Weekly Caledonian. (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1919-1920, 1919-02-05
MAKING THE FAR EAST SAFE
FOR DEMOCRACY
1.-The Sunset Trail

We call il the Far East, but it ism
the far east at all. That term orr
ginated in Europe. For Europe per
haps the tenn has meaning. To cal
it the far east here in America mean:
going three-quarters around the
globe. Which is a waste of effort
words and Imagination.
For US American folk it shou'
be the Near West. You board ;
Japanese steamer at San Frncisco
You sail away from the Ferry House
clock, the low-lying buildings along
the dock, the old Panama Exposition
fair grounds, out through the Colder
Gate and into the heart of the sunset
You while away the hours gazing
over the mighty blues of the broad
Pacific. The engine sings you to
sleep with its heart-throb all the
night. The bells mark off your mimic
eternity. The swing and the swish
of the pillows are the only evidences
of life in your play infnity. The time
passes quickly Some rare morning
when the sea air is like wine, the
cry comes that one of your fellow
passengers has discerned Fujiyama.
When you come up from the saloon
and luncheon that afternoon you are
sailing up long Toxic Bay toward
Yokohama. You're in Japan. You
stand at the door of the Orient. You
are in the Far East. And you can't
believe it. 1t is altogether too near
home. 1t comes to you as a shock,
how very open is the broad ocean
trail straight to the shores of Amer
lea Before you took the trip, the
great Pacific seemed a mammoth bar
rier between your country and the
vast mystic Oriental world some-
where over the skyline into the heart
of the sunset. Now you realize that
instead of barrier, the Pacific is
highway that brings you very near to
the Orient, indeed. Truly it is the
Near West. 1t seems strange that
within the reaches of such a short
ocean voyage you should change
worlds; that you could journey in the
short course of Is days from the up
to-date, slap-dash, freshly-painted
Ynkee hemisphere into the shoddy,
slough-along old Orient
where your first chore is to break
in three pieces and throw away your
American yardstick; where you must
unlearn much that has made of you
a good hustling Americn; where you
must take civilizations as you find
them and shorten your stride to
theirs or wreck your head and your
wits and your health in learning the
lessons you must learn sooner or later
or turn about and return.
just over the western skyline, it
Neal West; Japan, Korea,
Siberia, Manchuria, China, the NAL
avs, India. Our splendid isolation ex-
lists no longer. We have taken ship
and sailed on voyage of discov-
ery-the discovery that the world is
small, that our country is
a very bright and newly-varnished
and puerile country, that the big
world, the real world, exists outside
of America, that we Yankees have
been and are the most provincial peo-
pie on the face of the globe. And
somehow our native land assumes
far different ratio to the balance of
the universe. Just a few days of
sociability on deck, few evenings
of festivity in the forward saloon, a
few days Of our country sinking low
er and lower on the eastern skyline
and the arms of the Pacific opening
wider and wider, and we are in
strange, strange civilization, among
strange, strange people-so near and
yet so far. We are the foreigners"
out here. Women and old men stare
at us. Little child run curiously
after US in the streets. We can
not make ourselves understood. And
all at our own back door. Truly, it
is an alarming situation.
The first thought is, what are we
going to do about it? The trend of
thought in the Near West is so diff
ferent than ours; the ethics, ideals,