d made one of the first commercial treaties with China. In 1854 the
United States had been the point of the foreign wedge that opened Japan
to western civilization and inaugurated that amazing period of national
reorganization and assimilation which has given the Japanese Empire her
place in they world today. American missionaries had labored long and
disinterestedly for the moral regeneration of both China and Japan with
results which are now universally recognized as beneficial, though in
1900 there was still among the Chinese much of that friction which is
the inevitable reaction from an attempt to change the fundamentals of an
ancient faith and long-standing habits. American merchants, it is
true, had been of all classes, but at any rate there had always been a
sufficient leaven of those of the highest type to insure a reasonable
reputation.

The conduct of the American Government in the Far East had been most
honorable and friendly. The treaty with Japan in 1858 contained the
clause: "The President of the United States, at the request of the
Japanese Government, will act as a friendly mediator in such matters of
difference as may arise between the Government of Japan and any European
power." Under Seward the United States did, indeed, work in concert with
European powers to force the opening of the Shimonoseki Straits in 1864,
and a revision of the tariff in 1866. Subsequently, however, the United
States cooperated with Japan in her effort to free herself from certain
disadvantageous features of early treaties. In 1883 the United
States returned the indemnity received at the time of the Shimonoseki
affair--an example of international equity almost unique at the time
but subsequently paralleled in American relations with China. The one
serious difficulty existing in the relationships of the United States
with both China and Japan resulted from an unwillingness to receive
their natives as immigrants when people of nearly every other country
were admitted. The American attitude had already been expressed in the
Chinese Exclusion Act. As yet the chief difficulty was with that nation,
but it was inevitable that such distinctions would prove particularly
galling to the rising spirit of the Japanese.

John Hay was keenly aware of the possibilities involved in these Far
Eastern events. Of profound moment under any circumstances, they were
doubly so now that the United States was territorially involved. To
take a slice of