cannot believe that Britain and America will take exception to any proposal by Japan which she brings forward as a necessary step for ensuring the safety of her national defense and economic existence." Finally, he declared that the consortium did not nullify the rights granted to Japan by China after yielding to the Twenty-one Demands. Mr. Thomas Lamont may justify this tacit understanding-in reality another "Gentlemen's Agreement -on the ground that it was necessary to safeguard Japan's food supply. But the whole attitude of Japan toward the consortium has a very ancient smell, which, in fact, is made more "fishlike" by the suggestion of Viscount Takahashi, the Japanese Minister of Finance, that a Sino-Japanese economic alliance be negotiated. He says that Japan should abandon her policy of "non-interference" in China, and loan "ungrudgingly" to this sister nation in view of the latter's deplorable financial condition. His suggestion, which the Elder Statesmen are understood to approve, may have been made with all due sincerity. But when he goes on to say that if the other powers are hostile to the independent action of Japan in this regard Japan can secede from the consortium, the real purpose of his suggestion is immediately revealed. For the raison d'être of the consortium was to prevent any one power from securing monopolies or political advantages to the detriment of China. And yet M. Takahashi, a public official, is advocating the very policy the consortium is designed to avoid. JAPANESE LOANS TO CHINA During the Terauchi Ministry the Japanese Government unofficially followed this policy of loans toward China. Through the medium of a mysterious Mr. Nishihara, it lent its support to the Northern Government by lending it some 220,000,000 yen. Up to the present time even the in terest on these loans has not been paid since their principal was recklessly dissipated among Chinese Tuchuns, into whose hands the money ultimately fell. But the Japanese banks which, with shocking credulity, helped to float the loan are demanding that action be taken. No more striking warning of the danger of such a policy can be found than in the Nishihara loans. It affords the Japanese Government an opportunity to play one government in China against the other; it gives it an excuse for intervention which is in thorough accord with its conception of an Asiatic Monroe Doctrine. To cap the climax, some Japanese papers now suggest that these loans, advanced to Chinese renegades and spent in personal dissipation, should constitute Japan's contribution to the consortium! It is no difficult task, however, for Japanese apologists to vindicate their attempts to buttress a Pax Japonica in the Orient. Certainly the annexation of Korea rests upon as specious grounds as the annexation of the Philippines. If France should insist so vigorously upon maintaining her protectorate over all Catholics in China, why should not Japan, as she did at the recent Communications Conference, refuse to surrender her Post Offices there? As long as England imports ten boxes of opium monthly into Hongkong, it is not strange that Japan should overlook the smuggling of morphia into China -at a reported profit of $400 a pound. One need not accept the naive excuse which Marquis Okuma once gave for a large navy-that it was to be used against the Chinese pirates -to pardon Japan's readiness to carry out her plans for an EightEight Navy (which means eight battleships and eight battle cruisers, to be replaced every eight years). is quite probable that the Diet never would have voted the necessary appropriations if the American Congress had not insisted on carrying out its 1916 building program, de It signed to make the American Navy equal to any other in the world. Japan may deserve all the epithets heaped upon her because of the tenacity with which she holds to Shantung. Yet Russia did the same thing to Port Arthur; Germany to Tsing-tao; England to Wei-hai-wei, not to mention Hongkong; France to Indo-China. As for Japan's policy in Siberia, it may find a counterpart in France's support of Kolchak, Denikin and Wrangel. Both have had the same excuse: the fear of Bolshevism. BEGINNINGS OF DEMOCRACY se Despite the sluggish consent which the people of Japan have given to militarism in the past, it is meeting with obstacles at home which, if encouraged, may result in its downfall. Naturally the reduction in number of the Genro-today there are only three-will be accompanied by a diminution of their influence. The past year has witnessed a violent quarrel between the Elder Statesmen and the Emperor over a certain " rious affair" which the press is sternly inhibited from mentioning, The Emperor violated an established precedent when he permitted Crown Prince Hirohito to become betrothed to a young lady who was not a member of the clans. Furthermore, the journey of the Prince to Europe, in violation of a tradition which had lasted for twenty centuries, outraged the Shinto proclivities of these Grand Old Men. Whatever the issue, Prince Yamagata and Marquis Matsukata tendered their resignations; and it was only after the earnest entreaties of the Emperor that they decided to remain. Furthermore, the growth of the democratic movement, which resulted in an overwhelming demand for universal suffrage and the emancipation of woman from 1918 on, is eating into the moats of militarist control. The rice riots of 1918 for the first time in the history of Japan aroused a feeling of class consciousness among the laboring people. Living in one of the most heavily taxed countries in the world, the tenant farmers of Japan are beginning to wonder for whose profit they are being ground down. The labor movement-represented by the Socialists, headed by T. Sakai, and the Japanese Federation of Labor, headed by B. Susuki--condemns militarism out of hand. Nor is labor alone in its denunciations. The disarmament campaign which Y. Ozaki launched last February has met with gratifying response, especially from the business men. Employing the novel device of charging an admission fee to his meetings, Ozaki explained to thousands the benefits of disarmament; and the Ozaka and the Yokohama Chambers of Commerce have gone on record in support of his views. A new sect of Shintoism has also arisen, called the Omoto-kyo, which 66 66 has aroused the wrath of the Government because it is bold enough to declare that “ those who are above (the governing class) in this world are doing nothing really good," and that henceforth things will be entirely changed * * * so that those who have so far been above will have a fairly bad time of it!" When it is remembered that Shintoism was the instrument which elevated Emperor worship to renewed heights in Japan, the pronouncements of this new sect are doubly significant. Little wonder that the Government is prosecuting its leaders for "dangerous thought "! MILITARISM'S WEAPON Unfortunately, the western world has done much to offset the influences of these forces of liberalism. Whenever Japanese immigrants abroad are singled out for treatment which is not accorded to immigrants of other countries, militarism is fortified in Japan. The militarists can readily convince a peculiarly sensitive people that such action on the part of western countries is due merely to racial prejudice. The exclusion of the Japanese from America is an economic necessity. But the Japanese people will never be convinced that such a policy is based on economics as long as California, for example, adopts a land law which applies to them alone and not also to other aliens. Because of this discriminatory treatment, the accusations made against the activities of the United States in the Orient are strengthened. Thus the charge is repeatedly made in Japan that the United States has instigated the Chinese boycott of Japanese goods and has fostered the independence movement in Korea, in order to increase America's trade and to reduce Japan's position in Asia. These charges are false enough; but they are the more readily believed by the Japanese people when western countries deny to Japanese abroad rights accorded to other aliens. Convinced of the reality of the White Peril in the Orient, the Diet can be persuaded to vote huge budgets, the people can be convinced that western liberalism is blatant hypocrisy, and that Japan's existence rests on force alone. Thus enlightened, they will continue to venerate the wisdom of the Genro and to leave the control of the army and the navy in the parasitic hands of the Western Clans, still animated by the philosophy of a bygone age. As long as the United States discriminates against the Japanese, after their admission to this country, and as long as Europe still steeps in Briand-ism, the Japanese militarists will find a prop which the beardless forces of liberalism will find difficult, if not impossible, to shake. 66 spread the benefits of the unbounding Imperial virtues to rescue the 600,000,000 people of East Asia." The real reason, however, for attempting such a rescue is not so much sentimental as it is military and economic. "We are firmly resolved," Sato says, "that in order to satisfy the demands for wartime materials and provisions, we should plan for the industrial development of the continent." By this a Japanese militarist can only mean the Closed Door -the development of exclusive sources of supply which in time of war will make Japan independent of the United States and Europe. With Bismarckian duplicity, the militarists are hiding their real designs by inciting public opinion to believe that the very existence of Japan is being threatened by America. Once this belief becomes general, public endorsement of imperialism is readily given, because the people believe it is "defensive." Consequently, General Sato, among others, bases his whole case for Japanese militarism on the impure motives of America, which "haughtily insults our empire and is endangering our existence." He declares that Japan has passed through two great national crises, the first of which was the Mongolian invasion of the thirteenth century, and the second, the Asiatic expansion of Russia ending in the war of 1904-05. In both of these crises Japan has been confronted with supposedly superior foes. But each time she has been victorious because "the Japanese in those days were not weak-kneed men such as the present day Japanese are! The third national crisis is at hand. America has taken the place of Russia. "America's insolence is far worse than Russia's before the Russo-Japanese war"-the menace is far greater. The World War made the United States tremendously rich; its people are "drunk with gold." It is the intention of American capitalists to carry out a gigantic economic development in the Asiatic continent, and to fulfill her It should be needless to point out that the success of Japanese militarism depends upon the support it receives from the Japanese people. If the militarists can convince the super-sensitive and racially self-conscious millions of Japan that the United States is animated solely by prejudice and capitalism in its Far Eastern policy, they will remain indefinitely in power. As General Sato points out, it is geographically and strategically impossible for the United States to fight a successful war (to overcome Japanese militarism) in Asiatic waters. Conse quently, Japanese imperialism will be defeated by the Japanese people only when they are convinced that its immoralities exceed its supposed benefits. But the Japanese people will never be convinced of this as long as they fear the "designs" of this country. It seems foolish that any one familiar with the Far Eastern policy of the United States should harbor such suspicions. Yet the discriminatory treatment of Japanese residents in the United States; the biennial "anti-Japanese" campaigns on the Pacific Coast; the attempt of Americans to obtain exclusive concessions in Asia, such as Washington Vanderlip believes he has secured in Kamchatka, and the efforts of others to impose a tariff which will kill Japanese trade with America-all are used by the militarists to convince their people of the impurity of America's motives and to make them believe that if Japan does not dominate Asia the United States will. America must, therefore, keep her own skirts clean. TRANSFER OF TWO HISTORIC DOCUMENTS ON the recommendation of Secretary of State Hughes, President Harding has signed an executive order for the transfer of the original Declaration of Independence and the original Constitution of the United States from the Department of State to the Library of Congress. The explanation was given by the President in the concluding paragraph of the order: This order is issued at the request of the Secretary of State, who has no suitable place for the exhibition of these muniments, and whose building is believed not to be as safe a depository for them as the Library of Congress, and for the additional reason that it is desired to satisfy the laudable wish of patriotic Americans to have opportunity to see the original fundamental documents upon which rest their independence and their Government. The department building has always been subject to fire risk, and Secretary Hughes has been impressed by this, as well as by the fact that nearly all visitors to Washington desire to see the great charters, while the State Department had no exhibition room at its disposal. The Library of Congress is the most suitable place both for the preservation and for the exhibition of the charters, for it is of modern fireproof construction and possesses appropriate exhibition halls, together with expert archivists in charge of all manuscripts of value. Soon, therefore, the citizens of this country will be able to look upon the original Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the nation, just as all visitors to the British Museum today can look upon Magna Charta. IS JAPAN HOSTILE TO FOREIGNERS? BY T. IYENAGA Formerly Professional Lecturer in the University of Chicago F A Japanese publicist's categorical answers to a dozen different charges made against his country in regard to the treatment of aliens―Japan makes no discrimination between races-Farming and ownership of land by foreigners permitted ROM every quarter of the globe, from every stratum of the world community, there arises the fervent wish for the noblest success to the Washington conference. Whether this earnest wish of a large portion of mankind be fulfilled or not will depend largely upon the temper, the psychological mood, of the delegates to the conference and of the peoples who have sent them. That there will exist the most genial atmosphere around the council table 66 an atmosphere of mutual trust and confidence "can easily be imagined when we think of the high gifts, largeness of heart, wide experience, and long philosophic training of the distinguished personages who are to grace the seats. These delegates are, however, under commission, and their action is naturally circumscribed. What is not certain is the psychological mood of the peoples, especially the American and Japanese, and what effect it will have upon their representatives. Inasmuch as the principal naval powers have expressed their genuine wish for a curtailment of naval equipments, the question of limitation of naval armament will not be a difficult issue. If the delegates of those powers proceed boldly in the same determined fashion as Czar Alexander III. ordered, as the story goes, the building of the Transsiberian Railroad by drawing on the map in a the presence of his engineers straight line from Petersburg to Vladivostok, ignoring the thousand difficulties in the way, the navy experts will succeed, we sincerely hope, in evolving a naval scheme whereby the defense and vital interests of the powers will be safeguarded, on the one hand, and a decided reduction of naval armaments made on the other, to the untold blessings of the peoples concerned and to the lasting peace of the world. Solution of the Pacific and Far Eastern problems may not be so easy, for they involve many vast and complicated subjects whose subtle threads are intricately interwoven by the hands of history. Moreover, the question touches the most vital interests of one of the invited nations, to whom the Far East is the only possible field of development, being barred under the present circumstances from other favored spots of the earth. Whatever may be the attitude of the American and Japanese Governments on the problem, it would be insincere to deny, so far as the present indication goes, that the disparity between the views entertained in America concerning those subjects, as reflected in the press, and the views held in Japan, is too great to justify much hope of smooth sailing with regard to these matters. When one of the invited nations is depicted, not infrequently, in the |