Tokio, Jan. 15.
Despite the fact that Japan is really and truly in better international accord with the Powers than was the case a brief 24 months aga and that much capital has been made of this fact as indicating: the desire of the Japanese Government and people to live on terms of intimacy and friendship with the rest of the world, there) is a not uninfluential section that regards the Washington Conference and its re-sultan treaties and understandings as a net spread by the Powers to ensnare Japan and into which she has fallen. Those inclined to this trend of thought are generally the swashbuckling, sword-rattling sort, not necessarily: professional soldiers or sailors, but a noisy political sect that interpret every concession made or wrong righted as a lack of backbone by the authorities. The Shantung retrocession and_ the Sino-Japanese postal pact—both results of the Washington Conference—are utilized by these people to be labour the Government on the score that, while these were matters that concerned Japan and China directly, the Government "disgraced the country" by "bowing to the instructions of foreign countries' The Quadruple Agreement, which has taken the place of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, is declared to ba "only an Anglo-Saxon means to hold Japan in check." In this frame of mind, those papers that have always been "again the Government''—no ne what Cabinet wild editorial articles in which, ned to in _power—print strange to say, all the venom and bitterness that results from, a belief—however wrong this may be—that Japan has been "let down," is directed largely against Great Bri tain, Japan's erstwhile ally.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.