The Japanese Foreign Office comes in for a sound berating, the writer declaring that it is little better than an appanage of London or of Washington and that "diplomatic affairs are conducted the Japanese Foreign Office officials at the leisure and pleasure of England and America'? and almost in accordance with instructions received from either across the Pacific or from the capital of the little island in' the North Sea. "It is inevitable that, under these circumstances, the indignation of the Japanese people should burst forth and the Russian question has aroused the memory of the nation to the fact that, besides Great Britain and America, there are also Russia and Germany, It has given a new orientation to the diplomatic ideas of the nation and indications are that there will be a possible revival of the sense of independence in the minds of the people so far as foreign affairs are concerned. If this tendency is rightly directed with a view to inaugurating a self-assertive diplomacy, Japan may yet hope-to strip herself of the old mantle of a self-denying, negative, passive, policy which she has been content with so long and acquire a national individuality, a national
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.