national pride refused to
admit that they had so far misunderstood the power of Britain and her
Allies. It was a terrible awakening to the self-styled "Lords of the
East" that all their schemes should be brought to nought, that British
and American squadrons might be expected to cruise in the Sea of Japan,
and perhaps hold the scales fair between her and her temporarily
helpless neighbour. I do not suppose it will ever come to that, but such
was her fear. From this time on, while the objects of Japan in Siberia
were still the same, she pursued them by quite different methods.

The first sign of change was that Japanese soldiers were allowed to
salute British officers and were no longer allowed to use the butts of
their rifles on inoffensive Russian citizens. Their military trains no
longer conveyed contraband goods to their compatriots who had
_acquired_ the Russian business houses in the main trading centres along
the railway. The Staff no longer commandeered the best buildings in the
towns for alleged military purposes and immediately sub-let them to
private traders. Japan at once re-robed herself with the thin veil of
Western morals and conduct which she had rapturously discarded in 1914.
While Hun methods were in the ascendancy she adopted the worst of them
as her own. She is in everything the imitator _par excellence_, and
therefore apparently could not help herself.

The British and French mildly protested against the attitude of Japan
towards Semianoff and Kalmakoff, but it was continued until the anarchy
created threatened to frustrate every Allied effort. Not until the Peace
Conference had disclosed the situation did a change in policy take
place. From this time on the conduct of Japan (both civil and military)
became absolutely correct. President Wilson brought forward his famous,
but impossible, proposal that the different Russian belligerents should
agree to an armistice and hold a conference on the Turkish "Isle of
Dogs." If patriotism is the maintenance of such rules of human conduct
and national life as will justify one man in killing another, then no
Russian patriot could meet in friendly conference those who had
destroyed and murdered their own country and people. Russia during the
previous two years had shown that there could be no compromise between
anarchy and order, or their several adherents. This was, however, the
policy of America, and as such received the blessing of every
representative, Jew o