d we any sickness on board? No. We must produce
the ship doctor, the list of passengers, and manifest of cargo. We had
no cargo. There were a dozen passengers. It was difficult to find fault
with us. No one was ill. We wanted coal. What was the matter? We had
no trouble at Hongkong. We could buy all the coal we wanted there,
but preferred this station. We had proposed to have our warships
cleaned up at Nagasaki, but there were objections raised. So the job
went to the docks at Hongkong, and good gold with it. Why was this? Oh
yes; Japan wanted, in the war between the United States and Spain,
to be not merely formally, but actually neutral! The fact is that the
Japanese Empire is not pleased with us. They had, in imperial circles,
a passion for Honolulu, and intimated their grief. Now they are annoyed
because that little indemnity for refusing the right to land Japanse
labor was paid by the Hawaiian Government before the absorption into
the United States. As the Hawaiian diplomatic correspondence about this
was conducted with more asperity than tact, if peace were the purpose,
it was a good sore place for the Japanese statesmen to rub, and they
resent in the newspapers the facile and cheap pacification resulting
from the influence of the United States. In addition the Japanese
inhabitants, though they have a larger meal than they can speedily
digest in Formosa, are not touched with unqualified pleasurable feeling
because we have the Philippines in our grasp. If Japan is to be the
great power of the Pacific, it is inconvenient to her for us to hold
the Hawaiian, the Aleutian and the Philippine groups of islands. The
Philippines have more natural resources than all the islands of Japan,
and our Aleutian Islands that are waiting for development would
probably be found, if thoroughly investigated, one of our great and
good bargains. The average American finds himself bothered to have to
treat the Japanese seriously, but we must, for they take themselves so,
and are rushing the work on new ships of war so that they will come out
equal with ourselves in sea power. They have ready for war one humdred
thousand men. If we did not hold any part of the Pacific Coast, this
might be a matter of indifference, but we have three Pacific States,
and there is no purpose to cede them to the Japanese. It would not
be statesmanship to give up the archipelagoes we possess, even if we
consider them as lands to hold for the hereafter. It is not d