THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1905. THE TOKIO RIOTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12968, 11 September 1905, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1905. THE TOKIO RIOTS.

It is very easy to attach an exaggerated importance to the disturbances with which the peace has been greeted in Tokio. The populace has evidently been in complete ignorance "of. the actual situation, not only as regards the policy of the Mikado, but as regards the conditions agreed upon at Portsmouth. As far as can be gathered from the news allowed to pass over the cables the popular impression appears to have been that Japan was in a position to take everything and yetmade a treaty .which advantaged her not at all. This was naturally regarded with general indignation, and the public protest took the usual Asiatic form of riotous demonstration, with the customary demand for the sacrifice of the Grand Vizier. Only after this convincing evidence of popular feeling did the Government consider it necessary to publish the peace terms, and thus to assure the public that it was mistaken. As the Western world has known for days, the treaty made is extraordinarily advantageous to Japan, although it does not obtain for that victorious State all that her diplomatists claimed when they went to conference. All that she has "surrendered" is a claim for indemnity and the least desirable half of the island of Saghalien. She has gained everything for which she went to war, and considerable concessions in addition. The possession of Port Arthur and its peninsula, the control of Corea, the ownership of half the Manchurian railway, fishing rights throughout Russian Pacific waters, and the best half of Saghalien, are all clear gains for Japan, apart from the evacuation by Russia of Manchuria, in which restored Chinese province the Mikado must necessarily be henceforward the real suzerain. The Japanese Government has secured this most advantageous peace against the most astute and obstinate Government in the world, a diplomatic triumph which, as we have pointed out, rivals the great naval victory of Togo and the military achievements of Oyama. It is hardly possible to conceive that a clear understanding of the peace conditions will not allay any widespread dissatisfaction, although irresponsible critics may long continue to bewail the " betrayal" of Japanese interests.

At the same time, the tumult reveals to the world the strain under which the war was being carried on, nd the importance attached throughout the country to the diplomatic demand for indemnity. Japan is a comparatively poor country, although her potentialities are enormous. Her forty millions of people are packed into islands not greatly larger than the United Kingdom, without the advantages of modern mechanisms and profitable exchange. Although machinery is being gradually introduced, they still produce upon » low plane, and have had to make extraordinary sacrifices in order to raise themselves to the level of a first-class world-power. The war has cost them over £100,000,000, and has not only loaded them with foreign debt, but has mopped up, in the shape of internal loans, most oi the local capital that was so greatly needed for industrial and commercial development. The Government had taken the precaution to have in hand a sufficient sum to continue the war until the end of the campaigning season, and this will be available for immediate financial necessities. But, after allowing for this, there can be no doubt that Japan and its people -will find themselves very short of cash and very much handicapped in consequence. The indemnity claim was, therefore, peculiarly favoured by every section of the people, who saw in the Russian milliards compensation for their every private and public privation. And they were very eagerly convinced that indemnity would be an absolutely irremovable condition of peace, and that Russia was so. reduced that she would not venture to refuse it if it were insisted upon with threat of continued war and proof of repeated victory. Fortunately for Japan, the Mikado has wiser counsel at his elbow than is to be found in the streets of Tokio, and has been content with the best fruits of victory. The realisation of this by the more intelligent Japanese will probably cause the tumult to disappear as rapidly as it arose. While the Japanese are thus gradually accepting the idea of peace without indemnity, that mentor of nations, the German Kaiser, has been holding forth in Berlin to visiting members of the United States Congress upon his pet bogey, the Yellow Peril. He is illogical, of course, but logic was never his strong point. He forecasts that Japan will close "the open door/'

and. by her cheap labour force the white nations out of the Oriental markets. But if her labour is so cheap she will have no necessity to close " the open door," for she can undersell European produce with the widest opened door in the world. That Asiatic competition must be counted upon in the future goes without saying, that it will be serious, possibly deadly, we may generally agree. But it is not therefore any different to German or any other industrial competition, and as far as the British Empire is concerned should not be differently regarded. The German Kaiser appears to think that we should tolerate the unfair exclusion of our colonial traders from German Pacific islands, but should wax indignant at the prospective exclusion of European trade from Asia by fair Japanese competition. The postulation is absurd.- If Japan is able to capture the ChinoJapanese markets by underselling European importers she will possess those markets, and nothing can prevent her doing so. But if we are wise we shall prevent either Japan or Germany, or any other nation, from capturing our Imperial markets, reserving them preferentially for ourselves and secondarily for those who are willing to give us quid pro quo. The diversion of Japan's feverish energies from war to manufacturing and commerce will undoubtedly affect the world's trade, but cannot harm the Empire if we accept cheerfully what we cannot prevent, and take steps to unite commercially our own British States, leaving Germany to rake its own chestnuts out of the fire.