of foreign invaders, consequently her
nationalism had no narrow, selfish meaning, and accordingly she saw no
reason for putting any obstacle in the way of St. Francis Xavier and
his followers until she concluded, however much or little reason there
may have been for her conclusions, that the incoming of these
foreigners in some measure menaced her national existence. Before she
arrived at that conclusion she was apparently prepared to welcome all
that was good in the ethical teaching of the Portuguese missionaries,
and, if a section of her population desired to embrace a religion to
whose ethical teaching she had no objection; there was no reason, in
her opinion, why that religion should not exist side by side with
those more ancient religions which had lived amicably together during
many centuries.

For nearly two hundred and fifty years Japan resolved to remain in a
state of isolation. Then, as I have said, European Powers and the
great Republic of the West came knocking and knocking loudly at her
doors, and as a result thereof her thinking men came to realise that
in a state of isolation a continued civilised existence is impossible.
Accordingly Japan, tentatively at first, opened certain portions of
her country to European intercourse, and as an inevitable consequence
thereof found it necessary to adopt European ideas--and European
armaments. The country had kept out the aggressor for some two
thousand years or thereabouts, and Japan clearly saw that if the
aggressor was to be kept out in the future, the near future, she would
probably have to fight to maintain her national existence. The war
with China was the outcome of the feeling that Korea under the
suzerainty of China was a constant menace to not only the prosperity
but the existence of the Empire. The same feeling undoubtedly led to
the war with Russia, as Japan considered, and rightly in my opinion,
that the possession of Korea by Russia meant the loss of national
independence. That war was not as so many wars have been, the result
of a racial hatred, the outcome of a spirit of revenge, or waged for
aggressive designs. It was forced upon Japan, and was in every sense
purely defensive. Japan waged it confident in her own strength from
the fact that in the two thousand years of her history she had, in all
the conflicts in which she had engaged, kept in view the one
ideal--the conservation of the national existence, an ideal which she
has consistently realised