LAST DITCH OF DEMOCRACY - Majority Rights

ut even that may not recommend it. I should quite plainly propose to
give Guam to the Japanese in return for one set of color and sound films
of the 300 best Noh dramas.
The films could not be delivered all at once, so we would not need to
give up Guam all at once.
We Americans are, or were, as you probably know, considered a set of
soulless roughnecks, by most of the outer world. Of course we are not,
but fact and opinion differ so often in this imperfect world.
Of late there has been added to our portrait a touch, a, eh TOUCH of
hysteria. Old blokes like me begin to wonder where all the Dan’l Boones
and Davy Crocketts have got to.
Americans are supposed to run wode at reports of Martian invaders.
Well now, I don’t suppose more than two or three chaps ran out and
committed hara-kiri at the news of those parachutists from Mars.
You may think I am joking about this Guam proposition. I am not. I ask
the impartial auditor whether the individual American citizen wouldn’t
get a great deal MORE out of a set of such films as I saw, the one I saw
in Washington two years ago, than he would out of a few tons of
tungsten, with possibly a few family coffins thrown in. It would mean,
and I admit it would mean, getting educated up to the point of knowing
what is meant by Kumasaka and Kagekiyo.
The film I saw was of Awoi no Uye. The Japanese would be truly
grateful to us, not for Guam, but for prodding ’em on to make a
complete high grade record of these plays before the tradition gets
damaged.
Umewaka Minoru is dead. I have heard discs of Noh music that did
NOT seem to me up to the mark. It is never too soon to start on such
records. And for the American auditor who doesn’t yet know what I am