Page:A wandering student in the Far East vol.1 - Zetland.djvu/48

20 community. It is true that many of the best men in Japan are now entering or have already entered the commercial lists, and are showing themselves worthy of the best traditions of the West; but it is equally true that the country is sending forth vast numbers of small traders who reflect only too clearly the status of their kind of pre-restoration days, and whose procedure in neutral markets is fast pinning to their country's traders the title of the pedlars of the East. Pedlary in itself may be an honourable trade, but pedlary fraught with petty fraud and supported by devices which debauch the commercial standards of the West, brings little but obloquy upon the country's name and fame, and provides an only too obvious cause for the enemy to blaspheme. "The barrier of a low morality," to make use of the words of Baron Shibusawa once more, "is by far stronger than that of bad laws"; and I hold that he is the better friend of Japan who makes candid confession of such shortcomings as are thrust within the radius of his view, rather than the plausible advocate who, by ignoring or denying all