THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 30, 1907. THE ASIATIC SITUATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13399, 30 January 1907, Page 6

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 30, 1907. THE ASIATIC SITUATION.

The relations of the Australasian colonics with Britain and Western Europe are so close and their relations with Eastern Asia are so slight that it requires a mental effort to realise that we are momentously concerned with affairs in the Northern Pacific and that it is our patriotic duty to watch them with careful eyes. The statement made in our cable messages of this morning that Russia is hastening the evacuation of Northern Manchuria is therefore of direct interest to us, particularly when read in conjunction with the statement of an Australian merchant, published yesterday, to the effect that Japan is making military preparations on so great a scale "that a stranger would imagine the country was actually engaged in war.'' If Mi - . McGlcw is right in his impression that the general belief in Japan is that before many years the country will again be at war with Russia there may easily be a connection between the hurried Russian evacuation of Northern Manchuria and Japanese military activity. For it is becoming universally recognised by the commercial mind of the world that Japan is determined to exploit both Corea and Manchuria in her own industrial interests, and that any European expectation of the "open door" is a mere delusion. This is the first fruit of her victory ; to secure it she is undoubtedly as ready to hustle the Russian garrisons out of Manchuria as she has shown herself to ride rough-shod over the treaty rights of the Coreans; to 1 maintain it she is as undoubtedly prepared to confront any European Power which ventures to interfere with the commercial monopoly she is gradually establishing in those territories. Nor is it to Corea and Manchuria that. Japan is confining her commercial campaign. English papers report that during 1900 she has opened up fresh shipping lines to China and has thrust her com- | mercial agencies up the Yangtse Val- ; ley and her commercial travellers into every corner of the Flowery Kir dom. This movement on China is subsidised by the Mikado and actively assisted by Japanese officials, while the bad reputation of Japanese 'traders and manufacturers is bei -afreely criticised in the Japanese commercial schools as " had for trade.'' The European shipping companies in Far Eastern waters are being openly ' competed against, and a situation is being ere. Ted—aided by the antiAmerican and anti-European feeling —which may give to .Japan, in a few i years, a practical monopoly of (he China trade. At- the time of the [.Chines boycott of American goods,

and again at the time of the Japanese protest in the San Franciscan school question, we suggested that the immediate point aimed at was the securing of Eastern trade for Japan. Whether this was so or not it has had that effect. There can be no question but that in the worldwide struggle for markets Japan has won the latest prizes and has expectations which are extremely likely to place her during the century among the great manufacturing and trading nations of the earth. And commercial success means to Japan, as it has meant to every State which has ever won to it, wealth, power, and territorial ambition.

The result of the German elections must further complicate the Asiatic situation. Germany has practically given to the Kaiser a national mandate to pursue his schemes of expansion, and the result is already seen in the enlargement of the German navy yards, which will certainly be followed by increased navy building activity. This is the answer of Germany to the proposals for reduction of armaments which have found such favour among Little Englanders. It is impossible for any Western Power to ignore it. France must respond on the same line, nor can Great Britain, even under Liberal Administration, afford to see herself outclassed by Continental rivals. The United States, in her turn, must increase the pace. So that even if the smaller States refuse the Teutonic challenge, and if Russia is temporarily absorbed in her internal troubles, there will still be four great Western Powers straining their resources in the effort to equip themselves with monstrous armaments. What must the effect be upon Japan The Japanese must be dull with a dulness none have hitherto suspected if they do not realise that between European and Asiatic a great gulf is fixed, and that between European and European there is an international bond to which Japan can never become party. We have only to transpose the problem. China and Japan may be and have been antagonistic nations, but Europeans instinctively perceive that they are natural allies against Europeans, and that the navy building of China is altogether favourable to the Japanese aspiration against European domination. So that it is quite reasonable to think that to Japan, which sees an exclusionist sentiment common to both American and British States on the Pacific, while both greet German and French immigrants with open arms, which has heard the German Emperor declaim against the Yellow Peril and has experienced the sympathy of France for Russia, the arming of Europe may not appear as designed for international strife, but as part of a deep-laid plot to assert the mastery of Europe over Asia. In i any case, she will spare no effort to develop her own naval and military resources and to gather to her assistance allies upon whom she can place more reliance than she .can upon the British. Mr. Wyatt, who visited the colonics as the accredited agent of the Navy League, has frankly stated that " the Japanese have no love for us." and that they entered the Anglo-Japanese Alliance solely for reasons of State. We have, therefore, in addition to the commercial campaign which Japan is waging with such success in Eastern Asia, and which brings the great commercial war of the century very close to our own doors, an immediate reflection in the Pacific of the military impulse given to the Atlantic States by the German elections. It is possible that, all unconsciously, rival European Powers are being driven to warlike preparations by a deeper impulse than that which apI pears on the surface, and that we 1 may see Frank, Teuton, and AngloSaxon arrayed together against a Pan-Asian movement as in the days of the Crusades. But it is, on the j surface, much more likely that they | will exhaust their resources and their energies in fratricidal strife, leaving a great Asiatic military and naval Power unscathed to claim lordship in the Pacific. In which event our Australasian colonies will have cause to be thankful if they have taken advantage of these long years of peace and prosperity not only to train their young men for national defence, but to strengthen their populations am! their prosperity by the systematic encouragement of desirable and kindred immigrants. For until we have i millions of men where now we have only hundreds of thousands it cannot be said that we are secure from the hordes of Asia directed by the shrewd and far-seeing statesmen of Japan.