Meanwhile the three Powers of Chinese Asia — almost the only ones that still preserved their sovereignty — forced into new and em barrassing relations by the military and political activities of the Occidentals in or near their borders, found themselves at odds with each other. The old dogmas of statecraft, that had ruled the world of Confucian ideas in eastern Asia, were being challenged and jostled. Especially was China's attitude of superiority and her claim to universal dominion and hom age, so long tacitly or openly expressed to the neighbor and pupil nations around her, of fensive to the mikado's empire, as being an archistic and anomalous. A war party formed in Japan for the invasion of Korea, that had taunted her island neighbor with being a traitor to Oriental culture.Happily, instead of hostil ities, the government in Tokio offered the olive branch and a treaty was made in 1876. This action was followed by the United States and by China, in 1882, by which little Korea, though having few of the necessary features of a modern state, was dragged out, in all her poverty and weakness, into costly and perilous international relations. Only for two or three decades did she attempt to keep up the forms, or farce, of a state in the modern world of in terrelations, while still her people had the mind of hermits. How hard old ideas and mental habits die is seen in China's attempt to hold both Riu Kiu (over which a long contro versy arose, which it was hoped would be set tled by the suggestion of Gen. U. S. Grant of a joint high commission) and Korea as vassals, despite the fact of her own recognition of Korea as a sovereign state. In 1894, these differences of view clashed and rose to the climax of war. Then, not for the first time on the bloody field, but initially as to modern armaments with steam and electricity, the two powers met —China fractional and divided and Japan united. The result of war's arbitrament was to clear the ground for the future history of Asia by abol ishing forever the effete dogmas of universal and of dual sovereignty.
Now Japan illustrated the axiom that pre cept whispers while example thunders. Not the professions of amity and benevolence but the policy and action of Europe bade Japan fol low up her advantage by aggression. As the pupil of the Anglo-Saxon nations, Japan — her sons having already read and mastered Eng lish and American history—proceeded to follow their compelling example. Dwelling on a chain of volcanic islands, with little arable soil and a fast growing population, Japan, like insular Britain, must needs have a larger food area and room for industrial expansion. Imitating Eng land even to flattery, she sought fresh territory in other lands on the near continent, demand ing, as °indemnity,* or the price of successful war, what had long been a thinly populated country very near the condition of waste land; which was, however, on the westward route to Europe and further toward those nations and parts of the world whose ideas she had adopted and with which she was joined in brotherhood, having turned her back on Chinese culture. England, by waging nearly 50 trade wars in almost within as many years, had shown her what to do by seizing coaling stations, islands and vast territories, from the size of India to those of the dimensions of coral reefs, thus ex panding her possessions in every direction, so as to have a never ceasing drum beat and a midnight as well as a noonday sun, and one shinning on her possessions during 24 hours of each day. Even the history of the United States, thanks to American missionaries and teachers, was a familiar object lesson urging to action and embrace of opportunity. Once but a narrow strip between the Alleghenies and the Atlantic Ocean, though already possessed of more land than could be worked intensively, the American people had extended their domains beyond the Mississippi and the desert, and out from the Pacific, even Alaska, Hawaii and the Philippines. The Americans taught and
enforced the Monroe Doctrine. Why should not the Japanese have one also? Hers, too, seemed manifest destiny.' Hindered in 1905 by the combined force of Russia, Germany and France, that were angry at the idea of Japan becoming so apt a pupil and doing what they had done, even making the European nations her models, Japan yielded to their mandate. She accepted, in lieu of Manchuria, Formosa, with a money indemnity sufficient to buy the battleships that in due time should enable her to win back what she had lost. The experience, in 1900, of marching with the Russians to Peking, did not tend to raise respect for the Russian military. Unable to see that the Muscovites had any more right to Chinese ter ritory than they had, the Japanese, after the failure of polite diplomacy, faced their rival, now become enemy, in arms in 1904-05. They won a foothold on the continent, with control of the routes to Europe and then proceeded to follow the example immediately before their eyes, of the United States in appropriating the Philippines. This they did by absorbing Korea. Still following out the principles of the Monroe Doctrine, they determined that eastern Asia should no longer be the seat of exploitation, colonization and conquest by European or other foreign powers. In 1915 Japan settled her old scores and eliminated Germany from China and the islands of the Pacific. Still carrying out her purpose, of cementing the friendship and consolidating the power of the nations under similar conditions of culture, she resolved to rouse China into a fuller national con sciousness in order to prevent that °break up' so heartlessly planned by European powers. Japan's underlying idea was to change China from a mediaeval to a modern power, make sure of a market and hinder China's further dismem berment by the nations that had already seized most of the lands and continents not their own. That the Japanese motive was ethically as well founded as that of the Europeans' policy toward Asiatics cannot, when studied in the light of history, be denied. In carrying out her policy of 1915 toward China, Japan simply employed the methods taught her and the weapons which had already been used upon herself and upon China for a century or more and approved by most Christian governments. Drastic they were, but if we take facts, instead of fears and prejudices for our guidt we see that Japan, sought no conquest of China's territory, but aimed rather to influence her colossal neighbor by means of education, employment of her experts, the right of control of the resources needed, and propa gation of religion, with freedom of conscience and unhindered modern civilization — all of which methods other foreigners had repeatedly used before her. Terrible as these demands seemed and ruthless as were the methods, real or apparent, as set forth in the hysterical ex aggerations of the journalists in Peking and writers in American magazines, they were no more than Christians had made — often at the point of the bayonet and at the mouth of cannon, when forcing tariffs, collecting indem nities, or laying extortionate mulcts on both Japan and China. So far as history has re corded, the United States is the only country in which the national conscience, as in the case of the affair in 1865 and in that of the Boxer outbreak in 1900, revolted against injustice and demanded and made re turn or reparation to the wronged. In 1915 Japan resolved to forestall European aggres sion—which might yet have another recrudes cence after the war, when Europe should awake from her international insanity.