PEACE AND AFTER.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 17, Issue 58, 24 July 1906, Page 2

PEACE AND AFTER.

"What the governing motive at Tokio was which finally overbore even the reported counsel of Marshal Oyaraa has not been revealed. The Emperor may have been, as he has been repeatedly reported to be, sick of the war and its enormous sacrifices, and inclined, in the future interest of Japan, to offer to the civilised world an irresistible proof of Japanese moderation and freedom from ‘out-recudance.’ It may have been that the British Government, /which has just be .settling .the conditions of an extended Alliance with Japan, had offered guarantees conditional on the speedy peace which seemed to the ‘Elder Statesmen’ better security for the future than even financial relief. Or it m'ay have been that the great financiers of Europe and America, who dread above all things the crash in France which would follow a suspension of payments in Russia, had applied pressure which it seemed to the managers of Japanese finance folly to defy. In any case, the motive sufficed, and peace was made, the Japanese statesmen displaying once more in making it the marvellous far-sightedness, self-control, and confidence in the acquiescence of their own people which have from the first marked their action. They have refused to bo blinded by any glamour of glory ; they have reckoned up the chances of what Japan might suffer if Russia, with Linievitch defeated, should still refuse peace, and'wait behind the shelter of the Khingan Mountains for the events of perhaps twenty years ; and they have perceived what Europe has still tf> realise, the immense value of the triumphs they have already gained. It is in those triumphs that their real gain consists, rather than in any material advantages, though these are not to be

despised. ... No State can now attack Japan without perceiving that it takes its life in its own hand. She is the mistress of the North Pacific, and must for years bo the dominant influence at Pekin and the strongest competitor for the trade of China, the last grand undeveloped market in the world. To have risen to such a height in a war of only, eighteen months might well content any, power, even if it did not inspire, as we suspect it did inspire, that ancient fear of the Destinies which prevents the wiser sections of mankind from pressing fortune too far,”—The Spectator.”