I asked this man why they went to such great trouble:

"Everybody who knows anything about the inside workings of the Japanese Government knows that all letters they want to read are opened and read anyhow. Why take such elaborate precautions to hide that fact?' I said.

"My dear sir,' he replied, 'it is contrary to the practice of our government to disclose these things.'

No

"Japan always has opened letters. one can object if a government opens letters that may contain information of use to an enemy; but why should letters be opened indiscriminately?

99 10

It goes without saying that such a system is highly annoying to foreigners in Japan and Korea. Even missionaries, the most subservient and non-complaining of all Westerners in the Far East, have complained of the Japanese interception of their mail."

But the heaviest blow of the system falls on the Koreans. In Korea, under the Japanese military administration, the system is not covered up, but openly practiced. Both the writer and receiver of letters objectionable to the government are punished. I know of more than

10

Saturday Evening Post, May 22, 1915.

"See W. T. Ellis, "Christianity's Fiery Trial in Korea," The Continent, June 27, 1912, pp. 896-899.

one case in which confiscation of property took place on the charge of this " treasonable crime."

This overt punishment for writing objectionable letters may be said to be another point of Japanese cleverness in the abolition of the Korean nationality. For it creates an atmosphere of fear, which suppresses almost unconsciously everything that pertains to Korean independence or nationality, or anything that intimates criticism of the Japanese administration in the peninsula. No Korean in America or in any other foreign country dare write anything in the least questionable in his letters to his friends at home, not because of himself but for the sake of those receiving them."

"See Missionary Review of the World, June, 1913, vol. 36: pp. 450-453.

T

III

PUBLICITY PROPAGANDA

I. OFFICIAL PUBLICATIONS

HERE is a remarkable similarity between the German publicity propa

ganda, as it was disclosed at the beginning of the European War, and the Japanese publicity propaganda; only the Japanese method is far subtler than the German. Fatherland, formerly published in New York, once characterized Dr. Eliot, the president emeritus of Harvard, as "Foxy Eliot," for the stand he took with regard to the belligerents. A Japanese organ would never have done this, for the Japanese have enough knowledge of American psychology to know that such an attack on one of the most venerable educators in the country would produce an effect contrary to that intended. This instance is cited to illustrate the difference between the Japanese and the German methods.

The government publishes or authorizes private concerns to publish year books, annual

reports, statistical abstracts, in foreign languages, not to inform, but to misinform the outside world. Many writers in America and Europe have paid unreserved tribute to Japan as the wisest colonial administrator of to-day.' They base their information on Report on Reforms and Progress in Chosen, an annual published in English by the Japanese administration in Korea. From the standpoint of those who know the actual condition of Korea to-day, this Japanese publication is highly amusing, for it gives the reader an impression that, all the way from Imperial Rome down to the American Commonwealth, there never was a nation so wise, just, and humanitarian to a subject people as the Japanese are to the Koreans. Indeed, the words of Colonel Cockerill have lost nothing of their force since they were penned in 1895, after the Korean Queen was murdered by the Japanese assassins.

"I decline to believe anything in the shape of news sent out by the correspondents of the Japanese newspapers," wrote the famous American correspondent. "A more flagitious and unconscionable lot of liars I have never known. As the Japanese Government exercises a strong censorship over its home press, it might be well for it to try its repressional hand upon the Jap

'See "Korea-A Tribute to Japan," Review of Reviews, 52:232-233, August, 1915.

anese sheet published in Seoul, the Kanjoshimpo, which is labouring zealously, it would seem, to bring about the massacre of foreign representatives in Korea."'

The rapid spread of the pacifist movement prior to the opening of the European War was taken advantage of by the Japanese and used effectively to shield their military ambitions and to discourage the increase of armaments in America. Eminent pacifists like David Starr Jordan visited Japan and brought back reports as to the national sentiment of the Japanese people to the effect that the ultimate aim of Japan is peace, not war; that "war talk on either side is foolish and criminal. Japan recognizes the United States as her nearest neighbour among Western nations, her best customer and most steadfast friend. For the fu

ture greatness of Japan depends on the return of the old peace with 'velvet-sandalled feet,' which made her the nation she is to-day." But if we look the facts squarely in the face despite the statement of officials and public men of Japan to the contrary, the American Peace Society of Japan, the Japan Peace Society, and many other similar organizations are nothing more than the catspaw of the Japanese national program. The actions and work of these societies have no

Quoted by McKenzie in "The Tragedy of Korea," p. 77. David Starr Jordan, “War and Waste," pp. 150-151.