The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-11-12
MEN, WOMEN
 A ND THIN G s

Asial There is mystery and romance in the very word itself. Read it on the printed page and whole procession of oriental pictures float before the minds eye.' Pronounce it, and the aroma of centuries hangs about it.
 As Kipling says: If you have ever dreamed
 -of the soft scent of the lotus in the gardens of sShahIirnar, of the whirr of prayer-wheels in the pilgrim-trod streets of Lhasa, of life on the junks and house boats of the Yangtse, of the lacquered shrines of the Tokuwaga Sho- guns-then your imagination has been filled with a bit out of Asia.
 Will the west ever understand the east? Upon it's ability to do so rests the peace of the world, and the eastern question, stretching all the way down the Danubian provinces to the Black sea, and the Red sea and out into the Pa cific and across the steppes of Russia into China and Japan, along the coast down to In- dia, has for many centuries been the Sphinx" of European diplomacy.
 Asia! What welter of races and religions it covers, and what variety of climate, soil and rivers and mountainsl It was Salisbury or some other premier of England who said that there were only two men in all the world who understood the eastern question, and one of them was dead The idea being that it was fortunate that he himself was alive. It has been of vital importance to England.
 Say what you please but American diplom- acy in spite of the plea of isolation which held so long, but which got setback in the World war, is also greatly interested in the solution of the eastern question. America now has foot in the Pacific and stake in Asia, and her claims to a proper adjudication of the Anglo Japanese alliance or entente is no longer an academic question, but one of vast practical import, not only for those living on the Pacific coast, but for every one of the United States
 It is not strange, then, that President Hard- ing linked disarmament with the far east in the Washington conference. Underlying his Bir- mingham speech was more than perfunctory and polite touching upon the negro question, for he made it plain that the race question had not only national, but worldwide in- port, and many read between the lines that in his subconsciousness was the embarrassing sit uation which would arise when Uncle Sam, John Bull and others sat around the peace table.
 England, however, has a far greater stake in the far east than America. General Shuts, premier of South Africa, stated at the recent British imperial conference in London: "Un- doubtedly the scene has shifted to the far east and the Pacific. The problems of the Pacific to my mind are the world problems of the next 50 years or more ... There Europe, Asia and America are meeting, and there I believe the next great chapter in human history will be enacted" fl
 Tho curtain has risen on a new east. Asia is the stage upon which is set the drama of the oriental renaissance China is a republic Old China and new, struggling for supremacy Japan! No longer only the land of cherry blossoms, but country of astute financiers, trained warriors, learned scientists, polished diplomats. India is having awakening That is why the coming together of the west and the east at Washington is fraught with such sig nificance