favor of the rich and influential, and the too easy reversal of criminal cases by the Supreme Court on trivial technicalities, are among the excuses given for the swift and terrible vengeance exercised by an outraged community. These are to be deplored, but they are not corrected by resort to lynch law. They are rather aggravated, and made plausible arguments for defendants in the most flagrant cases.

We must insist upon speedy and impartial trials. Every offender against the peace and dignity of the State should have the same fair trial and the same just punishment whatever his crime or color of skin. There should be no aristoc

racy in crime. A "white fiend" equally with a “black brute" should be speedily punished according to the forms of law. Racial and social lines have no place in courts of

justice.

The strength of the English government is the nation's profound respect for law. The peril of America is disrespect for the majesty of law and growing contempt for its administration. Unless there is a speedy and wholesome revival of reverence for constituted authority in this republic, we are certain to see the sad day so graphically described in the gloomy prophecy of Lord Macaulay.

One chief cause of the alarming growth of the mob-spirit is the small politics of our day-the only stock-in-trade of the little demagogue. The man who panders to class prejudice, who seeks to inflame passion, and excite hatred, and whose mock-heroic courage is displayed in coarse and vulgar denunciation, is largely responsible for the rash conduct of young men. And the newspapers that make merry over lynchings characterizing them as "neck-tie parties”—and laud the outlaws as defenders of society, are themselves educating the people to despise the decisions of the courts and to contemn the sanctions and imperatives of all law. The mob which lynches a negro charged with rape, will in a little while lynch a white man suspected of crime. That is the history of outlawry. It becomes more enraged with every outrage more infuriated with every taste of blood. The mob that riddled the body of a negro who had killed

a white man, burned his wife because she followed her husband in his flight.

Every Christian patriot in America needs to lift up his voice in loud and eternal protest against the mob-spirit that is threatening the integrity of this Republic.

CHARLES B. GALLOWAY,

Bishop of Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

Lynching, mob-spirit, lawlessness, are in the blood of our people. Not many American citizens appreciate the inviolability of the State. We are not a fully civilized people. We are becoming civilized. Some are advanced; others are backward. In many the instincts of barbarism are, though latent, suppressed by environment-in the time of incitement more powerful than the sense of citizenship.

It is ours to see to it that the work of civilizing proceedsas rapidly as possible. If we yield to the mob, if we condone or apologize for lynching or any other lawlessness under any circumstances, we make the sacrifice not only of law and life, but of civilization and all moral progress. As an evidence of the general backwardness I need only point out that only the few recognize this obvious fact. In North Carolina there has been no little formal and deliberate yielding to the lawless. Throughout the East ballot frauds have been encouraged and condoned on the ground of necessity. Within seven years the General Assembly-under Aycock-passed an act of amnesty to men who had committed political crime. Then there were the Red Shirts. Of old there was the KuKlux. For a generation in the West political protection has been vouchsafed illicit distillers. If they voted for the Republican party all they had to do was to move a little farther from the road.

These instances are of the past; they are gone, I desire to believe, forever. But I cite them for two purposes: First, to show that we are not as civilized as we think we are; second, to say that Ku-Klux, Red Shirts, political protection to ballot-stuffers and illicit distillers must inevitably weaken the State, must breed crime, must lead to mobs,

must bring forth lynching, must make for the forces of barbarism. That is what has happened.

In the long process of time our uncivilized propensities will be outgrown and eradicated. Meantime there is no cure. There is only a preventive. That preventive is sure. Its name is powder and shot-Force and Punishment: the weapons of last resort that the civilized use to check the barbaric. That is to say, lynching is to be treated like any other lawlessness.

The significant fact of recent experience in North Carolina is that the Commonwealth has reached the point where its people demand-mark the word—that their officers shall use powder and shot and their courts shall punish to the extent of the law. This means that North Carolina has taken a great stride forward; and that the number of lynchings will rapidly diminish. Never in our history has there been a more wholesome rousing of public spirit than that which the Salisbury crime provoked. The crime cost us dearly; but the compensation was quick and full. Next time a mob attacks a jail in North Carolina blood will flow. After that the Law will "ride on prosperously" in this Commonwealth. J. W. BAILEY,

Editor of the Biblical Recorder.

The "Fineness" of Japanese Poetry

BY STANHOPE Sams,

Literary Editor of the Columbia State

The poetry of Japan must eventually command the consideration of all students of literature, not only for its own value, but because it is undoubtedly the most original and, therefore, the most characteristic product of Japanese intellect. Mr. Basil Hall Chamberlain, in his preface to "The Classical Poetry of Japan," says: "The one original product of the Japanese mind is the native poetry. So remarkable a fact should of itself suffice to gain for the poetry of this people the first place in the attention of those who make Japan and Japanese the special object of their investigations." One can hardly agree with this fine scholar in his view that the native poetry is the sole "original product" of the mind of Japan; but, even with this quality to recommend it, and nothing more, the poetry of the Japanese would be worthy of our close consideration. There is, it seems to me, very much more in the native poetry than originality, great as is that charm; for it is, in common with the poetry of other peoples, a reflection of the life and moods and spirit of the race, and it is, besides, the finest example we have in all literature of the art of selection, compression, phrasing-the art of packing "infinite riches in a little room."

I wish to consider here, however, only one of the qualities of the poetry of Japan, of the briefest forms of that poetryits fineness, the fineness of jewel-work, its marvelous selective art, its feminine and perfect delicacy. Although the Japanese poetry may justly claim high rank because of its grace and beauty of form and its chastity of expression, yet by reason of its fineness it occupies a unique and noble station in universal literature.

In an illuminating confession, Jane Austen compared her own minute and finished method of writing to the work of an artist that paints with infinite patience upon two-inches' breadth of ivory. The comparison implies painstaking and

elaborate attention to details, and it suggests supreme closeness of observation and delicacy and fineness of craftsmanship. And this self-drawn portrait of our finest novelist, who, to use another of her phrases, was fine for herself alone, suggests also the infinitely fine art of Japan. For the most part, Japanese art demands no greater space than this two inches' breadth of ivory. Its paintings, its statutes, its poetry are all in miniature not as we work, constructing great clusters of brilliants, but each product a single and a tiny gem.

We are accustomed to think of the Japanese as "little," but as we come to know them better and learn what they are and what they have achieved, that impression of smallness fades; the race emerges out of the mists of tradition and prejudice, and we see that, spiritually, they are among the large peoples of the earth, with "the thews of Anakim, the pulses of a Titan's heart." This impression of littleness is doubtless due to this chief characteristic of Japanese art, which is always in miniature. "Be brief" was the perfect counsel of Shakspere, as it was of Basho, the prophet and priest of brevity in Japanese poetry, hundreds of years before. Our art prefers a great spaciousness in which to execute its conceptions. It craves blocks of marble, the granite slopes of mountains, vast stretches of canvas, and the long stately flow of epics. But now and then appears a soulascetic, content to bound a part of his life within a square foot of canvas; or one that discovers that beauty may dwell within an inch of ivory as delightedly as in a block of marble; or one who finds a single poignant lyric cry adequate to carry a message from one soul to the soul of the race. Among these geniuses of repression are the rare artists of Japan.

The little paintings and the diminutive statutes have had and will always have, let us hope, a liberal appreciation; but the little songs of Japan have hardly yet reached us, so fine and clear and tenuous is their music.

The Japanese are by nature artistic-one of the three inherently artistic peoples, the two others being the ancient Greeks and the modern French. And their art is intimately associated with their life, goes deep into the soul of it. It is