduce in our issue of to-day. There are a great many people who believe in Tolstoism; some of them have been airing their shaky logic lately in the correspondence columns of our Kobe con- temporary, the Chronicle. It is believable that had TOLSTOI's letter to the Times been signed by the Russian equivalent of "John Smith," the page and a half of the Thunderer's space would have been otherwise engaged. Tousror is insane. There is no doubt of it. He may be on certain grounds compared with W. T. STEAD; but in the latter case we are enabled to see some method in the mania. TOLSTOI's philosophy-for it is as philoso- pher rather than novelist that he claims
t
TOLSTOI, as we have suggested, must be accounted responsible for the setting back of a few human clocks, disgearing the mental mechanisms of impressionable youth; but the unchecked flight of time finds man in the aggregate pretty much as he was when the Oxyrhynchus papyri were written, fighting and loving, worrying and rejoicing over the trifles that make the sum of human
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things. Thus, despite TOLSTOI, and the prominence accorded to his hysterics, SHAKESPEARE (whom he sneers at as an over-rated scribbler": what an opening for In quoque!) will continue to enjoy some appreciation; Woman, whom TOLSTOI despises, will continue to play her noble communal part; and Man will not cease (we trust) to shoot straight and fight fair. The fact that Russia, usually credited with some intolerance, suffers patiently such seditious utterances by TOLSTOI, argues that his madness and irresponsibility are recognised where he belongs.
JAPAN'S RELIGIOUS LOYALTY.
(Daily Press, 2nd August.) The food fa dists are so numerous, and various, and their contributions to the world's boredom so distressingly frequent, that an article like "Economic Nutrition," in the current number of the Contemporary, is liable to escape the attention it deserves The late Mr. GLADSTONE's not veryalluring advice to "chew each morsel of food at least thirty-two times" is taken as text for a homily which, being obeyed, is to consider- ably reduce the ills that human flesh in- herits. Many impressionable people are by the "chow cranks" from time to time scared into a moderation which has first given them the empty feeling of an "aching void," and afterwards driven them to the opposite extreme of the barbarian joys of repletion. This, we are now told by E. WAKE COOK was a false, or habit-hunger," akin to the mouth-appetite" of the boy who complain- ed that his mouth was hungrier than his stomach. In venturing the observation that in the Far East there is quite a noticeable lot of that same "mouth-appetite," we
(Daily Press, 4th August.) would repudiate all inte:tion or desire to
When, before the current war began, the appear "preachy." There is a tide in the
Japanese Diet introduce in its Reply to life of man which, taken at the flood, leads
the Address from the Throne a variation to a hearty and whole-souled recognition of
from the customary tone of grateful ac- the joys of the table. The man who does
quiescence in the status quo, there was a not appreciate a well-cooked and well-served
dis: inctly perceptible sensation of shock dinner must have some thing the matter with
throughout the empire. The conspicuous him-or be in love, which is much the same
meekuess with which the Japanese people thing, if the professor who recently dis-
accepted the subsequent summary dismissal covered the bacillus amoroso be a credible
of its recalcitrant representatives must be person. Whatever may be said about quan-
regarded as an indication that Japan is not tity-and rude things have been said about
yet so desperately democratic in its ideas the anti-breakfast faddists-there is a
as some alien observers have considered it good deal that is convincing in this present In that immoral book, the Kreutzer Sonata to be. The secret of the apparent inappre- article's development of the Gladstonian immoral in its teaching, as well as ciation of the logical issues of the Iro Con- practice of hyper-mastication. It is found indelicate in its expression --TOLSTOI stitution may perhaps be found in the fact in that practice that "after tborough masti- ; struck the note which earned for him that sufficient time has not elapsed for one cation all that is properly reduced and his fame. ог notoriety. We need not of its most famous clauses to bear fruit. "insalivated is swallowed by an involuntary: dwell upon it; it is of a piece with his We have in mind the twenty-eighth article, impulse, while all hard, stringy, indigestible latest lucubrations iu the Times. un-granting freedom of religious beliet. En- "substances which would cause trouble if natural, unreasonable, anarchistic, tending lightened as Iro's views upon State religions pussed into the stomach, ure, by the reffex ; wa surer destruction than is the war at undoubtedly are, and greatly appreciated as muscles, returned to the mouth for further which he girds. Poz Inyscheff," the this privilege will one day be, we have little chewing or actual rejection." This function ¦ character used by TOLSTot as a mouthpiece, doubt, malgre the self-congratulatory trum- is describe by Dr. VAN SOMEREN as aadmitted that his neighbours looked upon petings of the Christian missionaries, and
new reflex of deglutition." Defenders of
the greatly enhanced efforts of the Buddhist the eat-heartily-and-tear-not method main-
revivalists, that the great heart of Japan is tain that the stomach requires a solid
still steeped in Shintoism.
Not perhaps aucleus to work on; but according to the
the pure, esoteric Shintoism as described by
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such universal attention is a suicidal one.
him as cracked; and in his Confession, TOLSTOI felt he was "not quite mentally sound." NORDAU sees in that admission a flash of self-knowledge on the part of the
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