tence. In this matter Japan will have, as other
nations have had, to work out her own salvation. In the process of
experiment many mistakes will no doubt be made, but Japan starts with
this advantage in respect of State Socialism, precisely as in regard
to her Army and Navy--that her statesmen, her leading public men, her
great thinkers, have no prejudices or preconceived ideas. All they
desire is that the nation as a whole shall boldly advance on that path
of progress by the lines which shall best serve to place the country
in a commanding position among the Great Powers of the world, and at
the same time to promote the happiness, comfort, and prosperity of the
people.

The Japanese are great in imitation, but they are greater perhaps in
their powers of adaptation. They have so far shown a peculiar faculty
for fitting to Japanese requirements and conditions the machinery,
science, industry, &c., necessary to their proper development. Japan
is without doubt now keenly alive, marshalling all her industrial
forces in the direction of seeking to become supreme in the trade and
commerce of the Far East. The aim of Japanese statesmen is to make
their country self-productive and self-sustaining. We may, I think,
accordingly look forward to the time, not very far distant, when Japan
will cease to import machinery and other foreign products for which
there has hitherto been a brisk demand, when she will build her own
warships and merchant steamers, as she now partially does, and
generally be largely independent of those Western Powers of which she
has heretofore been such a good customer.

At the present time the chief manufactures of the country are silk,
cotton, cotton yarn, paper, glass, porcelain, and Japan ware, matches
and bronzes, while shipbuilding has greatly developed of recent years.
The principal imports are raw cotton, metals, wool, drugs, rails and
machinery generally, as well as sugar and, strange to say, rice. Japan
exports silk, cotton, tea, coal, camphor and, let me add, matches and
curios. The trade in the latter has assumed considerable proportions,
and I fear I must add that much of what is exported is made
exclusively for the European market. According to the latest figures,
the country's annual exports amounted to about L35,000,000, and its
imports to about L44,000,000. I venture to prophesy that these figures
will ere long be largely inverted.

Silk is the most important item of Japan's foreign trade.