e ball from one to another. We bore in
mind the golden rule: "Never agree with a man who abuses his own
country," and got on well enough.

"Japan," said a little gentleman who was a rich man there, "Japan is
divided into two administrative sides. On the one the remains of a very
strict and quite Oriental despotism; on the other a mass of--what do you
call it?--red-tapeism which is not understood even by the officials who
handle it. We copy the red tape, and when it is copied we believe that
we administer. That is a vice of all Oriental nations. We are
Orientals."

"Oh no, say the most westerly of the westerns," purred an American,
soothingly.

The little man was pleased. "Thanks. That is what we hope to believe,
but up to the present it is not so. Look now. A farmer in my country
holds a hillside cut into little terraces. Every year he must submit to
his Government a statement of the size and revenue paid, not on the
whole hillside, but on each terrace. The complete statement makes a pile
three inches high, and is of no use when it is made except to keep in
work thousands of officials to check the returns. Is that
administration? By God! we call it so, but we multiply officials by the
twenty, and _they_ are not administration. What country is such a fool?
Look at our Government offices eaten up with clerks! Some day, I tell
you, there will be a smash."

This was new to me, but I might have guessed it. In every country where
swords and uniforms accompany civil office there is a natural tendency
towards an ill-considered increase of officialdom.

"You might pay India a visit some day," I said. "I fancy that you would
find that our country shares your trouble."

Thereupon a Japanese gentleman in the Educational Department began to
cross-question me on the matters of his craft in India, and in a quarter
of an hour got from me the very little that I knew about primary
schools, higher education, and the value of an M. A. degree. He knew
exactly what he wanted to ask, and only dropped me when the tooth of
Desire had clean picked the bone of Ignorance.

Then an American held forth, harping on a string that has already been
too often twanged in my ear. "What will it be in America itself?"

"The whole system is rotten from top to bottom," he said. "As rotten as
rotten can be."

"That's so," said the Louisiana man, with an affirmative puff of smoke.

"They call us a Republic. We may be. I don't think it. You Britishers