and those who would fail to observe the rules were regarded as men of no culture and refinement.

This point brings me to the consideration of the festivals. of the seasons and the floral calendar. I shall here simply enumerate the chief festivals. Including the New Year's festival, which is a great thing in Japan, the festivals are always associated with the flowers of the seasons, the New Year's decorations being the plum-flower, pine and bamboo. The 3d of the third lunar month is the day for girls, a merry doll day in which peach-flowers play the central part. The 8th of the fourth month is the birthday of Buddha, the day being observed more out of doors than indoors and the azalea being the chief flower. The 5th of the fifth month is the day for boys, another doll day, in which iris flowers together with mugwort leaves are offered to the dolls of warriors. The 7th evening of the seventh month is the night observed in honor of the two stellar constellations, the Herdboy Prince and the Weaver Princess who are said to wed on that evening. No flowers are used in this festival, but the leaves of a tree called kaji are offered to the stars, being floated on water which reflects their twinkling light. On the three days in the middle of the seventh month the Japanese All Souls' Day is observed, and on the 15th of the eighth month the festival of the moon, on both of which a kind of reed with its flowerlike ears is offered to the respective objects of adoration. The 9th of the ninth month is the day of chrysanthemums, which is now observed on the late emperor's birthday, the 3d of November.

Beside these chief festivals, which are social and domestic at the same time, the flowers of every season receive their respective attention and respect. The floral calendar gives the times of their blooming and directions as to the places where the best of those are to be seen and enjoyed, according to which the family or a group of friends or schoolboys would go picnicking. They are floral shows, not in the horticultural halls but in the open air and in the heart of nature. I shall not enumerate the seasonal succession of these flowers but point out just one thing in connection with the floral calendar; that is, the custom of "hearing insects," which is mentioned in the calendar, together with the hearing of nightingales, of cuckoos, of water-rails, of plovers. You can see, toward an autumnal evening, in the suburbs of any town, groups composed chiefly of men, going to the fields with gourds in their hands. It is the party who go to hear the mournful and quieting songs of the insects, such as grasshoppers, crickets, the "weaving insects,"

the "bell-insects," the "pine-insects," etc. The party stretches out mattings on the ground at a suitable place on a hillside or in a field and remains till late in the evening enjoying the natural orchestra played by the six-legged musicians and also enjoying the saké drink which they have brought in the hollowed gourds. The insecthearing takes place in autumn and similarly in the summer evenings people go out to the fields where there are waters, in order to see the flying glow-flies. The Japanese have been richly provided with the symphony orchestra and moving pictures by benignant mother Nature, and her children faithfully and piously record these performances in their floral calendar. Of course these insects are also brought into the homes for the sake of old men and children. who are not able to risk the cool air of the autumn evenings.

Thus far I have tried to state a few points concerning Japanese life in its relation to the esthetic sense of the people, which is intimately allied with their love for nature. The love of nature and its manifestations is almost inevitable in the life of any primitive people because of its archaic simplicity. But I wonder whether there is any uncivilized people who care to listen to the music of insects or take pains to change their clothing according to the flowers of the season. The simplicity of Japanese life and art is not a primitive and undeveloped rusticity but the result of a trained and very thoughtful refinement which manifests itself in subdued sobriety and severe purity in every aspect of life. The arches and honeysuckles of the Renaissance are surely a product of art, but I believe that the art in the life of the Japanese is to be reckoned with side by side with other sorts of art. In conclusion I wish to call attention to the fact that the artistic sense manifested in this sober and simple purity is a product of the religious inspiration given by Shinto, the native religion of Japan, and by Zen, the Buddhist naturalism and intuitionalism. I must await another occasion to elucidate these religions and how they have worked to mould the artistic sense of the Japanese.

A REJOINDER TO MR. J. MATTERN.'

BY CHARLES T. GORHAM.

MR

R. MATTERN does not seem to have fully appreciated my point as to atrocities. It is that, even assuming the Belgian outrages to have been unprovoked and unauthorized, they were not illegal according to German military law, and therefore the excuse of "relentless" retribution does not hold good. Certainly I do not admit that they ever took place "wholesale," as Mr. Mattern asserts; if any whatever occurred (the evidence is extremely meagre) they must in the nature of things have been far less culpable in persons defending their country against aggression than on the part of invaders. They were infinitely less shameful than the shocking and barbarous retaliation, especially as the Germans were ravaging a weak country which Germany had pledged herself to protect. With the point in question (the justification by German military law of such attacks) the Hague Conventions have nothing to do, but I am not in the least surprised to find that a German advocate is not ashamed to appeal to conventions which Germany is daily defying.

Mr. Mattern wonders that I prefer to accept the statements in the Bryce Report rather than the sworn evidence of Germans. I do so because so many Germans have been proved to be liars. The conviction for perjury of the German who swore the Lusitania was armed is only one instance. The German reports of the naval "victory" furnish another. And there are plenty more. Is Mr. Mattern aware that the Bryce Report is fully confirmed by the first-hand evidence of M. Massart? Does he know that the German adjutant of the governor-general of Belgium has admitted the German excesses, and stated that they were deliberately inflicted as a "warning"?

1 See The Open Court of July. 1916, "In Reply to Mr. Charles T. Gorham," with reference to still earlier articles.

The labored argumentation about the New Statesman article is wasted. It is a little annoying to bring forward an authority and then find that he has turned against you. If Mr. Mattern is unable to see that the New Statesman's recommendation to suspend judgment and a disbelief in mere rumors cannot possibly "dispose of” specific charges detailed subsequently and endorsed by the same paper, I can only hope that time will clear his vision. That there were "myths" about maimed children I admitted in April. Does that show that all accounts of German barbarities are "myths"?

The quotations from British writers as to relentless warfare seem to be misapprehended. Any one who understands the English character would naturally assume that they refer to warfare against combatants (that is a presupposition underlying the British idea of warfare); they do not refer to the slaughter of women and children. I did not contend that the treaty of 1839 "imposed a binding obligation" on Britain to make war in defense of Belgium. But it gave Britain and the other signatories, including Germany, the right to do so if hostile aggression rendered it necessary; it certainly did not authorize attack on Belgium. The necessity did not arise in 1870 because, as Mr. Mattern says, "there was absolutely no danger of either France or Prussia crossing into or marching through Belgium." In August 1914 Germany threw over the "scrap of paper" which she had confirmed in 1870. France and Britain adhered to it, as they were perfectly justified in doing. The fact that Mr. Mattern, while blaming Belgian outrages discredited the far better authenticated charges against the Germans, warranted me in stating that he looked with equanimity on their invasion of Belgium, and his reply fully confirms the inference. I beg to inform him that the Standard was not the "organ" of the "British Government."

In his account of the incident mentioned by Bédier (whose book I have not read) Mr. Mattern does not deny that the occurrence actually happened, but shows (or rather implies) that the offender was punished. Crime cannot properly be punished unless it has been committed, but I entirely agree that the passage as to punishment should not have been suppressed. For the credit of the "humane" German army I hope that many other offenders were punished, but I "hae my doots," in view of the German evidence. It is a favorite but stale device of German partisans to allege that unwelcome evidence is a "concoction" of the enemy.

I have nothing to say about the Baralong affair, except that, if the German accounts are true, it seems to have been a brutal

imitation of German methods previously used against us. It is natural to retaliate, I admit, but, "Que messieurs les assassins commencent."

Permit me to add that the personal tone adopted by Mr. Mattern does not impress me as being precisely that of a gentleman.

MR. MATTERN'S REPLY.

Mr. Gorham's "Rejoinder" as printed above hardly calls for a response except perhaps with reference to his statement that in 1887 the Standard was not the organ of the British government. Mr. Gorham and I apparently fail to agree as to the exact meaning of the term "organ," and to show my willingness to meet my antagonist half way I herewith declare myself ready to substitute for the phrase "organ of the British government" the wording of Sanger and Norton (England's Guarantee to Belgium and Luxemburg, London, George Allen & Unwin Ltd. [1915], p. 99), who state that “at that time the Conservative Party was in power and the Standard was its principal organ."

In answer to the rest of Mr. Gorham's "Rejoinder," including his closing remark, I refer those interested to the former stages. of our controversy and especially to Mr. Gorham's "few lines in reply to Mr. Johannes Mattern's article in The Open Court for December" of April last and to my article "In Reply to Mr. Charles T. Gorham," The Open Court, July, 1916. Only after a careful re-reading of at least these two will Mr. Gorham's present "Rejoinder" be fully appreciated.

Dixi!