After the first astoundment created by the Japanese collapse had passed off, fairer-minded men began to ask one another why the Government had made peace, and whether or not Japan could have avoided making peace on the terms she did, if she had shown herself more firm and had employed a few of those artifices in which Disraeli so excelled unself at the Berlin Conference. It may be remarked that Jepan is such an able imitator that she might well have imitated what has bon dono before, but a little examination shows that' hor imitations incline rather towards the copying of actualities than to the deep study and effective use of decade old precedents, Thus in Manchuria it is already a subject of much comment that in the territory from which she has succeeded in driving Russia—tho country South of Changtu—Japan has simply resuscitated forms which the Cear's officers had been pleased to devise and institute before the war; and that although much has been written by 8 detractors about her usurpation of Chinese rights, the plain truth is that she has displayed hardly a spark of originality in her methods, leaving the Chinese Administration of Manchuria to lumber on now much as before.
But this is another question.
The fact remains that Baron Komura and his aids employed, and thought they could win by employing only, the methods of the new school of diplomacy—the allega school of frankness and open dealing. Much has been lately written about this new diplomacy which knows not art nor subterfuge and is reputed to be employed by English and American statesmen in their dealings with one another, and which has been so extolled by the late ambassador Choate. But it is one thing to employ such methods between men of English speech whose ideals, religion, training, and countless other things are practically the amo, and who know each other's exact strength and force of character. It is quite another thing for an Empire of the East, whose star has just risen, to attempt such artless ways with a Power boasting of the most brilliant and resourceful diplomatists in the world; to attempt them is to court defeat, and now even the semi-official " Kokumin," duly chastised with plebeian brickbats, defeat diplomatic.
The firet mistake which will in time be fully acknowledged lay therefore in assuming that the Mikado's plonipotenflaries had but to lay an itemized account of their demands before the Czar's high officers, without subterfuge or fencing, to have everything crucial accepted. This involved the totally false assumption that Russia felt herself a beaten Power —not a beaten Power in a mere colonial war but a beaten Power in a gigantic fight to afinish—and was willing to acknowledge this fact in the Conference Chamber—and to have it from thence proclaimed from the house tops of " score of countries.
Nothing could have been more erroneous than this. The uttermost limit of Russia's admissions, unless she could have been made to see the shadow of a worse fate hanging over her, must'and could only be, bearing in mind the peculiar circumstances of the situation, that the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.