The failure of the world to understand what Shantung means to China and the failure of Japan to understand that they cannot for many years stand out against the indignation of the entire world in continuing to keep Shantung is one of the great spiritual failures of the Far East in our century.
The second great failure is the tragic failure of an entire race of people; that of the Ainu Indians of Japan.
It is a pathetic thing to see a human race dying out; coming to "The End of the Trail." But I was determined to see them, in spite of the fact that people told me I would have to travel from one end of Japan to the other; and then cross four hours of sea before I got to Hokkaido, the most northern island of Japan, where lived the tattered remnants of this once noble race.
The name of this dying race is pronounced as if it were spelled I-new with a long I.
These are the people who inhabited Japan before the present Japanese entered the land from Korea and drove them, inch by inch, back and north and west across Japan. It was a stubborn fight, and it has lasted many centuries; but to-day they have been driven up on the island of Hokkaido, that northern frontier of Japan where the overflow of Japan is pouring at the rate of four thousand a year, making two million to date and only about fifty thousand of them Ainus.
"Are they like our American Indians in looks, since their history is so much like them?" I asked my missionary friend.
"Wait until you see them, and decide for yourself. I know very little about American Indians."
So one morning at three o'clock, after traveling for two days and nights from one end of Japan to the other, and then crossing a strait between the Japan Sea and the Pacific Ocean to the island, we climbed from our train, and landed in a little country railroad station.
It was blowing a blizzard, and the snow crashed into our faces with stinging, whip-like snaps.
I was appointed stoker for the small stove in the station while the rest of the party tried to sleep on the benches arranged in a circle, huddled as close as they could get to the stove.