ese
have shown they thoroughly understand by not only tightening their hold
on Manchuria and Shantung, but by going straight to the root of the
matter and declaring on every possible occasion that they alone are
responsible for the peace and safety of the Far East--and this in spite
of the fact that their plan of 1915 was exposed and partially
frustrated. But the chief force behind the Japanese Foreign Office, it
should be noted, is militarist; and it is a point of honour for the
Military Party to return to the charge in China again and again until
there is definite success or definite failure.

Now in view of the facts which have been so voluminously set forth in
preceding chapters, it is imperative for men to realize that the
struggle in the Far East is like the Balkan Question a thing rooted in
geography and peoples, and cannot be brushed aside or settled by
compromises. The whole future of Chinese civilization is intimately
bound up with the questions involved, and the problem instead of
becoming easier to handle must become essentially more difficult from
day to day. Japan's real objective being the termination of the implied
trusteeship which Europe and America still exercise in the Far East, the
course of the European war must intimately effect the ultimate outcome.
If that end is satisfactory for democracies, China may reasonably claim
to share in the resulting benefits; if on the other hand the Liberal
Powers do not win an overwhelming victory which shall secure the
sanctity of Treaties for all time, it will go hard for China. Outwardly,
the immediate goal which Japan seeks to attain is merely to become the
accredited spokesman of Eastern Asia, the official representative; and,
using this attorneyship as a cloak for the advancement of objects which
other Powers would pursue on different principles, so impregnably to
entrench herself where she has no business to be that no one will dare
to attempt to turn her out. For this reason we see revived in Manchuria
on a modified scale the Eighteenth Century device, once so essential a
feature of Dutch policy in the struggle against Louis XIV, namely the
creation of "barrier-cities" for closing and securing a frontier by
giving them a special constitution which withdraws them from ordinary
jurisdiction and places foreign garrisons in them. This is precisely
what is going on from the Yalu to Eastern Mongolia, and this procedure
no doubt will be extended in time to other r