WHITE GEISHAS-NE- W SOURCE OF ALARM "EAST OF SUEZ"Vigorous Protests Against Exhibitions of Dancing by

Women in the A Danger to Prestige,on Depends the Tranquillity of

V" Colonial Possessions in

0 "X.

Bayadere of

n. r. n .LirnMiu i:.Maud Allan, to whom we

WHEN tlie vogue of thosesouls," In which Jewels

iccm to take the place ofclothes, first nnnouneed her Intention ofundertaking n professional tour throuKhthe Orient n storm of protest wasraked 1 nil reputable white people

lio were living "Hast of Suez'' or whohad resided there In the past. The no-tion of a woman of their race n whiteunman- - publicly posturing In n state

almost complete nudity for the en-tertainment of natives was revolting tothem to the last degree, nnd appealwere made to the British authorities InIndia and the Malay Peninsula, to theFrench administrators of Indo-Chln- a

ind to the foreign envoys and consulsIn China, Japan nnd Slam to prevent atill cots her Salome performances, ButIt feems that although the officials thusInvoked were anxious to Interfere theyvere powerless to do so.

Encouraged by her example, nn Engl-ish ulrl. who for three or four years

a? employed as governess to the chil-dren of the Japanese Viceroy of Coren.

pplied In the early part of Decemberlat to the municipal office at Yokohamafor a license as a geisha, or dunclnggirl There was some delay about granti-ng it, owing to the fact that no suchrcipi-- st hail ever been made by a whiteK'unian before, and In the meantimeKntthsh and Americans In Japan whohad learned of the affair brought everytort nf pressure to bear upon the youngwoman to Induce her to abandon herproject, offering not only to pay hertare back to Kngland but to give her a

, um of money besides If she would sailfor home, lint she was deaf to their

rpiim-nt- s and entreaties, and finallyuc reded in obtaining her license from

the Yokohama police authorities, whichtears the date of December 16, 1!13.

The geisha, as everybody know, Isthe professional dancing and singingflrl of Da! Nippon, the counterpart ofthe hsyptlan nlme, and of the nautehees and bayaderes of India, Foreignwriters from l'lerre Lotl downwardhae sought to endow the go In ha with

halo of poetry nnd romance, nnd aparticularly charming operetta of theCllWt and Sullivan order, entitled "TheOlsha " has rendered her name to

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Mewat (India).

familiar and attractive to the theatre- -going public that her distinctive garbhas become n fnvorlte costume for youngwomen nt fancy dress entertainmentsIn this country nnd In Europe.

Hut the fact of the matter is tint therole of geisha Is but one remove abovethat of those women so Justly describedas "unfortunate." The latter Indeed ateIn some respects better otT. For theyare segregated In a portion of the cityor town restricted exclusively to theiruse and euphemistically styled the

or Flower Gnrden. There, secluded from public view, they can In nmeasure hide their shame, whereas thedancing and singing girl has to go here,there and everywhere In t espouse tothe summons of men who wish to hireher to promote gnyety nt their feastsand banquets.

The mission of the geishas Is to ren-der the entertainment a success by Inducing the men to drink nnd It-- merry.to amuse them by their songs ns well nsby their dancing nnd contortions thatarc expressive rather than eloquent nndwhich are apt to degenerate ns theguesta become Influenced by the goodcheer nnd by the sake cup to east re-

straint to the winds. It must be bornein mind that all dancing In the OrientIs lascivious In Its origin even the re-ligious dancing. Contact with Westerncivilization has had the effect of Impos.Ing a certain curb upon Its public mani-festation of this character, which Itmust 1c admitted the Japanese Govern-ment has done Its best to discourage.But the authorities do not attempt toInterfere with any dancing or singing atfunctions given at private residences orat the ten houses and the entertainmentoffered by the geishas on these occaslons too often shows a tendency tohark back In a manner scarcely calculated to commend Itself to Mrs. Grundy

The geisha has nothing In commonwith the Japanese mires. Whereasthe latter Is trained to become an ndeptin the dramatic art, the singing anddancing girl Is trained, like the nauteheeof India, solely with a view to afford pastime and amusement to men forhire. It Is this and the lascivious originof Oriental dancing, to which 1 have alluded above, that cause the calling ofthe dancing girl throughout the Hunt to

THE SUN, SUNDAY, MARCH 1, 1914.

WhiteOrient

WhichAsia

take ho very low a place In the socialHcale,

It Is true that occasionally a geishahas been so fortunate as to escape fromher sorry and degrading servitude bymarriage to some noble or statesman.But such cases are not frequent andthey are regarded In Japan much In thesame way as analogous mesalliancesare looked upon In Great Britain andon the Continent of Kurope. Nor dothey serve to redeem the very lowesteem In which the dancing girl Is heldthroughout the length and breadth ofAsia.

If I have painted the lot of the geisha,In far darker colors than the ordinarywriter nbout Japan, who but too oftenIs n mere tourist; If 1 have robbed herof the glamour with which she has liecnsurrounded In portruyala of this char-acter, It Is In order to explain the In-

dignation nnd even the horror arousedamong the reputable foreign element InJapan by the action of this young Eng-lish In taking out a policelicense nt Yokohama as a dunclng girl.The visitation of Maud Allan with hertinlumc performances was bud enoughIn nil conscience, but It was of fleet-ing nnd ephemeral character. This Eng-

lish geisha lias taken her place as apermanent Institution and It Is to lefeared that her example will be followedby others of her kind to the furtherdetriment of the prestige of the whiteraces In the Orient.

Nowhere Is the position of the whitewoman more delicate than "east ofSuez." The Asiatic entertains little orno respect for women, whom he regardsfor the most part ns creatures of an al-

together Inferior order, devoid of muchIntelligence, resembling brutes In lielng

without a soul. It U a matter ofe.v-trem- e

difficulty to bring any untrnvelledOriental to comprehend the deferencewhich the men of civilized nations payto women.

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Cop) right. Is 11. 1.) l)iiUeruuol& Underwood.

The latter In Ills eyes are solely fittedto act as the handmaiden, nay, even asthe slave, of the stronger sex. The,native woman Is fortunate Indeed If shecan secure the sort of contemptuousliking nnd pitying Indulgence withwhich men are accustomed to regardpet untmals. In many of the Asiaticcountries the birth of a girl Is evenlooked upon as a cause for regret andfur lamentation, and the mortality ofInfants of tho weaker sex throughoutAsia, more especially In China, is elo-quent of Indifference to 'their existence.

Perhaps the most amusing Illustra-tion of the contempt which men In theOrient entertain for their women Is tobe found In that story current through-out the Moslem world, according towhich Eve was fashioned, not fromthe rib of Adam, but from the tall ofii dog, that Is to say, of the animalwhich Is regarded by the Koran asranking next In unciennllncsa to thehog tho dog --being the scavenger

Ir excellence of Asiatic cities, townsand villages. It seems that Allah, hav-ing cut out the rib from Adam, had laidIt on tho ground beside him, while

in sewing tip the wound made bythe excision, A pariah dog hap-pened along and, catching sight of therib, snapped It up and bolted therewith,Allah In hot pursuit.

Allah had difficulty in catching thedog. He finally succeeded, however. Inclutching the animal's tall, with suchvigor that It remained In his hand,tho dog escaping with his booty, Allah,

A typical geisha.

accordingly, resolved to make the bestof a bud Job, und used the parluh dog'stall. In lieu of Adam's rib, for thopurpose of constructing Dame Eve. Itis to this canine origin of the Motherof Mankind that the restlessness ofwomen Is oscrltied. They can no morube kept motionless than can a dog'stall be prevented from wngglng.

White women In the Orient havetherefore always had a very difficult roleto play In order to command that re-spect, that regard for their delicacy offeeling und for their sentiments of

to which they have been ac-

customed nt home, it has been a mostarduous task to impress upon the mindof the oriental thi.l the white womenwere entitled to a treatment superiorto that which ho was accustomed to ac-

cord his own womenkind. If thistins been accomplished It Is because oftho cure which the whlto woman has ob-

served with regard to her conduct.She realized that the prestige not only

of the whlto woman but of the entirewhile nice was Involved, nod that Ifshe contributed In any way to Impairthat prestige her position In the Orientwould become Intolerable, She

tho fact that im a whitewoman she was necessarily In tho llmo-lig- ht

as fur at) the natives were con-cerned, under constant observation andscrutiny, and conducted herself accord-ingly, Indeed, Have In certain In-

stances, of which more anon, the whltowoman hns until now succeeded Inmaintaining a remarkable umouut of re-

spect pn tho part of tho natives, whonever dreamt of considering her In thosame light us their own womenkind.

llut this privileged position, won withso much trouble by tho whlto woman Intho Orient, Is terribly endangered byexhibitions there such as those of MaudAllan, In her tiulomo dancing, and bytho appearance of a young English-woman, presumably of education andtherefore of enlightenment, In the ranksof those dancing girls of Japan,It will doubtless not bo long ero whitewomen will be found sufficiently lost toall pride of race and sense, of proprietyto enroll themselves among the nautchgirls and bayaderes of India.

There Is nothing In the existing lawsof the great Asiatic empire of GeorgeV, to prevent anything of that kind.Bui when that time com It will bo wellfor the British officials and merchantsIn India to send their wives ond theirdaughters home, since their position will

become not merely Intolerable but evendangerous, deprived as they will he ufthe privileged position and of the re-spect which they now enjoy among thehundreds of millions of natives of everycaste and creed.

There has only been one black spot Inthe record of the white woman In theEast. Fortunately, It Is an evil of arestricted character, which neverthelesrequires brief mention. It Is the pres-ence of establishments of the characterknown as "disorderly" nnd tenanted ex-clusively by white women nt Shanghaiand at other important seaports InChina, Japan, Cochin-Chin- a und In, Ha,He, That white women should be foundto ply such ii trade In the Orient Is dis-graceful nnd abhorrent. The only re-deeming feature about them Is that thecestablishments are rigorously barred tonatives and thut the Inmates, with somesense of shame, remain In seclusion nndout of sight.

Until six or seven years ago the Amer-ican concession at Shanghai was theparticular stamping ground of thesewomen, who hoasted of plying their tradethere and In the other Chinese treatyports under the Stars and Stripes. President Tnft had heard about this scandalwhen In the Philippines nnd on becom-- ,Ing President appointed to the highestJudicial position In the consular courtsof China, Japan and Slum a Judge whomade It his business to send ull thokeepers nnd Inmates of the disorderlyhou-e- s situated within the limits of the

American concessions to Jail and to de-prive them thenceforth of the protec-tion of old Glory.

If the white people in the Orient areso Jealous of their prestige und o ap-prehensive of everything calculated toImpair It It Is because they know farbetter than uny one nt home the extentto which the United Stutes and severalof the great Towers of Kurope are de-pendent thereon for the retention oftheir great colonial possessions in thatpart of the world. It Is this prestigethis belief of tho Oriental In the supe-riority of the white races that alonerenders it possible for England, withthe ridiculously small force of barely70,000 wlilte troops, to hold In subjectionthe 300,000,000 of natives of India, manyof them of warrior race and bitterlyaverse to British rule.

There ore few Asiatics more fanaticor whose hatred of white people Is moreintense than those of Indo-Chln- wheremore than 60,000,000 aro kept undercontrol by barely 20,000 French troops;while a mere handful of American sol-diers are, thanks to 'this same prestigeof the white In the eyes of the duskyraces of thu Orient, sufficient to main-tain order among thu millions of Malaysinhabiting tho near 4,000 Islands thatgo 'to make up the Philippine Archi-pelago, hot this prestige disappear andtho retention of alt these dependenciesby mere force will bo a matter of Im-possibility and ho rule of the white Intho Orient will quickly become n thingof the past.

It Is on this account that the shiftlesswhites the genus known In tho South-ern Stntes of America as "white trash"

aro n source of such constant troubleand concern to the white residents Inthe East. The whlto pariah Is Indeedone of the most difficult problems bywhich tho great Towers owning colonialpossessions In Asia are confronted. ItIs a problem that has come home to theUnited States since tho latter has addedthe Philippines to Its possessions.

Some years ago the late Dr. Burr, theeminent specialist for diseases of thumind, called public attention here to thecase of an American millionaire who,severing his ties from the land of hisbirth, had taken up his abode In Japan,where ho consorted, not with the edu-cated classes, but with theWanlns, or people of the most degradedand lowest type, whose mode of exist-ence differs hut slightly from that of thobrute beast and who are accustomed to

Naurch girl of

perform those kinds of labor which noone else In the Orient will undertake forfear of contamination and loss of caste.In India, too, there are hundreds of de-generate Europeans, who partly In con-sequence of mere shlftlessness und In-

ability to earn a livelihood nnd partlyIn consequence of Ignoble tastes undmodes of life ally themselves with themost degraded und lowest classes of na-tives, Hie very contact of whose mereshadow Is regarded by the high casteHindu as a defilement.

A few of these white outcasts, likethe American millionaire mentioned byDr. Barr us living a life of abominationin Japan, are well to do nnd owe'.thelr

Reflections of a Retired Hod CarrierATl'ItALLY. 1 suppose," said a"N' prosperous retired hodcarrler,

"the thing tint strikes memost about the present day hurry upway of doing things Is the hodelevutor,with which they carry up bricks undmortar to the masons lit work on a newbuilding.

"In my day ull the mortar und brickswere carried In hods on men's shoulders,and u man's Job that was, too. MostlyIrish the hodenrrlers were then, anda line, n bin lody of men they were, too,though t say it, who belong to the samerace; but thole nre few, If nny. Irishhodenrrlers now The most of tnoseold timers who once carried up thebricks and mortar und dug the trenchesfor tho city's gas and water mainsgraduated sooner or later into otherwoik mote profitable. Their sons tookup various other businesses, pursuitsand professions nnd came to be therulers of the town.

"In those days most buildings wereof three or four stories, a few were car-ried up to six, which wiih a tall buildingthen. But whatever the height of thebuilding, the bricks and mortar werenil carried up ladders In hods on theshoulders of men, and, as I said before,to carry the hod was a man's Job,

"The hodcarrler stood up his hodbeside a barrel on the ground and filledIt, say, with bricks, n heavy load. Filled,he lifted It to hi shoulder and kiln needIt thcie, nicely; nnd then deliberatelyhe marched for the ladder.

"To many people the work of climb-ing a ladder Is difficult; what shall wesay of climbing with a heavy load onyour hack? But the hodcarrler didthat nil day; made a day's work of It.and he would climb to the scaffolding Infront of the sixth story of a building,keeping going all the tlmo without stop-ping.

"But now? Why, the day of the hod-

carrler Is gone. On low buildings ofsuy two stories, or mnybe on some littlebuilding where nnother way wouldn'tpay, men do still carry the hod; but onmost buildings of over two stories theyput III n hod elevator nnd snake thebricks and mortar up In n Jiffy. Whilethere aro some hod elevutors fitted withrucks in which hods carried In can beset to be hoisted, in most of them thebricks nnd mortur nre carried up onwheelbarrows. So now not only hashodcarrylng largely censed but thehod Itself has largely given way to thewheelbarrow.

"In a building under construction you(Inil two sets of wheelbarrow men, oneon the ground and thu other up at thestory wliere the bricklaying Ih going on.The ground men load their barrows

Newur (India).

moral und social downfall solely to theirevil tnstes. llut the majority have beenreduced to the condition by want, con-sequent upon a disinclination to workfor an honest livelihood. They are asource of incalculable Injury to whltoprestige In the Orient, n problem whichhas thus far defied all the efforts of theEuropean and American authorities tosolve In nny satisfactory manner.

Until now they have been, however,the only problem of the kind. Fromhenceforth, If white women arc to enterthe lists of the dancing girls, of thegeishas and of the nautchees, therewill be the additional problem of thewhite female purlah east of Suez.

with bricks or mortar and roll themonto the platform of the elevator In thebuilding, and clang goes a bell and theengineer nt the donkey engine In thestreet shoots that elevator up fasterthan any passenger elevator runs, bangto the top, whole men nre waiting toroll the loaded barrows to the brick-layers and other men are walling to rollempty barrows on. Then clang goesthe bell again and the engineer dropsthut elevator to the ground, where menare waiting to roll the empty barrowsoff anil till them and other men nrewaiting to loll loaded barrows on,

"And so they keep the hod elevatorund the wheelbarrow men hummingand humping. No more calling downfiom the bricklayers up above for '.Mori'mort" 'More brtik" What you hearnow Is the c hoo-- i hoo-- i

of that engine In the streetrunning the hod elevator. In those days,when land i so valuable and everyweek of tenting time eoiints. when theystart to put up n building they put it upquick; they let no bricklayer wait formortar und hi Ick.

"i if course the hodcarrler had to go,no man that ever lived could carry ahod up a twenty or thirty story build-ing, or if he could he wouldn't want to.und anyway they couldn't wait for him.so tho hod elevator had to come, Andstill to me. as think back to otherdays, there Is nothing In use at thepresent time thut shows so strikinglythe differences between old ways nndnew,"

Unhealed TaxisY principal objection to riding"M In public hacks In the coldmonths," declared a man vvho

usually prefers taxis and cabs to thosubway nnd suif.ice cats, "is dun to thfact thut the owners of such hacks makescant provisions to keep .their passen-gers warm and protected from the win-

try blasts."Apparently that nuisance will be nb-v- ia

ted this year, for In look ng over thunew public hnik ordinance which Is nowIn effect I noticed a provision wi lehcovered the subject. The provision readslike this: 'No owner, driver or otherperson shall penult to be operated ordrive u public hack for hire unless suchhack contains it clean, heavy robe upontho Inside, for the use of passengers,during the months of November. De-

cember, January February and Marchof each year.'

"I guess that piovisioii sounds goodto persons who have been In the habitof riding In UinIs In the winter andfreezing."

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