Baroy Hayasut, Japanese Minister to China, who, it has been stated, is to be transferred to Russia, went over to Tokio recently on furlough, and there he was, as tight be expected, repeatedly interviewed by the enterprising journal lists of the metropolis, The Japan Mail says that the best of these interviews was reported in the Jiji, and of this it gives a summary in its own columns. The vier s of such an able and observant diplomatist are well worth noting, Baron Hayashi regards the situation of China a little more hopefully than Westerners are inclined to do, which may be partly ascribed to the fact that the Japanese, Westernised as they are, are not yet quite Westerners—the expressions are clumsy but they convey the intended meaning,—nor have they entirely lost their traditional respect for their great neighbour, rotten as it was reserved to them to prove her to be. He remarks that China after the war is not nearly so enfeebled or distressed as his countrymen ight suppose. "In that colossal old kingdom not only were many provinces not directly affected by the war, but even those that felt its direct effects appear to be forgetting it entirely." He does not find the Chinese Government so helpless as it is thought to be in Japan. He questions the opinions held by the English journals published in China, that China's foreign policy depends upon the will of two or three big Powers. Here we think, and we judge not only from advices received from time to time from Peking, but also from the concessions that China has been forced, in the face of much internal as well as external disapproval, to make to France and Russia, that the English journals are right, and that Baron Hayashi has given too much credence to what he has been told by the Ministers of the 'I'sungli Yamen. He says that "though China may be reduced to a more abject state, and suffer hereafter more crushing defeats, she does not at present feel any particular pain, and does not rely on any Powers for anything. It is true that she may be obliged to seek the protection of England, if-Russia prefers certain strong demands, and vice versd, but possessing from the earliest ages vast self-conceit, she will never readily acquiesce in the demands of other Powers or follow their advice. If driven to bay, she may develop " resolution to oppose the whole of the outer world at the point of the bayonet." This is a conclusion which seems to us entirely improbable. It is quite trae that she never readily acquiesces. M. Gerard had almost to use force to get his convention re the frontier of French Indo-China signed,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.