Note 101 — Chapter II

It is possible, however, that if Mr. Russell had been in Korea in March 1919, and had seen the hideous cruelty practised at that time—cruelty which took the form of peculiarly ingenious and diabolical modes of torture on the part of Japanese officialdom towards unarmed Koreans, women and children as well as men—he might have modified his statement to the extent of saying that present-day Japan is copying Christian morals of the age of the Inquisition. That Japan is not a “Christian country” has no bearing on the question, since Buddhism, quite as much as Christianity, enjoins forbearance and gentleness, and stresses—as its key-note—“harmlessness.” But the teachings of Gautama, like those of Christ, have little effect upon “the direction taken by the criminal tendencies,” as Mr. Russell puts it, of the nominal followers of these teachings—in Orient or Occident.