THE FUTURE OF JAPAN.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 8539, 20 March 1908, Page 6

THE FUTURE OF JAPAN.

A WORLD-PROBLEM. Many thoughtful people arc steadily drifting towards a settled conviction that the great world-problem of the future is the future of Japan. It is quite surprising to note tho frequency and fulness with which speculations, and, I may add, misgivings, on this head continue almost to flood the public journals, and the steady convergence of opinion into something like a consensus that Japan constitutes one of tho most lorinidable dangers that loom ahead. Pessimism of the direst seems to pervalc cauable thought on this subject. Only a few weeks or months ago Japan and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance Avere to be the dominant factors in tho world's peace. Now tho point of view has changed, and Japan is held up as the apple of universal discoid; whether viewed from the Eastern or Western standpoint, the ultimate outcome is the same. Even her recent overwhelming victory over Russia, which at the time was expected to ensure a lengthened if not a permanent peace in the Far East, is now held up as pregnant with a host of latent perils. Russia, it is said, has not tho slightest notion of taking her beating lying down, but is simply biding her time while sho makes vast preparations b&sed upon her recent practical experiences. _ Japan is fully aware of the fact, and is therefore unable to relax in the smallest degree her measures of defence or preparations for future contingencies which she has only too much 'reason to regard as certainties. China is being stealthily approached by Russia on one hand and Japan on the other, and the potentialities of a Chinese Allianeo are admittedly so vast as to bo incalculable. And now the United States arc in tho field. Gloss it over as President Roosevelt and his associates may, the present expedition of the American fleet amounts to a tremendous volte face —an absolute turning on its axis of the whole American policy so that it faces due West instead of due East—the Pacific instead of tho Atlantic Ocean.

Now the immediate and urgent peril inferred by those best qualified to judge is this: Japan is, or feels, compelled to maintain her status and preparedness as a groat naval and military Power, but she is a poor country, and simply cannot afford the needful outlay. Her people are ground to tho dust with taxation, her credit in the European money market is impaired because no one can discern any adequate security behind the magnitude of her undertakings. The inference from this state of affairs is the same as was always drawn from any trouble in France during tho last Empire, and has been from any special Nihilistic activity in Russian in moro recent times. Some foreign distraction must bo found, some enterprise that may divert public attention and act as a specios of lightning-conductor, also that may enable Japan 'to go once more to tho money market with a prospcct of success, therefore with the backing of England. It is a very real and imminent peril which menaces us too nearly to be pleasant to contemplate. On the other hand, the position may have this favourable side that it may divert Japanese attention from the antiJapanese legislation and administration of Australia and New Zealand. At ther same time, if, by parity of reasoning, America must be indicated as the objective of Japanese war policy, it is clear that England may at any time find herself a serious factor in an exceedingly grave and complex situation.