e head men of Japan
are dreaming ambitiously, and the people are dreaming blindly, a
Napoleonic dream. And to this dream the Japanese clings and will cling
with bull-dog tenacity. The soldier shouting "Nippon, Banzai!" on the
walls of Wiju, the widow at home in her paper house committing suicide so
that her only son, her sole support, may go to the front, are both
expressing the unanimity of the dream.

The late disturbance in the Far East marked the clashing of the dreams,
for the Slav, too, is dreaming greatly. Granting that the Japanese can
hurl back the Slav and that the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon
race do not despoil him of his spoils, the Japanese dream takes on
substantiality. Japan's population is no larger because her people have
continually pressed against the means of subsistence. But given poor,
empty Korea for a breeding colony and Manchuria for a granary, and at
once the Japanese begins to increase by leaps and bounds.

Even so, he would not of himself constitute a Brown Peril. He has not
the time in which to grow and realize the dream. He is only forty-five
millions, and so fast does the economic exploitation of the planet hurry
on the planet's partition amongst the Western peoples that, before he
could attain the stature requisite to menace, he would see the Western
giants in possession of the very stuff of his dream.

The menace to the Western world lies, not in the little brown man, but in
the four hundred millions of yellow men should the little brown man
undertake their management. The Chinese is not dead to new ideas; he is
an efficient worker; makes a good soldier, and is wealthy in the
essential materials of a machine age. Under a capable management he will
go far. The Japanese is prepared and fit to undertake this management.
Not only has he proved himself an apt imitator of Western material
progress, a sturdy worker, and a capable organizer, but he is far more
fit to manage the Chinese than are we. The baffling enigma of the
Chinese character is no baffling enigma to him. He understands as we
could never school ourselves nor hope to understand. Their mental
processes are largely the same. He thinks with the same thought-symbols
as does the Chinese, and he thinks in the same peculiar grooves. He goes
on where we are balked by the obstacles of incomprehension. He takes the
turning which we cannot perceive, twists around the obstacle, and,
presto! is out of sight in the