Life at any post would be dull were it not for the little failings of the "chers collègues," which always give one something to talk of.
The Japanese are ruining the beauty of their country by their insane mania for advertising. The railways are lined with advertisements; a beautiful hillside is desecrated by a giant advertisement, cut in the turf, and filled in with white concrete. Even the ugly little streets of brown packing-cases are plastered with advertisements. The fact that these advertisements are all in Chinese characters give them a rather pleasing exotic flavour at first; that soon wears off, and then one is only too thankful not to be able to read them. They remain a hideous disfigurement of a fair land.
One large Japanese-owned department store in Tokyo had a brass band playing in front of it all day, producing an ear-splitting din. The bandsmen were little Japanese boys dressed, of all things in the world, as Highlanders. No one who has not seen it can imagine the intensely grotesque effect of a little stumpy, bandy-legged Jap boy in a red tartan kilt, bare knees, and a Glengarry bonnet. No one who has not heard them can conceive the appalling sounds they produced from their brass instruments, or can form any conception of the Japanese idea of "rag-time."
We have in this country some very competent amateurs who, to judge from the picture papers, have reduced the gentle art of self-advertisement to a science.
I think these ladies would be repaid for the trouble of a voyage to Japan by the new ideas in advertisement they would pick up from that enterprising people. They need not blow their own trumpets, like the little Jap Highlander bandsmen; they can get it done for them as they know, by the Press.
CHAPTER XI
Petrograd through middle-aged eyes—Russians very constant friends—Russia an Empire of shams—Over-centralisation in administration—The system hopeless—A complete change of scene—The West Indies—Trinidad—Personal Character of Nicholas II—The weak point in an Autocracy—The Empress—An opportunity missed—The Great Collapse—Terrible stories—Love of human beings for ceremonial—Some personal apologies—Conclusion.
I returned twice to Petrograd in later years, the last occasion being in 1912. A young man is generally content with the surface of things, and accepts them at their face value, without attempting to probe deeper. With advancing years comes the desire to test beneath the surface. To the eye, there is but little difference between electro-plate and solid silver, though one deep scratch on the burnished expanse of the former is sufficient to reveal the baser metal underlying it.