, while the three
destroyers and the little gunboat were surprised by the enemy. Guam, and
Pago-Pago on Tutuila, were also captured, quite incidentally. About the
middle of May, a Japanese transport fleet returning from San Francisco
appeared at Honolulu and took forty thousand inhabitants to Seattle,
where they formed the reserve corps of the Northern Japanese Army.

* * * * *

Japan's rising imperialism, the feeling that the sovereignty of the
Pacific rightly belonged to the leading power in yellow Asia had, long
before the storms of war swept across the plains of Manchuria, come into
conflict with the imperialistic policy of the United States, although
invisibly at first. Prior to that time the Asiatic races had looked upon
the dominion of the white man as a kind of fate, as an irrevocable
universal law, but the fall of Port Arthur had shattered this idol once
and for all. And after the days of Mukden and Tsushima had destroyed the
belief in the invincibility of the European arms, the Japanese agents
found fertile soil everywhere for their seeds of secret political
agitation. In India, in Siam, and in China also, the people began to
prick their ears when it was quite openly declared that after the
destruction of the czar's fleet the Pacific and the lands bordering on
it could belong only to the Mongolians. The discovery was made that the
white man was not invincible. And beside England, only the United States
remained to be considered--the United States who were still hard at work
on their Philippine inheritance and could not make up their mind to
establish their loudly heralded imperialistic policy on a firm footing
by providing the necessary armaments.

Then came the Peace of Portsmouth. Absolutely convinced that his country
would have to bear the brunt of the next Asiatic thunder-storm, Theodore
Roosevelt gained one of the most momentous victories in the history of
the world when he removed the payment of a war indemnity from the
conditions of peace. And he did this not because he had any particular
love for the Russians, but because he wished to prevent the
strengthening of Japan's financial position until after the completion
of the Panama Canal. America did exactly what Germany, Russia and France
had done at the Peace of Shimonoseki, and we had to be prepared for
similar results. But how long did it take the American people, who had
helped to celebrate the victories of Oyama, No