Japan is'both capitalistic and Iilitaristic, but, now that the country has managed to shake off to a great extent the incubus of kaying the uniformed satraps dictate her policies, she is looking towards a means of curbing the unrestricted desires of the niewrich that have sprung up like mushrooms and who, solicitous of only their own personal desires, have made life considerably harder than it was before the great boom ani. before the days of high wages. Workmen occasionally hurl all the thunders of the at. the "capitalistic system," but in reality they visualize only these nouveau riche. At any rate, the workers are still considerably impotent.
have not learnt how to organize and it will be decades yet afore they can reach a stage at which they can really make their will felt. Hitherto, their ranks have been greatly strengthened by the intellectual "members of the middle classes, who preferred higher wages and a workman's coat tv the meagre salaries paid clerks and the expensive European garb that seemed a sine qua non, It was this middle class imtellectual element that stiffened the backs of Labour, but with the wither ing of the war boom flower and its blossom, high wages, the middle classes have not been as enthusias. tic as they have hitherto been. In fact, they realize that the conditions they thought were permanent have become transient. They have quit the Labour camp, but are nov yet sure whether the sort of capitalism as expressed in Japan is really beneficial to the land, and consequently there is. considerable heart-searching, which is wrongly regarded by those high apostles of Sovietism, like Krassin and Axtonov, as signs of a revolution in Japan.
THE FUTURE OF SAGHALIEN, The entire island of Saghalien to come under the sway of Japan and an abolition of fortifications so far as the Russian and Japanese littorals are concerned in the same way that Canada and United States have no fortifications is the gist of a scheme that has been proposed to Mr. A. A. Joffe by leading members of the Kenseikai, the principal Opposition political party in Japan. The leaders of the party paid a visit to the Soviet diplomat at his hotel in Atami, where he is recuperating from his illness, had a long conference with him relative to a final settlement of Russo-Sapanese ' problems- and then Lroached this settlement, The interview lasted for nearly six hours, Mr. Joffe talking from an easy chair. The Bolshevik diplomat did not definitely commit himself, but left no room for doubt that Russia would' be willing to lease or sell Northern Saghalien to Japan, on condition that he is given guarantees that, im the event of another Russo-Japanese conference, the prospects for success of such a parley will be ensured beforehand other words, it means that Russia will expect her guid pro quo, and wants it to be promised beforehand, holding out to Japav the tempting bait of having all the
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