banzai (hurrah)by john paris
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World Affairs Institute
Banzai (Hurrah) by John ParisAdvocate of Peace through Justice, Vol. 88, No. 8 (AUGUST, 1926), p. 512Published by: World Affairs InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20661365 .
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512 ADVOCATE OF PEACE August
International topics and social reform
measures are particularly well reported in
this year's book. The special emphasis in
the maps and corresponding articles this
time seems to be South America and the re
publics there located.
The Confessions of a Reformer. By Fred
erick G. Howe. Pp. 352. Charles Scrib
ner's Sons, New York, 1925. Price, $3.00.
Under this courageous title, branding him
self at the outset as one of an unloved group, the author traces his course from the eco
nomic and social theories current in his boy
hood home to a disillusioned but obstinately
hopeful liberalism.
He records his strenuous and ardent ef
forts to cleanse city and State poUtics of cor
ruption. All the way along he found it neces
sary to scrap one text-book idea of govern
ment after another. Failure and mistakes,
misjudgments, and readjustment continually followed his course.
Incidentally Mr. Howe gives interesting
snap-shots of well-known public men with or
against whom he worked.
His final disillusionment he met in Paris
with Mr. Wilson in 1919. There he found
that the Americans "were amateurs, ama
teurs seeking to right the world by moralistic
appeals . . . Our motives were honest, but Europe only smiled at our
na?vet?."
The President himself, the author's one
time hero, was the last of his ideals to crum
ble and to be reappraised. He saw Mr. Wil
son at last, a man still great as an inspirer of his own people, but one who could not deal
with realities?one who finally failed be
cause he could not face failure, and there
fore sacrificed principles?because, too, he
could not bear criticism or advice.
The most interesting and thought-provok
ing element in the book is the conduct of an
honest man's mind as he meets the graft,
injustice, and greed in much of our political life. He is frank to cruelty, but never bitter.
He has no solution. He concludes with this, "I have more to learn than the time that is
left suffices for. Yet I realize that only a
beginning is possible to any man."
Virgin Spain. By Waldo Frank. Pp. 301.
Boni & Liveright, New York, 1926. Price.
$3.00.
The writer of these word pictures has not
outgrown the habit of "fine writing." It is
rhetorical prose which flows like a stream.
One is dominated by the murmur thereof;
rhythm fills the ear so that the thought is hard to catch.
Yet the little essays are colorful pictures of the south, of the many races which are
welded together to make Spain. The very
misticism of the atmosphere has its appropri ateness ad charm. From the Moors of the
south to the Basques of the north, from the
old legends and stories to the life of today,
Spain is presented, not entire, but in little
thumbnail sketches.
It is a book to read in snatches and to
dream over, not to read through at a sitting.
Banzai (Hurrah). By John Paris. Pp.313. Boni & Liveright, New York, 1926. Price,
$2.50.
The engaging rascal, on whose life story are strung the episodes of this book, is dis
tinctly drawn down to the moment when he
disappears with his benefactor's oriental curios and the story ends.
The volume is not put out as a novel.
Rather, it is the transcription, by an author
thoroughly familiar with Japan, of the remi
niscences of a demobilized Japanese, who had
been an aviator in the British army. There are obvious embroideries and additions, all
along, contributed by Mr. Paris himself?
helps to the understanding of Japanese con
ditions.
As in his two novels previously published, Mr. Paris, though evidently a lover of Japan, strips off the romance with which westerners are wont to clothe her.
By means of these experiences of a bright,
restless, unguided youth through family after
family of the lower middle classes in Japan, we are shown, with a coolness and lack of
condemnation, which is brutal or scientific, as one chooses, human and moral conditions that would be scandals in the occident.
Surely not all of Japan, nor even the best
of it, is here chronicled; but for the chosen
cross-section of it, the book is definitely con
vincing.
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