time, be able to turn out the coarser products, the finer articles would still be made by us. Such a development would be a distinct gain, since, the richer our customers and the more productive their industries, the more will they be able to purchase from us. With all the development of Japanese industry in the last three decades, her imports from the Western nations have increased thirtyfold. Moreover, Japan would be the last nation to destroy the promising market of China by an overdevelopment of Chinese manufacturing industries. For, if Japan has any definite ambition, it is that of creating an active commerce throughout the Orient, and reaping the vast profits of a middleman. Should Japan be successful in the present war, the exclusive policy initiated by Russia and France would be definitely defeated. Not only has Japan given the most positive assurances of an opposite policy, but it would plainly not be to her interest to take any different course. As an Oriental nation, she is able to create the routes and organizations of commerce throughout the Orient, far more speedily and effectively than any European nation, even were it to Orientalize itself. The Japanese are aware of the fact that the merchants of the world do not have perfect confidence in their commercial morality; and, with the same energy with which Japan transformed her industrial system, she is at present striving to improve her commercial methods and the morality of her merchant class. The latter have become prominent only since the Restoration, before which they were looked down upon, as they were in the ancient Greek state, as a class hardly respectable. But better men are entering the field, and the nation has an earnest desire to answer the demands of our social morality, as well as of its own.

Should Japan carry out her mission, she will strive to preserve the specific character of Oriental civilization and industry. European capital will not be invited to transform the East, nor will the factory system be introduced so rapidly as to unsettle the native industrial life. The peculiar excellence of Oriental fabrics will be preserved, and the glorious art of the Orient will be given a new opportunity to unfold itself. It is not by adopting our methods that the East can become strong and great, but by living its own life, that is, the life of peace and artistic industry. No great military or industrial conquest can be made by a people that abandons its own civilization.

On the other hand, should Russia be successful, she will have a free hand to enforce the policy of exclusiveness which she has already announced to the world in her treaty with China. Her disregard of international law in the present war, while she was weak, gives ample earnest of what she would do were she strong. The evasive answer given to Mr. Hay's note concerning the "open door" policy is a most excellent illustration of her diplomatic methods. Japan, in the event of success, would not be strong enough to hamper and exclude European commerce, but she would be given the opportunity and the power to call the Orient to a realization of its own spirit, and to cause it to develop along its natural lines. It is difficult to see just how humanity is to benefit from any different course, from Russian exclusiveness or from a capitalistic invasion of Asia. They would certainly bring small profit to the populations of Asia, who would be forced into a new slavery, as well as to our own home industries, which would find in Asia a competitor in their own methods, led by European skill and backed by unlimited financial power.

In order that either the industrial or military yellow peril should become a reality, a total transformation of all the customs and ideals of Oriental society would have to precede. This can be brought about only through our own action. If by constant attacks, by acts of burning injustice, the Asiatic peoples are made to feel that they must abandon every other purpose and concentrate all their strength upon military preparation, their serried ranks may assume a threatening attitude. We have so far done our best to sow the seeds of future trouble. The treachery practised against Japan by three European Powers, the repeated attacks upon Chinese integrity, the missionary activity undermining the very basis of Chinese social life, the horrid massacres of 1900, where the cross became to the Chinese the symbol of bloodshed, rapine and thievery, so that the European who knows China best declared that centuries only could eradicate the memory-all these facts are directly calculated to arouse that very peril which statesmen profess to be so anxious to allay. Russia herself has taken the most efficient course to awaken the bitterest racial animosities. Her signal disregard of solemn promises and her utter contempt for the legitimate national ambition of Japan, have been followed in the present war by methods not calculated to allay national bitterness, whatever may be the outcome of the struggle. The

massacre of the marines on the "Hitochi," where a thousand Japanese soldiers on an unarmed vessel were cut to pieces by a machine-gun fire lasting for three hours, was in strange contrast with the saving of the crew of the "Rurik," which had itself taken part in that murderous affair. Through his refusal to permit the burial of the dead around Port Arthur, the Russian commander is surrounding himself with a wall of horror which must dismay the bravest of the Japanese assailants and burn itself forever into their memories. The Russian government has encouraged the idea that it is engaged in a holy crusade against pagans; even the generals are loaded down with amulets, and the religious imagination of the soldiers is assiduously worked upon. By thus appealing to the stolid masses, the Russian leaders are stirring up the bitterest and deepest feelings of race hatred.

Thus when we look for the real source of the yellow peril, we shall probably find it in the Russian absolutist party, who are looking for an indefinite lease of power from Oriental sources; we shall find it in the imperialistic imagination of Kaiser Wilhelm, who is trembling for Kiao-Chao while he makes himself believe that he is trembling for Europe; we shall find it in the French desire to expand the Indo-Chinese sphere; in the capitalistic system, which is ready to destroy the character of Oriental life and industry and transform the patient masses of the Orient into competitors to our own laborers. It is to be expected that these forces will attempt to annihilate the effects of Japanese victory by preparing an international interference for the "peace of Asia." But woe to the peace of the world if such an arrangement were again concluded, with the clear purpose to deny the right of the Orient to live its own life and to protect its own ideals. The last vestige of belief in international justice would be killed in the Japanese, and the entire Oriental world would be forced to realize that its safety lay alone in stubborn, fierce resistance. The real yellow peril would then arise, though even then the forces thus evoked might confine themselves to a purely defensive action. It is the present duty of British and American diplomacy to prevent such an injustice to Japan and the consequent danger to the peace of the world. Japan is fighting our battle. This is so well understood that in Germany and France it is popularly believed that our governments are setting her on. The very least that the Anglo-Saxon races can do for the repre

sentative of their policy in the Orient, is to counteract the diplomatic influence that would by roundabout means again deprive the Japanese of the fruits of their unexampled self-sacrifice. We do not mean to indicate that the Japanese will demand Manchuria. They are undoubtedly sincere in their promise to restore this province to China, but they have a right to demand that Russian intrigue shall forever be shut out from that country.

The yellow peril is of our own making. There is no irrepressible conflict between Oriental and Western civilization. On the contrary, they are complementary to each other, not competitive. During the last century our own civilization, torn by internal conflicts and troubled by uncertainties, has sought for broader views in Oriental thought; Japanese art has shown our artists a new way of beauty, in which, by painting light in all its splendid manifestations, a new vista of artistic possibilities has been opened up. The monistic thought of Oriental philosophy has been more and more approached and assimilated by our scientific system. Only narrow-mindedness can see in this civilization a danger which we must subdue; only ignorance can consider it as worthless and vicious. We can imagine no greater political crime, not only against the Orient, but against ourselves, than the attempt to turn Oriental civilization from its natural course of development into alien channels, to destroy its broad and noble ideals, its peaceful industrial life, in order to force it into a sham similitude with our system, with the result that its millions will be doomed to a new slavery to alien capital, or to the warlike ambitions of a victorious Czardom. Nor has there ever appeared in political discussion a greater folly than the effort to conjure up the phantom of a great warlike movement on the part of these essentially peaceful societies, and to preach the Machiavellian doctrine, "Destroy them before they can destroy us."

PAUL S. REINSCH.

THE PROPER GRADE OF DIPLOMATIC

REPRESENTATION.

BY JULIEN GORDON (MRS. VAN RENSSELAER CRUGER).

UNDER that title, the Hon. John W. Foster, veteran diplomat and statesman, presented to the International Congress of Arts and Sciences which met at St. Louis in September last a notable paper, valuable to those who take a special interest in our diplomatic affairs. It points out the inconveniences resulting to nations in general, and to the United States in particular, from the ancient system of graded diplomatic rank, as definitely settled at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The gravamen of the paper, so far as the United States is concerned, lies embodied in the following statement: "The most serious embarrassment resulting from this difference in grade of diplomatic representation is furnished by the relations at present existing between the United States and Turkey. For a number of years past, these relations have been in a most unsatisfactory condition. In no country of the western world could the old fiction of the ambassador as the personal representative of the sovereign to-day approach so nearly a reality as in Turkey, as the Sultan is more fully than any other monarch the personal ruler of the state. All the great Powers of Europe, and even the Shah of Persia, are represented at Constantinople by ambassadors, and they exercise the right of access to the Sultan at will, to discuss official matters. The American ministers plenipotentiary have represented to their country that it is very difficult to get any just and proper consideration and despatch of their business, because of the irresponsible character of the Secretary for Foreign Affairs or even of the Grand Vizier, as all important matters are determined by the Sultan; and that, as they do not possess the ambassadorial character, they cannot without great difficulty have audience with him to discuss official business. To