Aug. 14.
Fon several months past the "North-China Daily News'' has had to say things as disagreeable tu Japanese readers as they were certainly said with reluctance by itself. For Japan is an old ally of Great Britain's and this paper has 's endeavoured to keep friendship for Japan as an integral part of its policy. Nor, and this we would specially emphasize, does it wish to break with that good tradition now. Yo this our Japanese readers will probably reply with a bitter snile, that we have a curious way of showing friendship. Tt is difficult for the average newspaper reader to distinguish between criticism of his nation and criticism of the particular Government which happens to be ruling over him. Yet that is a distinction which we have always tried most carefully to make clear: and in condemning what Mr. J. O. P. Bland calls the invisible and irresponsible powers behind the Throne which actually control Japan's policy," we have tried to, show not only the injustice of that policy to other peoples, but its damaging consequences to the Japanese themselves.
Reduced to the barest outlines, the complaint against Japan is thie: that being far too thickly populated for the resources of her own soil, her people must expand and obtain supplies from elsewhere, and that in seeking to fulfil that need ber rulers have allowed no consideration of the rights and feelings of others to stand in the light of their thacking @ way through."" A country whose population has increased by fourteen per cent. in ten years while its productivity has only increased by four, must overflow. It is not the fact, but the manner of overflowing with which other nations quarrel. The Japanese answer to this is: \Ve are no worse than you English and Americans; it is merely that you started earlier to annex the fat places of the earth and having got them you are like a retired burglar, who, under an assumed name, sits on philanthropic committees to slobber over other people's iniquities to the deserving poor."' Historically untrue as that argument is, it cannot be met because it represents a state of mind which will not accept facts from others nex inquire into them on its own account. But Great Britain can reply that wherever she goes there is equal opportunity and equal justice for all; and if Japan objects that Australia and Canada shut their doors to her, Great Britain can point to the fact that they do the same by the Indians, and thereby give her a great deal of trouble. And at any rate the self-governing dominions have been perfectly frank and con. sistent. They have never pretended to open the door with one hand while shutting it with the other as the Japanese Government has done in Manchuria. Nor can any other country in modern times be accused of anything so unscrupulous and indefensible as the Twenty-one Demand. Nor can one recall any incident, in peace time, in which there is such glaring contradiction between a country's promise and performance as in the case of Shantung. These things, with twenty others differing only from them in degree, not in quality, cannot be forgotten or explained except on the evident assumption that the men who speak for Japan do not control her acts. The Japanese Foreign Office may make fine speeches; but the War Office dictates the policy.
And this policy is unfair to the Japanese people and is doing them infinite harm. Anybody who knows anything about Japan can see that the average decent-minded Japanese would far sooner live on good terms with his neighbours than otherwise. He is hospitable, friendly and courteous, the utter antithesis of everything that his present Government makes him appear to be, The evident unpopularity throughout Japan of the Siberian adventure suggests fairly strongly that he has no appetite for mere wars of conquest. Furthermore, in political life there undoubtedly exists a very numerous body of liberally-minded men, who both recognize the practical folly of War Office government and would reverse it on simple grounds of abstract principle—whose policy, in other words, is guided not only by self-interest, but by the fullest consciousness of right and justice. How to strengthen this party is the great problem on which depends both the peace of the Far East and the internal welfare of Japan; for that they are at present powerless is sufficiently shown, even in a question of home politics by the recent quashing of Mr Shimada's interpellation regarding the honour of three Ministers. Tt is not only foreigners who have cause to find fault with the party in power in Japan, but the Japanese themselves. Her foreign policy is but a reflex of the internal contest— commercialism versus feudalism, internationalism against _seclusion, democracy and autocracy. The old ruling caste are clinging desperately {o their privileges against the rising tide of liberal thought, and, just like the Prussians, they seek to strengthen their position by foreign conquest. But there are those in Japan who realize that expansion can be achieved' without aggression, that raw materials are better to be got by barter than by bullying and that honesty is a more effective method in foreign affairs than the bludgeon.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.