Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1913-03-07
Central America Sees Japanese Circus.


Ihere Is a troupe of Japanese acrobats
travelling in Central America lust now.
called the Imperial circus, whose per-
formances appear to fascinate the GOOD
people there for a most particular reason.
Gays leading newspaper of the capital
of FL Salvador. in clever causerie ..The
imperial circus of Nippon has left among
Our people profound impression.
IL mas set our people wondering and
dreaming the public of the galleries.
sittihS with eyes wide open, wove a tale
OF heroic patriotism around each per
torrance: our people would not believe
that those We're simply acrobats, al
though their feats seemed the result of at
least century's training No. those
men were not rope dancers: they were
engineers, they were secret agents at the
service of the Mikados dreams of con.
quest
Popular imagination. according to that
chronicler, accompanies these diplomats.
stfategists, engineers, from village TO vii
lage, on their hunt mot for the almighty
dollar as their foe in race and ideals. but
for plans, surveys, measurements, in
short, complete information of these
lands that is carefully transferred to
their voluminous note books between ner
formances. The chronicler of course.
makes fun of all this. hut hardly enough.
IT must be owned to be absolutely con-
FincinS He wonders how the people. his
compatriots, ever came to weave such an
absurd legend. But try TO convince one
OF those dreamers, he says. and you VIII
! near him answer you with numbers of
similar instances of great patriotic sac
r1tices. He will recall the story of that
notable Japanese engineer Yoritomo.
VINO spent his time on the canal works
at Panama as a cook, and very likely an
excellent one, too, while he took the most
accurate plans of the monumental work
carried out by the Yankees
Is the explanation, the writer asks, to
De found in elective affinity? BY which
ne may, or may not, mean the call of the
blood, seeing that the bulk of the Central
American peoples. is OF Maya and Aztec
descent and more or less MoneoIoid
But, whether the writer. and with him
the educated class of Central America.
believes or scorns the idea that the
japanese rope dancers and iiu iitsu
champions that come to the eastern
shores of the Pacific are secret agents.
the important fact is that the masses.
according to. the report, surround the
japanese with a glamour of patriotic ro-
manticism and speculate on the "Mika-
dos dreams of conquest of their own
land not merely without the least appre-
hension or aversion. but on the contrary.
with evident satisfaction, possibly with
enthusiasm. 1t is as though such a con-
quest were to bring them something like
relief. something like the promise of a
new era
Any one who has followed public utter
anees and press comments in Central
America on recent developments must
have been struck with the extent to which
the idea appears to prevail at least north
OF Costa Rica. that their little republics
are on the eve of final absorption by the
United States. And if the popular imaei-
nation of the Salvadoreans is dazzled bv
the ambitions of Nippon. the relief which
those ambitions seem to promise them
can only mean the liberation from
American dominion.-Christian Science
Monitor