d, which overthrew a
feudal aristocracy which had endured for nearly seven hundred years. At
its close, the Mikado emerged from the sacred seclusion, in which he had
been purposely kept, to take the reins of government and lead the half
unwilling nation into the ways of the western world. In a few years,
Japan had fitted herself out with a constitution, a bureau staff, an
army and navy, post office, railroad and telegraph facilities, customs
houses, a mint, docks, lighthouses, mills and factories, public schools,
colleges and schools of special instruction, newspapers, publishing
houses and a new literature written by Japanese students of European
life and history; Ambassadors and consuls were admitted to Japan and
sent to the other nations; scholars sought the western schools and
returned to put into practice western ideas; European ships established
commercial relations with the islands; and Christian missionaries
hurried into this promising new field. Japan, in thirty years had passed
from obscurity to fame, and no longer doomed to be the prey of other
nations, she had a voice in that great council, which decides the
destinies of mankind. By a not unnatural coincidence, she has been
attracted to that other island power, Great Britain, and it is to
England that her debt is greatest; for in political and economic
progress, England is the model of the world.

About the middle of the fifth century, the Roman armies, after a
military occupation of Britain which lasted for four hundred years,
were recalled to Rome. That imperial city, fattened upon oriental
plunder, and intoxicated by hundreds of military triumphs, was now
falling amidst the ruins of her temples and theatres, before the
onslaughts of barbarian hordes. Meanwhile the same drama, though upon a
smaller scale, was being enacted in the deserted province. The Romanized
Britons, their vitals eaten out by the corrosive civilization which they
had adopted, were slaughtered like sheep on their borders, by the
uncivilized tribes, until in desperation, they invited North German
pirate chiefs to Britain to protect them. To protect them! What bitter
irony! By the end of the next century, bones and ashes were about all
there was left to protect, and England was peopled afresh by the
devastating hosts of her protectors.

While in their native forests four centuries earlier, these Germans had
won the admiration of Tacitus by the simplicity of their manners and the
integri