It was ours to be servants only, and joyful was the service. After forty-seven years’ close acquaintance with these people, I am unable to trace any inferiority in intellect, or any fundamental difference in human nature, character, or brain power in the Japanese, as compared with Occidentals. Being a student of history and nations, I believe in their honesty and morality. All that we did was to show the way. The capacity was already theirs. Nevertheless, as Verbeck said, “New Japan came from beyond the sea.” To an Englishman we leave the final verdict.—“New Japan is the creation of the foreign employé.” Japan’s true line of advance has really been less in exterior brilliancy than in interior reconstruction, in coöperation with her foreign helpers; and these, in overwhelming preponderance, whether of numbers or personality, have been Americans.
RESIDENCE OF TOWNSEND HARRIS AT SHIMODA (1835–1838)
MIND VERSUS MUSCLE IN GOLF
BY MARSHALL WHITLATCH
MR. WHITLATCH was a national figure in golf two or three years ago. Now he plays only once or twice a week. But his recent scores in the Knickerbocker Cup contest at the Oakland course show the results of applying his newly developed theory of play to his own game. His gross scores for the four rounds, played a week apart, were 75, 72, 77, and 73, a triumph, he considers, for his new ideas. His 72, done with a ball out of bounds, establishes the new competitive record for the course.—THE EDITOR.
GOLF and brains do not seem to assimilate. That the brains of the country are at work on this problem is amply proved by the membership-lists of the various country clubs. The handicap-lists and scores turned in by these brainy men are further evidence that golf and brains do not assimilate. The scores seem to indicate that there is a direct relation between the amount of brains used and the amount of strokes used in making a round of the course. The more brains, the more strokes.
When I try to find the cause of this state of affairs, these intellectual giants with whom I talk modestly inform me that “Golf is mental,” and they admit that the subtle mystery has thus far eluded them; but I can tell from what they leave unsaid rather than from what they voice just how determined they are to master this wonderful mentality which permeates the game of golf, and I can almost imagine their speech of dedication as they consecrate themselves to this great end.
In my own case, I have recently made a very curious discovery and have imparted the secret to a number of my friends, who have urged me to pass the word along.