at in China the
history of Korea. Japan would be willing to go to any lengths to secure
the attainment of this reactionary object. Faithful to her "divine
mission," she is ceaselessly stirring up trouble and hoping that time
may still be left her to consolidate her position on the Asiatic
mainland, one of her latest methods being to busy herself at distant
points in the Pacific so that Western men for the sake of peace may be
ultimately willing to abandon the shores of the Yellow Seas to her
unchallenged mastery.

The problem thus outlined becomes a great dramatic thing. The lines
which trace the problem are immense, stretching from China to every
shore bathed by the Pacific and then from there to the distant west.
Whenever there is a dull calm, that calm must be treated solely as an
intermission, an interval between the acts, a preparation for something
more sensational than the last episode, but not as a permanent
settlement which can only come by the methods we have indicated. For the
Chinese question is no longer a local problem, but a great world-issue
which statesmen must regulate by conferences in which universal
principles will be vindicated if they wish permanently to eliminate what
is almost the last remaining international powder-magazine. A China that
is henceforth not only admitted to the family of nations on terms of
equality but welcomed as a representative of Liberalism and a subscriber
to all those sanctions on which the civilization of peace rests, will
directly tend to adjust every other Asiatic problem and to prevent a
recrudescence of those evil phenomena which are the enemies of progress
and happiness. Is it too much to dream of such a consummation? We think
not. It is to America and to England that China looks to rehabilitate
herself and to make her Republic a reality. If they lend her their help,
if they are consistent, there is still no reason why this democracy on
the shores of the Yellow Sea should not be reinstated in the proud
position it occupied twenty centuries ago, when it furnished the very
silks which clothed the daughters of the Caesars.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] The growth of the Chinese press is remarkable. Although no complete
statistics are available there is reason to believe that the number of
periodicals in China now approximates 10,000, the daily vernacular
newspapers in Peking alone exceeding 60. Although no newspaper in China
prints more than 20,000 copies a day, the reading publ