VIII
Only a decade or two ago, it was on its highest phenomenon. Money flourished among people. They bought as they wanted to buy. They went wherever they wanted to go. They used those plastic materials as their life convenience needed to have and they were produced and sold limitless to reach its highest evil, air pollution on the globe environments. These so many features that have appeared all over the world within this only a few decades of time without being much realized by themselves. I am rather optimistic on those phenomenon as a spiritual creature. I now feel that it will soon be over and replaced by a new age on this earth with its philosophical sentiments by everyone of them for their own survival. They, the human beings will reach their highest point of their evil incarnation at the height of their avarice for money. The money itself is the material thing, coins or notes, or nowadays, it may well all be replaced by the electro-operated network flowing items including the electro-photographic mortgage. They are all the products, produced by human beings for their life conveniences. Let’s remember once it happened, for example, the War-Time Bond in Japan issued by the Army Administration, and even the children were also forced to purchase through school teacher’s recommendation, they turned to be nothing in value all of a sudden when the war ended on August 15th 1945. Nobody would take its responsibility for the redemption. All turned to be garbage or some monumental decorations framed and hung on the wall. Thereafter, people who feared those phenomenon, they changed the method of keeping their fortune to precious metals, like gold or platinum. What will happen all the agricultural products crop becoming decreasing because of the climate changes or the system that enables to produce them by human power would reach its height of impossibility because of the disappearance of famers? Those material things mentioned above cannot turn themselves to be the foodstuffs that human being can eat to fill their hungry stomach. For its saving of money, the return, nowadays, is very limited. People cannot live on interest of the savings only because of its extremely low rate now being offered from the saving banks.
Japan seems to have elapsed its age for about thirty years under the Heisei era being saturated in the mood of its trend that became the fashionable phrase, 忖度（conjecture）,the sentiments with which people were driven to their mezzanine where everybody lost words of criticism even if some phenomenon appears before them, for example, the ill proceedings of company governance and the TV watchers have for all the occasions been much annoyed to watch the sights. The top VIP executives make deep bows and say, “We are really sorry. Deeply apologize for the troubles caused by our services. The mistakes such as this time happened would never repeated again with our full fledged efforts.” These company executives would not feel humiliation which the people of Japan used to do decades ago. For these thirty years, they have forgotten self criticizing or resentment and nobody tended to take responsibility for their mistakes. That is what I have had impression felt of the society movements by watching TV news or listening to the radio broadcasting for only a few weeks staying in Japan. To notice such uncomely incidents as these shameful apology making scenes, I must be persuaded that the Japanese people’s morality ethic has changed. Corporate governance has been driven into its bottom. It must not be only in this country, Japan. All over the world, people, whether they are engaged in business or politics, as well as those concerned with medical affairs, just any kind of people have been tended to be spoiled by the economic avarice syndrome. On the contrary, dignity disappeared. In order to keep one’s personal reliability, one has to make any excuse or explicit protest if any suspicious claim raised on his or her deed with persuasive reasonability or accountability. Nowadays, these procedures seem to be replaced by arrangement with shifts of staffs creating disappearances of the persons concerned from the site of the incidents. If one is responsible for such irregularity, one has to make compensation in any forms. Everyone is watching the TV or listening to the radio and children are not exception. Education programs at any nation must reconsider about that. Children must learn the justice as they grow up.
When I was young, I was able to make criticism on those irrational matters by writing stories with affluent latencies included in the contents. On them, I had to face so many attacks of criticism or ill talking by the rival writers or publishers. One of the good examples, that I now remember was a remorseful incident on my novel, Cakes and Ale, when the manuscript pages brought to the publisher Wm. Heinemann, where Hugh Walpole was the Chairman of the Selection Committee. When he started to read the contents of the story, having them taken out and,at home, in his bed, he immediately imagined that Alroy Kear, the characteristic writer appearing at the first stage, I, the writer, meant the model being him, (Hugh Walpole) and his annoyance reached its highest repulsion. The next morning, he rang A.S. Frere of Heinemann and cried out his feeling of agony and told him not to bring this book into publication. As I denied it in the Preface of Cakes and Ale, it was not him, so I tried to dodge his protest, on the spot, when the attack aimed me at. Contrary, I made an explanation that the model of Alroy Kear was the composite of some writers including myself. And, often, some of them, might have possessed of such unfavorable characters as that of arrogant sentiment shown openly when they were in the position to give selection and/or recommendation of the books written by the writers who wanted to publish their books. Alroy Kear was to be said to have the similar habit when he did the job.
In Cakes and Ale, there mentioned ‘…..he used to take them to lunch at his club and through his ingratiating behavior making sure that the review of the next book was couched in much more friendly tones.’
If Hugh Walpole read the manuscripts, and thought the model was him, that means, he himself recognized the similar character as Alroy Kear. At any rate, I was not unwilling to make a kind of apology if my writing gave him such unfavorable impression of him, and he once reached the reconciliation for that, however, the indurative feeling seems to have lingered within him till he died. He once tried to plot the revenge to me by hiring the famous novelist in America, Elinor Mordaunt who wrote the story, Gin and Bitters that told the accurate account of my travels, setting the background on the South Seas stories. Of, course, I made a forceful protest not to be published, and the publication was limited within American market. Oddly enough, on this protest, Hugh Walpole also joined me. It was because he himself feared that people might think Elinor Modaunt was a pseudonym of his. There was such acid rivalry sentiment inhabited among the writers’ society in those days. Still, however, they had enough eloquence to make attacks and retaliations over the pen works, not even in physical violence. I later came to know that Elinor Modaunt was a close friend to the 2nd wife of Thomas Hardy. In the novel,
Cakes and Ale, I used the main characters name, Willie Ashenden
which was also reused in my secret service story for its title and the narrator, I. I would like to disclose here that the name was taken from my schoolmate’s name in the Kingston School.
Now, on this juncture, I would be pleased to express my appreciation to Willie XXIII for his elaborate work done as the “Reader’s Opinion on The Footprints in the Jungle.” He had the time of making speech for about an hour at The Japan Maugham Society, the 19th Forum on October 29th, 2017, 2nd Session. There he talked about “The Footprints in The Jungle.” He read this story from The Complete Short Stories Volume III published from Wm. Heinneman in 1953 as the reprints of those Collected Short Stories on the South Seas series first published in 1921 or 1922 as the fruitful results of our adventurous trips to the Federate Malay States. When I had these collected stories published there aroused severe criticism in the British society because of the contents the stories carried to the readers were full of those reportage tone fact finding works on their bases. They were filled with those scandalous contents left in records in the newspapers published in those places. The Straits Times and Malay Mail, in English language were the newspapers in which I was able to read through about the lives of many dispatched or emigrated people from our country. They were left as the records un-demolished since the time the British started its colonial policy many years before. The rubber plant operation was one of the main faming works employing many native people which were managed by us white people dispatched from England and adjacent countries. It had started many years before the war, almost fifty years ahead of the time since the industrial revolution proceeded, and Henry Wickham’s rubber seeds about 70,000 of them brought into our country in 1876 and it gave the start of rubber farming boom in the British colony such as Sri Lanka or FMS tropical lands owing to the large industrial level consumption of rubber foreseen inevitable for the vehicle industries. A large number of people were hired by the British Government as the employee with the pension guaranteed system for the purpose to be dispatched to those colonial lands. They were to be engaged in the management of rubber plantations. The people immigrated to those countries were the mixture of various walks in the hush changing society of industrial revolution waves. Those with a little fortune with them or, others, the greater part of them being driven to the jobless poverty lives under the sharp changes of the time. The parity between rich and poor proceeded so wide. The happiness of people depended on their society they belonged.