The following delightful description of Germany’s greatest festival, the Emperor’s birthday, has been given me by Professor Hugo Münsterberg of Harvard University:
When I look backward to my boyhood days in Germany and ask myself from what sources my young patriotism was steadily supplied, I cannot value highly enough the influence of the patriotic celebrations in my school and my native town. The dearest memory belongs to the Emperor’s birthday. I know quite well that the present Emperor was born in January; but when I hear the word “Emperor’s birthday,” it still always awakes in me first the date of the 22d of March—the old Emperor’s day.
Long before, the school planned everything for the grand day; patriotic and religious music, songs and patriotic declamations by the younger pupils, short dramatic plays with motives from German history, given by the older boys, and always an enthusiastic oration by one of the teachers. In Sunday clothes we gathered in the school; everything was decorated with flowers and garlands and flags, and the whole school continuously, year by year, was lifted up in a common pride and enthusiasm. Two or three of the happiest morning hours were devoted to the celebration, and the jubilant hurrah for the beloved Emperor at the end of the historic oration was the only sound of the day.
Then we streamed out into the decorated streets, enjoyed the picturesque parades and went to the concert at the market-place, where patriotic marches kindled our youthful emotions. The afternoon belonged to parties at home, where school friends gathered and enjoyed their games with a historic flavor and the chocolate with a patriotic abundance of cakes. Quiet, mellow days they were, and any loud noise would have appeared to us boys as a desecration of the festivity; and yet the loyalty which I stored up in those March days of my boyhood still supplies me amply when I have, year for year on the 27th of January, to make my Emperor’s birthday orations to the German-Americans.
An interesting account of the manner in which Japan celebrates her fêtes was kindly written for me by his Excellency Viscount Aoki, recently Japanese Ambassador to the United States:
In Japan we have three great national holidays. They are November 3d, the present Emperor’s birthday; New Year’s Day; and February 11th, the Day of the Accession of the Emperor Jimmu, the first ruler of the Empire of Japan.
An illustration of the Emperor’s birthday celebration in Japan will be sufficient to give a general idea as to how our national holidays are celebrated at home, for there is little difference in the way of its celebration between the above-named three holidays, except in minor details:
On the Emperor’s birthday all offices, schools, banks, and large business houses are closed. The national flag is hoisted on all public buildings, schools, and on most of the private houses all over the country. High dignitaries, both civil and military, who are present in the capital, proceed to the Palace of Tokio to present before the throne their congratulations for the occasion, while those in the country and abroad send their congratulatory messages by mail through the Minister for the Imperial Household. In every school all over the country the day is observed in a form appropriate to the occasion. One hundred and one salutes are fired from every fort in the empire. The imperial review of the army is in regular order of the celebration of the day, when hundreds of thousands of the enthusiastic public gather around the drill-ground and all along the imperial route to cheer their august and beloved sovereign and to witness the glorious military parade of the day, while all of his Majesty’s ships fire twenty-one salutes (otherwise known as the national salute) and appear in full dress. The Emperor entertains in the palace at breakfast all the foreign representatives and high dignitaries of the empire.
And now let us listen to what some of our prominent Americans, whose patriotism none can assail, have to say about our present-day observance. First “Mark Twain,” in whose heart of hearts the small boy is enshrined, and who certainly would not needlessly curtail even one of his little pleasures. Does he approve of our day of “burning” patriotism? No; for he has written to me: