t who has given due
attention to the question can deny that it is primarily on the proper
handling of this nexus of financial interests, and not by establishing
any artificial balance of power between foreign nations, that the peace
of the Far East really hinges. The method of securing national
redemption is ready-made: Western nations should use the Parliament of
China as an instrument of reform, and by limiting themselves to this one
method secure that civil authority is reinforced to such a point that
its behests have behind them all the wealth of the West. In questions of
currency, taxation, railways and every other vexatious problem, it is
solely by using this instrument that satisfactory results can be
attained.[29] For once Chinese realize that parliamentary government is
not merely an experimental thing but the last chance the country is to
be given to govern itself, they will rally to the call and prove that
much of the trouble and turmoil of past years has been due to the
misunderstanding of the internal problem by Western minds which has
incited the population to intrigue against one another and remain
disunited. And if we insist that there is urgent need for a settlement
of these matters in the terms we have indicated, it is because we know
very precisely what Japanese thought on this subject really is.

What is that thought--whither does it lead?

It may be broadly said that Japanese activities throughout the Far East
are based on a thorough and adequate appreciation of the fact that apart
from the winning of the hegemony of China, there is the far more
difficult and knotty problem of overshadowing and ultimately dislodging
the huge network of foreign interests--particularly British
interests--which seventy-five years of Treaty intercourse have entwined
about the country. These interests, growing out of the seed planted in
the early Canton Factory days, had their origin in the termination by
the act of the British Government of the trading monopoly enjoyed until
the thirties of last century by the East India Company. Left without
proper definition until the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 had formally won
the principle of trading-rights at five open ports, and thus established
a first basis of agreement between England and China (to which all the
trading powers hastened to subscribe), these interests expanded in a
half-hearted way until 1860, when in order to terminate friction, the
principle of extraterritorial