Polk County observer. (Monmouth, Polk County, Or.) 1888-1927, 1914-07-21
Continued from Friday.)

world with so much anticipation as
went to Russia. J. never came ava
from any place in this world with s.
sad heart. Russia is a wonderful.
beautiful country, attractive IN 1T
physical endowment. L think st. Pet
ersburg and Moscow are two OF tn
most beautiful cities l ever saw. No
where have | seen such evidence o.
lavish bestowals Of wealth upon Ger
tain things. l never have stepped in
side the arched doorways of sucl
churches-altars cleaning with gold
the holy icons framed in blazing dia
monds and precious stones. They are
paved with marble, wainscoted witt
malachite, panelled with lapis lazuli
and yet, step out Of that environment
of magnifcence, and on the porches
and on the steps of this majestic
church you look upon the most awful
squalor and pitiful poverty you even
saw. Old men and women lying there
literally rotting, mumbling through
toothless gums a prayer for a few
pennies to keep them from starvation.
| never saw such drunkenness. The
government makes and sells the whis-
key, vodka, and the more vodka the
peasants drink, the more profit in the
pocket of the government. And what
does the government care for the few
thousand of these mujiksq
Of
land surface of the globe. Out of her
stupendous population of millions sew
enty-two per cent can neither read
nor write, and in the sense that we
know it, there is not public school
in the whole empire. Russia carries
q crushing debt of four and three
quarter billion dollars. She borrows
money every spring to pay the $4,000
900 interest on it; and yet she has
provided this year four hundred and
ninety-seven million dollars as mill
tary budget, and at the knout's end
she is taking by increased taxation
from her peasants and poor the money
with which to build and equip navy
to replace the one that Togo sent to
the bottom of the Sea of Japan.
Well, there is Japan! Poor little
bankrupt Japan! The logical end of
the whole grotesque delusion! Fifty
millions Of industrious, economical, pa
triotic people wrestling a living from
a soil impoverished by centuries, with
out national resource, figuring income
and expense to the last penny, halv
ing each pitiful coin in willingly borne
taxation-eighty-fve per cent Of ia
pan s income is derived from taxa
tion-she has nothing else. 1t means
that her people must give each year
an average of twenty-five per cent of
all they have and earn to pay Japan's
penalty for following her "Great AL
ly" in the race of mad militarism.
Only fifteen per cent of the land of
Japan is arabic, and that only under
forced intensive farming; all the rest
of it is waste sand, rock, and lava,
which would not grow even a blade
of grass, and even the fifteen per cent
of arabic soil must be artificially fer
tilized before it will bring forth any
thing at all.
Japan has a national debt of ST.
37S,000,000, an average of $2l.75 for
every man, woman and child in the
whole empire. If you put Japan upon
the auction-block tomorrow and sell
her before the nations Of the world,
everything. from one end of the en-
pire to the other-jewels of the en-
peror's crown, her manufactures,
railroads. tea fields, everything-I
question whether at public sale the
whole empire would bring enough to
discharge the stupendous crushing
debt that she has laid upon her
shoulders m an endeavor to keep up
with her great "Ally of the West"
l have been in Japan a great deal
for the last ten years. Some of my
best, warmest, and most trusted
friends are men who stand high in the
councils of the empire and who are
with all the intensity of their
intense natures to solve their prob
lens. I spent a very pleasant day
not long ago with Count 0kuma, one
of the few remaining old men of the
ancient regime. For from being the
sanguinary monster
that a great deal of our sensational
description pictures as describing the
leading men of Japan, he is a delight
full old man, spending the twilight of
his life in good deeds. He has en-
lowed a magnificent university, where
some three thousand young men and
are engaged in the laudable
pursuit of getting an education. He
has one of the most magnificent col
ections of orchids in the world. He
,pecializes in beautiful first editions
and rare Confucian classics. He is
and a sage-an ideal old
nan. He said to me, as We were
alking about these things: "The
has gone out through the
world that the japanese are a san
urinary nation-that we are blood
hirsty and quarrelsome, and that we
lelight in warfare. Have you ever |
topped to think that Japan has :
ought Just two wars in all her his
DRY, and that both those wars were I
n defense of what she considered