Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: chapter Section 4chapter Section 5 PREFACE In the Preface to his illuminating volume 'The Japanese Nation: Its Land and Its People,' Dr. Inazo Nitobe explains concisely the circumstances which led to its publication: ' The idea of sending public men of note unofficially from this country to Japan and from Japan to the United States, owes its inception to Mr. Hamilton Holt of New York City. When his plan had been developed to a certain degree of feasibility, the task of carrying it into effect was accepted by President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University, in whose hands the idea took the more practical, if the less ambitious, form of an exchange professorship, and he interested certain typical universities to join in putting it into effect. After the enterprise was fairly launched, the responsibility for its continuance was passed on to, and made a part of, the work of the Carnegie Peace Endowment.' It may be added that one form of the work of this Endowment is an effort, by Exchange Professorships, or Lectureships, to make the different peoples better acquainted with one another, and to lay the foundations of international peace in international knowledge. Ignorance is the prolific source of race prejudice and hostility; it creates the conditions which make race bigots, light minded public men, and irresponsible newspapers dangerous foes to the highest interests of the world. Dr. Nitobe was happily chosen as the first Exchange Professor from Japan, and his addresses delivered in six representative universities and before learned and popular organizations were listened to with great in terest; and, published in book form by Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, present an interpretation of the Japanese people at once deeply interesting and authoritative. It was the...
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