their rivalries; a feeling of horror went through them all, and they huddled together as if they realised that something uncanny was happening which threatened them all alike. There was in reality nothing mysterious in the Japanese victories. A few European officers had seen their army before the war, and a distinguished Anglo-Indian had reported that they were quite as good as Gurkhas.' Russia was honeycombed with disaffection and corruption, and was never able to bring her whole force to bear in the Manchurian battle-fields. But the decisive factor was the German training of the Japanese army, which had learnt all that the best instructors could teach, with wonderful thoroughness and ability. This was the momentous lesson of the war. An Asiatic army, with equally good weapons and training, is a match for the same number of Europeans; and there is no part of European military or naval science which the Asiatic cannot readily master. In these facts an observer might well recognise the fate of white ascendancy in Asia.

Mr Stoddard, in his remarkable book on 'The Rising Tide of Colour,' has collected evidence of the effect of this campaign upon the Japanese themselves. A temper of arrogant and aggressive imperialism has grown up among them. The semi-official Japanese Colonial Journal declared in the autumn of 1914: To protect Chinese territory Japan is ready to fight no matter what nation. Not only will Japan try to erase the ambitions of Russia and Germany; it will also do its best to prevent England and the United States from touching the Chinese cake.' The Great War seems to have raised their ambitions still higher. Count Okuma, in the summer of 1919, recommends an alliance with Russia, as soon as the Bolsheviks have been suppressed.

"Then, by marching westward to the Balkans, to Germany, to France, to Italy, the greater part of the world may be brought under our sway.'

Another plan is to arm and drill the Chinese.

'We have now China. China is our steed! Far shall we ride upon her! So our 50 millions becomes 500 millions; so our hundreds of millions of gold grow into billions. . . . How our strength has grown and still grows! In 1895 we conquered

China; Russia, Germany, and France stole the booty from us. In ten years we punished Russia and took back our own; in twenty we were quits with Germany; with France there is no need for haste. She knows that her Oriental possessions are ours for the taking. As for America, that fatuous booby with much money and sentiment but no cohesion and no brains of government, were she alone we should not need our China steed. America is an immense melon, ripe for the cutting. North America will support a thousand million people; they shall be Japanese with their slaves.'

So wrote a Japanese imperialist in 1916. Such rodomontades have some importance as symptoms of a new spirit, but otherwise need not be taken seriously. More interesting is the growing consciousness of Pan-Asiatic sympathy, which finds vent in the cry, 'Asia for the Asiatics,' and in proposals to establish a Monroe doctrine for the East. The revolution in China in 1911 was probably the beginning of a new awakening in that vast empire. In speaking of Chinese stagnation we have often forgotten the paralysing effect of the Tartar domination, which has only lately been thrown off. And the new China, in spite of its hatred of Japan, is dreaming of a Pan-Mongolian alliance. An Indo-Japanese association has existed for some years; its object is certainly not to maintain the British Raj. Let us go to India, where the people are looking for our help!' exclaims Count Okuma in 1907.

Many Anglo-Indian writers, and among them Mr Townsend, have commented on the extreme slenderness of the threads by which we hold India. Above this inconceivable mass of humanity, governing all, protecting all, taxing all, rises what we call the Empire, a corporation of less than 1500 men, who protect themselves by finding pay for a minute white garrison of 65,000 men, one-fifth of the Roman legions. There is nothing else. To support the official world and its garrison there is, except Indian opinion, absolutely nothing. If the brown men struck for a week, the Empire would collapse like a house of cards, and every European would be a starving prisoner in his own house. He could not move or feed himself or get water. The Empire hangs in the air, supported by nothing but the minute white garrison and the unproved assumption that the people of India

desire it to exist.' This is forcibly put; but till lately we might have answered that behind that small garrison lies the whole power of the British Empire, which could and would be used to put down rebellion. The natives, however, know that though this used to be true, it is now very doubtful whether the masses in this country would not sympathise with the rebels and paralyse the efforts of the Government. It is not surprising that the growth of nationalism in India seems to many to portend the approaching end of our rule.

Another symptom to which some of our alarmists attach great importance is the Moslem revival. Islam is a great civilising influence in Africa, and is spreading rapidly among the negroes of the interior. It is also true that a very bitter feeling has been aroused among educated Moslems, in every country where they live, by the destruction of the Mohammedan kingdoms and governments. At the present time there is not a single Moslem ruler who is really independent of Europe. The downfall of that proud and conquering faith has been, from the political point of view, almost complete. This humiliation, we are told, may lead to a great militant revival. The Moslems may put themselves at the head of the Pan-Asiatic movement. They may convert Hindus, Chinamen, Japanese, and fill them with martial ardour for a Holy War against Europe. This prediction does not seem to be very probable. There is not much danger to Europe from the African blacks. In Arabia the swarming period has passed. The Moslems in India have given our armies less trouble than other fighting races of the peninsula. And it is most unlikely that either China or Japan will adopt the Mohammedan creed.

To the present writer it seems that the danger to the white races will come only from the yellows and the browns, not from the blacks or the reds, and that this danger is not at present of a military character. No doubt it may become a military danger in the future, if the whites persist in excluding the yellow and the brown races by violence from half-empty territories in which they desire to settle. If the white man is determined to throw his sword into the scales of peaceful competition, his rivals will be compelled at last to vindicate their

rights by war. But at present the brown man will not take up arms except to obtain self-government for himself in his home, and this he is likely to obtain from Great Britain without fighting. The Japanese, in spite of a few fanatical expansionists, have no wish to try conclusions with Europe or America on the field of battle, so long as they are allowed to extend their influence on the continent of Asia. A mass-levy of Chinese for aggressive war is not to be thought of; they have none of the habits of Mongolian raiders, and, unlike the Japanese, they do not wish to be soldiers. The yellow peril, so far as it exists, is the peril of economic competition.

Until the European broke into the isolation of Asia, the life of its crowded population was self-contained and self-supporting to an extent of which the West has no experience. A fairly contented Indian peasant or artisan,' says Mr Townsend, 'usually seems to Western eyes to possess no comforts at all. His hut contains nothing on which a British pawnbroker would advance three shillings. The owner's clothing may be worth five shillings if he has a winter garment, and his wife's perhaps ten shillings more. The children wear nothing at all. The man never sees or thinks about meat of any kind. He never dreams of buying alcohol in any shape. The food of the household costs about six shillings a month. He could fly into the jungle with his whole possessions, his farm or hut of course excepted, at five minutes' notice. This method of life extends from the bottom of society up through the whole body of the poorer peasantry and artisans.' 'But for the Europeans, they would import nothing whatever.' And yet these people are not all poor. Silver in India disappears as if

it fell through into a hidden reservoir. The man in a loin-cloth has usually his hoard, often a very large one, and the Indian 'poor' possess a mass of jewels. It is not poverty, but thrift like that of the miser in a comedy, that keeps the standard of comfort in India at the lowest possible level. And the result is a social freedom and absence of care which the Hindu not unreasonably values above all the paraphernalia of European culture. In China the standard of living is rather higher, and in Japan higher still; but even in Japan the working

class lives almost incredibly cheaply, and, apart from the disturbances caused by Western interference, society is in a state of stable equilibrium. It is needless to say that in skilled craftsmanship the Asiatic is as good as the European.

The introduction of Western industrialism into these countries has had the effect of increasing the population, of creating a class of native capitalists, some of whom, like the merchants of Singapore and the mill-owners of Osaka, are immensely rich. It has also brought the East into direct economic competition with the West. The Japanese, in their haste to make money, have tolerated a system of labour in their factories no better than that of England a hundred years ago, and discontent is already manifest among the wage-earners; but it is certain that the ratio of wages to output all over the East gives native manufacturers an enormous advantage over the European and American, and that this advantage is not likely to grow much less.

All who have had the opportunity of observing the Asiatic at work seem to agree that economically he is greatly superior to the European. Many years ago Mr Kipling, after a day or two at Canton, records the horror which overpowered him at the deadly efficiency of the Chinese. Soon there will be no more white men, but only yellow men with black hearts'-the 'black hearts' were perhaps the result of witnessing a Chinese execution. Mr Stoddard explains the cause of this efficiency in graphic language: Winnowed by ages of grim elimination in a land populated to the uttermost limits of subsistence, the Chinese race is selected as no other for survival under the fiercest conditions of economic stress. At home the average Chinese lives his whole life literally within a hand's breadth of starvation. Accordingly, when removed to the easier environment of other lands, the Chinaman brings with him a working capacity which simply appals his competitors.' That urbane Celestial, Doctor Wu-Ting-Fang, well says of his own people :

'Experience proves that the Chinese as all-round labourers can easily out-distance all competitors. They are industrious, intelligent, and orderly. They can work under conditions that would kill a man of less hardy race; in heat that would kill a salamander, or in cold that would please a polar bear,