It is more than probable, as history has clearly shown in the past and as the racial con stitutions intimate, that progress in Japan and China will proceed from varying levels and in different channels. In the island empire the centre of national life is in the one unchanging dynasty and national amelioration has issued from the government downward. Any sure advance for Japan in the future will be from the same source and in a similar direction. On the contrary among the Chinese people, to whom the existence of this or that dynasty makes no vital difference, reform will arise in and pro ceed through their social system and not from throne or court. In China real and permanent progress has been less through anything done in Peking than directly traceable to the work of men who rose from the people and who had been instructed by foreign diplomatists, teach ers or missionaries. These men have trained the people through the schools, the press, the churches and the hospitals, reaching all parts of the empire by means of the printed word, book, tract, newspaper or by personal influence upon China's leading men, whether in or out of office. In Japan before Perry's advent there were hundreds of men already enlightened, keeping eye on European aggression in Asia, and moving for the unification and reform of the nation. The great motive supplying the force of their lives came from no foreigner but from their own inborn patriotism and self sacrifice. Nevertheless, when fullest credit is given to the propulsive power of her Bushido, or the Knightly Code, it must be remembered that Japan, after her first contact with Europe, never was truly a hermit nation. For 200 years or more the Dutch at Nagasaki fer tilized the Japanese mind, keeping open not only the door of outlook on and information from Europe, but nourishing the Japanese in tellect with exact science, varied knowledge and the applications of Occidental methods especially in medicine and the mechanical arts. In 1853 it was strenuously charged by the Conservatives who wished the country kept shut that only the native eDutch scholars') wanted the empire opened to commerce and western influences. In 1868 when the men rich in Dutch culture and the ellikado-reverencers" gained possession of the imperial person in Kioto, they began to relay the foundations of the empire by seek ing for knowledge in every part of the world. Teachers, advisers, engineers and experts of all sorts were imported by the hundreds, who dur ing 35 years have literally taken off their coats and, by example and teachin, rede craft and handicraft have shown the Japanese how to do those very things which they are now doing so well. The configuration of the Jap anese Islands has fitted them to profit to an ex traordinary degree by the adoption of the forces of steam and electric communication at a time most needed, that is, immediately after the abo lition of feudalism and in the transit to indus trialism helping to unify them politically and consolidate them into a marvously compact nation. In China, railways will re-distribute into wholesome evenness of proportions of table land and littoral the population now congested in the river valleys and alluvial plains, will de velop and distribute the wealth of the mines will abolish the almost periodical famines, and by adding healthy movement and contact of the inhabitants of distant provinces develop in the Chinese that patriotism (as distinct from race pride which is already so intense), the lack of which has been the cause of China's many woes, and will give that middle term of a large in telligent and practical body of men of affairs between the throne and the masses, so notable in Japan and which China so sad!) needs. The progress in both Japan and China has neces sarily been thus far mostly of the material, edu cational and economic sort, for neither the Chinese nor the Japanese take kindly to the abstract thought or science of the West. It is an exceptional thing to get a Japanese or Chinese to listen patiently to the presentation of even the outlines of a metaphysical or ab stract argument or proposition. Hence, there fore, in its doctrinal form, Christianity has made but slight progress, and the chief experience noted by foreigners in the reception of an Occidental creed of any historic name by Chinese or Japanese has been its simplification. It seems quite certain that Christianity as known and practised by the countries of the Extreme Orient is to a very hopeful degree ex pressed in practical forms or in reform. Nor is it at all likely that in accepting what Jesus taught these peoples will ever receive or as similate also that Greek philosophy, Roman tradition and doctrinal achievement, and the ethnic peculiarities which form so large a part of popular Christianity in America and Europe.
The chief role which the Japanese are to play in the future— with probably the de velopment of reserves of power greater than the average Occidental suspects in them—will be as the teachers of the Chinese, who number one-fourth of the population of the world, by interpreting to the sons of Ham the civilization and systems of the West, themselves acting as the middle term between Occident and Orient. The Japanese have learned how vain it is to trust in material progress alone. The old sanc tions and motives being now corroded or dis solved, they are seeking new guarantees for decency and progress. In answer to the im potent fears of many Japanese that their na tional solidarity, centred in the throne and imperial line, existing from Cages eternal,* will be imperiled, and the similar terror of the Chinese conservatives, lest the whale edifice of society and morals fall to ruins, history has but one reply. Inexorable fact and reasonable probability, shows that dogmatic theology, as a political engine, must certainly give way be fore the advance of education and science; while if anything is certain from the record of the past it is that the first secret of Occidental progress lies in the fact that Greece, Rome and the northern nations of Europe, early in their careers, dropped ancestor worship and put the moral responsibility of the individual in the fore, making mental initiative a duty and not a crime. The Chinese and Japanese must find
other grounds and sanctions for national life and perpetuity than in ancestral worship and their traditional, communal civilization. Hap pily the events' of the last few years in the Far East show steady progress in the direction which history assures us is the only right one. The real line of advance had been in the direc tion of an increasing sense of both personality and individuality.
Having in our survey of China given the Chinese and average Occidental view of the situation in 1914 we shall in this article pre sent what may approximate the view of the Japanese and of the scientific student of inter national affairs.
The logic of events and the general move ments of .civilization, within the last 50 years and especially from about the year 1880, have not only forced China and Japan, once hermit nations, into a new alignment with the western Powers, but into unexpected relations with each other. Of old, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Eng land and France were the countries most indus trious at the task of seizing and occupying the land of *the heathen,'" when whole continents were confiscated as prizes, or given away in the name of God, but in our days Great Britain has led all others. The new dogma of imperial ism dominating European Powers in the 20th century means first the exploitation of the weaker nations, through capitalism and then the use of the governments in support of these advance agents of civilization, leading sooner or later to trade wars, to military occupation and to annexation. Great Britain, having led the way and set the example, rules 22 per cent of the earth's surface and 25 per cent of its population. Russia, France and the United States have followed. These four countries are, with China and Brazil, the six greatest landowners of the world controlling 62 per cent of the earth's area. All of these, except China and Brazil, whose boundaries were long ago fixed, have in very recent times seized the possessions of other peoples to enlarge their domain. The white man, imagining himself the favorite of Heaven, has appropriated nearly all of Africa, much of Asia, both continental and insular, and Polynesia. Only the Monroe Doctrine has prevented European Powers from reappropriating much of republican America. It is this lust for land, pelf and power, shown by the white man, that has conditioned the mod ern history the Far East.
In the reawakening of national conscious ness in the three nations, China, Korea and Japan, the Central Empire suffered first, hav ing her frontiers violated and her soil invaded, while indemnities, more or less extortionate, have been forced from her. This nibbling and dismembering process, begun with the loss, in 1841, of Hongkong to Great Britain, has con tinued to this day. From her old-time area, Upper Mongolia and much of Manchuria has become the possession of Russia; Annuli or Cochin China of France; and Formosa of Japan. Korea, weak and helpless, desolated her borders in order to make her territory forbidding to the covetous. In Japan, far-see ing spirits, over a century ago, discerning her eastern trend on the continent and the descents of Russia southward on Japanese soil, sounded the alarm by voice and writings; but only to be imprisoned or hounded to death as alarmists and to have their books confiscated or destroyed by the Yedo authorities. Only at a late hour did the Shogun's government awake to reality and begin the defense of the north and, in 1860, the expulsion, with British aid, of the Russians from the islands of Tsushima, near which, in 1905, Admiral Togo destroyed the Muscovite's naval power in the Far East. While in her hermit isolation, tortoise-like Japan, governed from Yedo, sought to defend herself by closing her shell, reckoning all aliens alike. To the three peaceful missions, sent by Presidents Jackson, Polk and Fillmore, to the unofficial calls of Glyn and Cooper, and to the enterprise of Mr. King, in 1839, she gave firm refusal, to all but Perry. He re fused to be refused, and his visible power, firm ness and tact won. As soon as the intellectual movement in critical scholarship and historical investigation and the study of Dutch, begun two centuries previously, ripened to the coup d'itot in Kioto in January 1868, the new, cent ralized, Imperial government came into power and instantly made bold assertion of the na tional consciousness. This was done by at once signing treaties in the name of the mikado, raising the first real, national army ever known in Japan, building a modern navy, sweeping away feudalism and inaugurating a definite foreign policy. This latter was manifested by the abolition of the long existing dual sov ereign of the Riu Kiu archipelago (Loo Choo ) long tributary to both China and Japan, the assertion of ownership of these and other outlying islands (such as the Bonin and other groups), the protection of her citizens in for eign lands, the establishment of consulates and legations abroad, the sending of hundreds of students to America and Europe and the im portation of an equal number of salaried ex pert teachers and advisers (yatoi) from the Occident, (to relay the foundations of the empire.* In a word, the Japanese, confessing their defects and the folly of long isolation, faced the situation. Instead of playing off one nation against another, they determined to find out the secrets of power in each and to apply these to their own needs. When some Riu Kivans had been wrecked on Formosa and killed by the native head-hunters, the govern mcnt in Tokio, in 1874 lived up to its duties by sending a force to Formosa to chastise the savages. When a Peruvian vessel entered Yokohama harbor, loaded with Chinese coolies kept against their will, Japan freed them and then communicated in friendly terms with China and Peru on the basis of international law. In her further dealings with Korea and China, she refused to negotiate except accord ing to the laws of nations. China, thus stim ulated and compelled by a rival deemed inferior, began to see the necessity of providing what she had never possessed before, a standing army and a navy.