Arizona republican., 1914-06-28
GREAT SCANDAL
 |S UNEARTAED
Old Warlike Morality of Samurai, It Is Feared, Is Giving Way to Modern Conditions, Which En- courage Dishonesty.

LONDON, June PA special to 1 the Times from Tokio says: When the telegraph told us late in January
 that one Carl Richter a typist for
 merly employed in the Tokio offices
 of Messrs Siemens and Schubert, had been sentenced in Berlin to two years penal servitude for the theft
 of important documents and the at tempt to use them for purposes of blackmail. not a soul in Japan antici- pated that here was the beginning of 1 a scandal that was to overthrow a
 ministry and reveal sore in the Jap 1 anese body polite and social which may be called shameful to the nation | The tale is not yet told, for at the 1 present moment nearly half a dozen ! high officers of the navy are before a court-martial, while three directors
 and three lower officials of the Nit sui Bussan Kaisha, the former mana :
 ger of Messrs. Siemens' and Schubert | in TOkio, the former correspondent
 of Reuters Agency here, and certain ] other civilians are awaiting trial by the ordinary courts. ! Japan aspires to maintain a first
 class navy. By reason of her own i inadequate resources she cannot but i depend largely on foreign firms for
 warship construction and the supply
 of materials. The result is an an-
 nual expenditure of very large amount-it has been estimated at an average of $500, ,000-on contracts l placed abroad and those who have 1 had authority to place these contracts
 have been tempted and have fallen.
 The finding of the preliminary court 1 in the Mitsui case says that com
 missions amounting to not less than 1 $200,000 found their way into the hands of Vice-Admiral Matzumoto, then director of naval construction | The other cases are all of a piece | with this. No wonder that the word commission has become a by-word | in the mouths of the people The custom of commissions runs in one form or another from top to bot tom of Japanese society, where the
 butcher gives present to your cook in gratitude for orders received and your cook adds trifle to the price of your meat, and everybody
 
 New Year for the sake of favors past and to come. Finally the foreigner
 who does business with the Japanese
 business man, has by his own testi- mony, always to reckon in something above and beyond the specified terms | of the bargain. Yet, granting all l
 this, the revelation of corruption at
 the heart of the navy is a shameful
 thing. The Japanese are fearful of | what may De found elsewhere in the l departments of state, and they have 1 had at least the hint that in one of them, that nearest the sovereign, | there is something rotten. The premier, Count Okuma, is the | first to admit it. He says: The ad-
 ministration of the state is today in |
 a very deplorable condition; both high and low are hunting nothing |! but their private interests and the |
 basis of public morals is highly pre-
 carious. But loyalty is a religion, so
 far as it ever can be made religion | in Japan. The emperor is sacred; |
 those who serve him are enrolled in | a sacred cause. If they win battles, |
 the merit and glory are his. IL is | the hereditary age-long creed of the | Samurai, that of perfect service; it is | the code of the warrior whose sword | was his soul. Behold then, among | those warriors the seeds of corruption | apparently sOwn broadcast, the very | wells of honor defiled. It is true that 1 under the system of ethics which has | produced a Matsumoto also flourished l the fine flower of Nogis chivalry and 1 that fighting men of that stamp are 1 not unknown today. But enough has | been shown to prove that all is not | well, to make one ask whether the old | morality is not giving way beneath
 the strain of modern conditions.