became nervous and desirous of severing the relationships with the foreigners as soon as possible.  In the case of corporate ownership the trustees began to make assumptions of absolute ownership, regardless of the moral claims of the donors of the funds.  In the earlier days of the trouble frequent conferences on the question were held by the missionaries of the American Board with the leading Christians of the Empire, and their constant statement was, “Do not worry; trust us; we are samurai and will do nothing that is not perfectly honorable.”  So often were these sentiments reiterated, and yet so steadily did the whole management of the Doshisha move further and further away from the honorable course, that finally the “financial honor of the samurai” came to have an odor far from pleasant.  A deputation of four gentlemen, as representatives of the American Board, came from America especially to confer with the trustees as to the Christian principles of the institution, and the moral claims of the Board, but wholly in vain.  The administration of the Doshisha became so distinctly non-Christian, to use no stronger term, that the mission felt it impossible to co-operate longer with the Doshisha trustees; the missionary members of the faculty accordingly resigned.  In order to secure exemption from the draft for its students the trustees of the Doshisha abrogated certain clauses of the constitution relating to the Christian character of the institution, in spite of the fact that these clauses belonged to the “unchangeable” part of the constitution which the trustees, on taking office, had individually sworn to maintain.  Again the Board sent out a man, now a lawyer vested with full power to press matters to a final issue.  After months of negotiations with the trustees in regard to the restoration of the substance of the abrogated clauses, without result, he was on the point of carrying the case into the courts, when the trustees decided to resign in a body.  A new board of trustees has been formed, who bid fair to carry on the institution in accord with the wishes of its founders and benefactors, as expressed in the original constitution.  At one stage of the proceedings the trustees voted magnanimously, as they appeared to think, to allow the missionaries of the Board to live for fifteen years, rent free, in the foreign houses connected with the Doshisha; this, because of the many favors it had received from the Board!  By this vote they maintained that they had more than fulfilled every requirement of honor.  That they were consciously betraying the trust that had been reposed in them is not for a moment to be supposed.

It would not be fair not to add that this experience in Kyoto does not exemplify the universal Japanese character.  There are many Japanese who deeply deplore and condemn the whole proceeding.  Some of the Doshisha alumni have exerted themselves strenuously to have righteousness done.