l v i I N T R O D U C T I O N T O V O L U M E 1 3 But by the end of the month, Einstein wrote an open letter, widely published in the press, that he had “recently gained the conviction that the League of Nations has neither the energy nor the good intention to fulfill its great cause. As a serious pacifist I therefore do not consider it right to be connected with the same in any way.” He requested that his name be removed from the list of committee members (Doc. 447). It is highly plausible that the recent French occupation of the Ruhr re- gion motivated this decision. In response to Brinkmann, he expressed his position in a more frank manner: “My annoyance about the impotence and moral depen- dence of the League of Nations led me to write a final resignation to the League of Nations and to underscore it by publicizing it in the press. This may have been un- diplomatic but my gut feeling compelled me to take this step” (Doc. 450). VII Einstein’s five-and-a-half-month trip to the Far East, Palestine, and Spain in late 1922 and early 1923 was one of the most significant events during the period cov- ered by this volume.[20] In the previous volume we saw that, in September 1921, Einstein had been in- vited by the progressive Japanese journal Kaizo to embark on a lecture tour of Japan.[21] After accepting the offer for autumn 1922, he became dissatisfied with the financial terms and declined the invitation. Nevertheless, in late January 1922, Jun Ishiwara, Professor of Physics at Tokyo Imperial University, forwarded to Ein- stein an official letter from Sanehiko Yamamoto, president of the Kaizo-Sha pub- lishing house, renewing the invitation for a month-long tour, to begin in late September or early October, that would include a scientific lecture series to be de- livered in Tokyo, and six popular lectures to be delivered in several other cities. An honorarium of 2,000 pounds sterling was offered (Doc. 21), the very same financial conditions Einstein had earlier found wanting. And while the tour would be sup- ported by the Japanese minister of education and the rector of Tokyo University, all of Einstein’s other engagements in Japan would have to be approved by Kaizo-Sha (Doc. 40). The Japan to which Einstein was invited was that of the Taisho era, “a period when internationalism, cosmopolitanism, secularism, and democratization seemed to be replacing the parochial claims” of the Meiji era, when the country had primar- ily focused on nation building.[22] Writing twelve years after the visit, Yamamoto recalled that Einstein’s invitation had come amidst the “sudden ideological change” in Japan between 1919 and 1921, a notable sign of which was the publi- cation by Kaizo-Sha of a novel by the Japanese Christian pacifist and labor activist