Art. 10.-JAPAN AND THE WAR.

Is Japan, as the wording of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance would have us believe, a surety for the general peace in Eastern Asia and India, a champion of the independence and integrity of the Chinese dominions, and a sponsor for the principle of equal opportunities for the commerce and industry of all nations in China? Or is she the Prussia of the Orient, the last and most inaccessible stronghold of aggressive militarism? Is she our true and faithful ally? Or is she a secret, powerful and malevolent menace to the whole fabric of our Empire in Asia and in the Pacific? Thirty years ago such questions did not exist; even six years ago they seemed fantastic and remote. For, however surprising might be the extent of Japan's ambitions, the poverty of the country and the weight of national indebtedness clearly made their realisation impossible. But to-day the position is very different. It is the countries of Europe, including our own, which are fettered by debt, and impotent from poverty. Japan and the United States, from a material point of view, are the only victors in the War of the German Supremacy.

Japan has shaken off her fetters. She has become in her turn a creditor nation. Since 1914, she has doubled her mercantile marine; and now she holds the third, instead of the seventh, place in the carrying trade of the world. She has doubled and trebled her industrial capital at home in the shape of banks, factories and equipment of all kinds. She has made extensive investments abroad, and has established a commanding position for herself in international commerce and finance. She has more than doubled her trade with China, and is now that vast country's leading customer. She has quadrupled her trade with the United States. During 1918 she exported about ten times her average annual pre-war value of goods to British India, the Dutch Indies, Australia, New Zealand, South America, Egypt and Cape Colony. Much of this trade may be abnormal, but much will be retained. Thanks to her geographical position, to the energy and intelligence of her people, and to the unremitting support and guidance of her Government, this profiteer among nations has, during the days of Europe's calamity, won an incalculably vast reward. There is no

longer, as there was in 1914, that deep gulf between the ambitions of Japan and the possibility of their realisation. Much indeed has already been realised; and her first post-war budget contained large appropriations and extensive schemes for doubling her naval power and for remodelling her army. Assurances are given that these projects constitute the minimum essential for the defence of the country. And so we return to our question, Is Japan the last stronghold of militarism, or is she a bulwark of peace in the Far East?

It may be said that in no country is there a more distinct cleavage between a militarist and a pacificist tradition. Japan has been actively militarist only during the last sixty years. Before that time, she was so intensely pacificist in her foreign relations, that she closed the doors of her empire against all strangers for very fear of war. A well-known story is told about the three famous Japanese leaders of the late 16th century. Once upon a time there was a nightingale which refused to sing. So Nobunaga cried, 'If you don't sing, I will kill you'; and Hideyoshi threatened, 'If you don't sing, I will make you'; but Tokugawa observed, 'If you don't sing, I shall wait until you do.' Now, Hideyoshi is the hero of Japanese militarism, the Napoleon of the East, who conquered Korea, who threatened China and the Philippines, and whose corsairs made the name of the 'Japonians' a terror as far south as Borneo and the Singapore Strait. But it was Tokugawa who won out by waiting, and who saved the empire from Hideyoshi's feeble heir. He founded that line of Tokugawa dictators, who closed the country against all foreign contact for two hundred and fifty years, and who resigned the dream of glory for the reality of peace. These two men are types of Japanese statesmanship as it exists to-day: Hideyoshi, swash-buckling and overbold; Tokugawa, diffident, insular and over-cautious.

The revolution which destroyed the Tokugawa dictatorship in 1868, and restored, in name, the autocratic rule of the Emperor, was a reaction against these centuries of pacificism. It was the victory of the spirit of Hideyoshi, of military adventure, and, in Japanese eyes, the prologue to an epic of conquests abroad. The new statesmen were, many of them, pupils of a remarkable

teacher, named Yoshida Shoin, who was executed at the age of twenty-nine for a fanatical murder. He had foretold that the new order would lead on to the making of a 'Great Japan,' who would conquer the Kurile Islands, Saghalien, Kamchatka, Formosa, Korea, Manchuria and a large part of Eastern Siberia, and who would eventually become the leading power in Asia. This 'Great Imperial Policy,' to which popular orators so often refer, places Japan as leader of the tide of anti-European feeling, which is rising with ever vaster volume and swifter impetus, wherever the white man rules the native, from Morocco to the Dutch East Indies. Nearer to Europe, this great upheaval is called 'Pan-Islam'; in India, it is alluded to as 'unrest'; further East again, it is styled 'the Pan-Asiatic Principle.'

Some years ago, an eloquent member of the Japanese Parliament, Oshikawa Hogi, declared, 'With the most beautiful virtues, which we have inherited from our forefathers, and splendid traditions, which no other nation in the world has ever enjoyed, I conclude without hesitation that we Japanese are the nation which has the responsibility of instructing and teaching the rest of the world, and is finally destined to become its dominant factor.' The 'Niroku' newspaper of May 8, 1919, remarks that the League of Nations proposes to save mankind from the horrors of war, but that it can only attain its real object by placing the Imperial Family of Japan at its head. To us in Europe this language sounds like delirium; but there are nearly sixty million energetic and patriotic Japanese to whom it is the ordinary language of national pride. For the cleavage between militarists and pacifists does not affect this creed, which is held equally by both parties. The militarists, however, look to its realisation in the near future and by aid of arms, if necessary. The pacificists, like Tokugawa, are content to wait until the nightingale sings.

The divergence between these two schools of thought showed itself immediately after the restoration of the Imperial rule in 1868. The military party wished at once to make war on Korea. Under their leader, Saigo, they tried to force the hand of the Government, but were defeated in the Satsuma Rebellion, which, on the part of the Government, was a war to prevent war.

Ito and the new pacificists believed that it was Japan's first interest to develop her commercial and industrial strength before embarking on military enterprises. However, in 1894 Ito's Government, like the Hara Government in February 1920, was being harassed by a democratic outcry in the Diet. Ito sacrificed his ideals, capitulated to the military party led by Yamagata, and, against his own better judgment, consented to the declaration of war on China.

Japan's unexpected success in the Chinese War secured a recognition from the European Powers, which years of peaceful progress had been unable to obtain. This lesson was not lost on the Japanese. From the Chinese War onwards, the baleful influence of militarism has been uppermost in Japan; and its policy has had noteworthy successes and hardly one serious check. The Kurile Islands, to the north of Japan, had been acquired in 1875; the Loochoo Islands, to the south, in 1876. The island of Formosa, the southern gateway of the Japanese Empire, was annexed in 1895. The victory in the Russian War gained the Port Arthur Peninsula and South Saghalien, and made Japan commercially and politically supreme in Korea and South Manchuria. Under the shelter of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance Korea was definitely annexed in 1910. So one half of the ambitious programme of Yoshida Shoin has already been realised. With the collapse of Russia, it seems as if North Manchuria, Eastern Siberia, North Saghalien and Kamchatka may also pass under the control of Japan. By the conquest of Tsingtao from Germany, and by the Treaty of 1915, forced upon China by means of an ultimatum, Japan has become, in fact, the leading power in Eastern Asia, and the virtual director of China's foreign policy. This control of China by Japan is the meaning of 'the Monroe Doctrine for the Far East.' The steady whittling away of all European influence out of that enormous country is a policy upon which Japan has unquestionably embarked.

Such is the remarkable crescendo of expansion, which the militarist party in Japan has achieved in twenty-five years. No wonder that the mass of the nation is intoxicated by the glamour of arms, and is proud to style the land 'gunkoku,' or 'war country.' But the wiser heads

in Japan are not to be deceived by this dizzy progress. 'I am glad that there are an increasing number of men who think that all these Chinese and Korean troubles are the results of a mistaken policy pursued in the past, and that nothing short of a fundamental reversal of that policy will be of any avail in solving the difficulty.' So writes Dr Yoshino Sakuzo, a leader of the Tokyo intellectuals, in January 1920. The old pacificist opposition has by no means faded away; and the defeat of Germany has strengthened the hands of the moderates. They doubt whether a vast land empire is really an advantage to an island realm. They doubt whether, economically and politically, Japan is mature enough to shoulder such immense responsibilities. Is Japan the frog of the fable, which, after trying to inflate itself to bull's dimensions, burst?

However that may be, Japan, at the beginning of the greatest war in history, was one of the most martialspirited nations in the whole world, and was governed by a militarist oligarchy. Yet the part she played in the war was smaller than that of any of the belligerents, except the South American Republics and China; and the interest taken by Japanese in the great events of Europe was so detached, that it became a commonplace to brand them as pro-German. But apart from her obligation to the Alliance, there was one reason why Japan could not possibly stand aside altogether from the conflict. That reason was China. China is almost always the reason for any move in Japan's foreign policy. Japan, like a bustling energetic planet, swings in a constant orbit round that inert, incongruous luminary which is China with its riches, its treasures, its huge population and its immense possibilities. A strong policy for Japan means a strong policy in China. Militarism in Japan means aggression against China. The large and well-equipped Japanese army is maintained to overawe China; and the admirable and growing navy exists to keep communications with the continent intact. China supplies iron in a quantity essential for Japan's existence, and an increasing provision of cotton and wool; and she is the principal market for Japanese manufactures.

Without any doubt the more enterprising statesmen