After all Jdpan is a great country for the journalist. There is always—or at, least very often—something happening in the political world, some regrouping of parties going on, some political reputation being hattered, some political reputation being Things could hardly be more critical from 1 political point of view or more interesting than they are at the moment of writing, and the centre of attraction so far is that clever old statesman, Marquis Ito.
ARe ut Party.
When his party said it would not vote for the continuation of the Land Tax (without which continuation there can of course be no naval expansion for some time yet) people wondered what the Marquis would do. Would he oppose his own party and get ps tically marooned or would he adopt its views and lay himself open to the chs of being Jed instead of leading to have chosen a middle cause for, while agreeing with his party to oppose the continuation of the Land Tax, he is in favour of naval expansion so long as it can be carried out by a cutting down of expenditure in other directions. The Marquis makes, however, a number of reservations and leaves himself many loopholes for escape. He does not condemn the policy of having recourse to the Land Tax, he merely denies that the moment is' appropriate. The Cabinet could thus meet him half way by abandoning its programme of railway and telephone but, it is not certain that they will do'so, They have proud spirit and ment on several occa sions, so that they are not likely to bend now." Besides their position is very strong. Even if he himself returns to power, Marquis Ito will, as the "Times" points out, have to strengthen the navy; and it would look very unstatesmanlike if he were to oppose that necessary measure when out of place, and to adopt it once he gets into office In England they will fail, Lam sure, to understand that most of his difficulties at the present juncture come from the fact, that he has never been much of a jingal while, on the other hand, hi has always been organi:
One of the strongest developments in this connection is the meeting which took place last night at the house of Mr. Kato, (Minister of Foreign Adairs, of Marquis
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.