their companions in misfortune. This is but human nature: "Nous avons tous asses de force pour supporter les maux d' autrui."
In the case of one important branch of modern journalism, the Japanese government has struck a blow whose results may be world-wide. When hostilities with Russia broke out in the spring of 1904, foreign newspaper men immediately flocked to Tōkyō, eager for the fray. They were politely received, they were dined, they were wined, they were taken about the Inland Sea in a yacht, and continually received assurances to the effect that they would be allowed to start for the front to-morrow or, at the latest, next week or next month. But the to-morrow was so long of coming that most of the correspondents, weary of this endless waiting, returned home angrier and possibly wiser men, though not in martial experience. Some few, who were actually granted a peep of the seat of war, found that their telegrams to the home papers were so greatly delayed in transit through Korea as to be rendered useless. Evidently, the Japanese government considers war correspondence little better than a roundabout means of assisting the enemy to a knowledge of one's own military movements. The experience of other nations, from Franco-Prussian days down to England's big bungle in South Africa, was there to instruct them; and they elected to safeguard their own troops at the risk of arousing the hostility of the foreign press, whose enormous outlay to procure war news had thus been made of none effect.
Nō. See Theatre.
Nobility. The Japanese nobility may be called very old or very new, according to the way one looks at it. In its present form, it dates from the 7th July, 1884, when the Chinese titles of kŏ, kō,[1] haku, shi, and dan, corresponding respectively to our duke (or prince), marquis, count, viscount, and baron, were
- ↑ The two kō's, though chancing to sound alike, are different words written with different Chinese characters. The first is 公 (Chinese kung), the second is 侯 Chinese hou).
