July 3.
Ir Japanese readers are made indignant by the opening of our correspondent's account of Japanese soldiers'—_bebaviour in Siberia, we" fear—they will hardly be mollified by its conclusion. Here he passes from facts to comment. And we seem to hear the angry rejoinder: ''Mere conjecture, bias and misrepresentation, as Japan is ever misrepresented through the hatred and envy of foreigners." But if what our correspondent says is certainly conjectural in the sense that neither he nor any other foreigner is privy to the counsels of Japan. est militarists, there is nothing in his article to-day which is not! logical and justifiable deduction from recent facts conspicuous to! all the world. The Twenty-one} Demands, and the anxious care that was taken to keep them from Great Britain's knowledge; worse still, the ugly fact that' when communication finally became inevitable, the most, damning clause of all was suppressed the grip obtained on' various strategic points in China by means of loans to Peking, by the! Arms, Agreement and Military Pact: the wedges driven into China's side in Fukien, Shantung and Manchuria: the quite recent and wholly unjustifiable claim of Mongolia as a sphere of special Japanese interest the; continual stealthy extension of police stations: and, casting further afield than China or Siberia, the strange and discredit. able harbour age in Japan permitted, actually in war time, to Todian Nationalist revolutionaries how,' with all these sinister recollections, can we shut our eyes to deductions yet more sinister?
But on the other side are notable facts and tendencies that we wish to emphasize, to which we cling for the sake of long and treasured friendship with the Japanese people and in the firm belief that this cloud of Prussian despotism will presently be dissipated from their destinies. Nothing could be more noticeable than the tone of leading Japanese papers during the past few days. We said on Tuesday that the Japanese public had been singularly slow to rouse over the Nikolaievsk incident. And here is the Osaka ''Asahi,'' not at all crying for vengeance, but vigorously opposing the occupation of Saghalien, Haxbarovsk and
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.