ated as Tsarism and a perpetual menace to a disarmed
nation such as China. So long as that government remains, so long must
Japan remain an international suspect and be denied equal rights in the
council-chambers of the Liberal Powers.

If the situation which arose on the 15th August, 1914, is to be
thoroughly understood, it is necessary to pick up threads of
Chino-Japanese relations from a good many years back. First-hand
familiarity with the actors and the scenes of at least three decades is
essential to give the picture the completeness, the brilliancy of
colouring, and withal the suggestiveness inseparable from all true
works of art. For the Chino-Japanese question is primarily a work of art
and not merely a piece of jejune diplomacy stretched across the years.
As the shuttle of Fate has been cast swiftly backwards and forwards, the
threads of these entwining relations have been woven into patterns
involving the whole Far East, until to-day we have as it were a complete
Gobelin tapestry, magnificent with meaning, replete with action, and
full of scholastic interest.

Let us follow some of the tracery. It has long been the habit to affirm
that the conflict between China and Japan had its origin in Korea, when
Korea was a vassal state acknowledging the suzerainty of Peking; and
that the conflict merited ending there, since of the two protagonists
contending for empire Japan was left in undisputed mastery. This
statement, being incomplete, is dangerously false. Dating from that
vital period of thirty years ago, when Yuan Shih-kai first went to Seoul
as a general officer in the train of the Chinese Imperial Resident (on
China being forced to take action in protection of her interests, owing
to the "opening" of Korea by the American Treaty of 1882) three
contestants, equally interested in the balance of land-power in Eastern
Asia were constantly pitted against one another with Korea as their
common battling-ground--Russia, China and Japan. The struggle, which
ended in the eclipse of the first two, merely shifted the venue from the
Korean zone to the Manchurian zone; and from thence gradually extended
it further and further afield until at last not only was Inner Mongolia
and the vast belt of country fronting the Great Wall embraced within its
scope, but the entire aspect of China itself was changed. For these
important facts have to be noted. Until the Russian war of 1904-05 had
demonstrated the utter valuelessness of T