THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, MARCH 9, 1909. AMERICA AND JAPAN.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3133, 9 March 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, MARCH 9, 1909. AMERICA AND JAPAN.

So much anti-Japanese tension still exists in California—where provocative legislation was only withdrawn after a notification by President Roosevelt that the Federal Government would disallow it as unconsMtutional—that Mr Root's remarks at the recent dinner of the Peace Society in New York wear a special significance. Secretary Root, as he is usually called in the United States, observed that the obstacle to recent negotiations between America, Japan and England lay not with the diplomutists, but .vith people who ought to be ostracised and punished for insulting friendly Powers. This rather cryptic utterance requires paraphrasing before it becomes readily intelligible. Mr Ro-t seems to have been explaining that the negotiations between America on the one hand and Japan and England on the other hand for a solution of the difficulty created by the antiJapanese legislation in California were baffled by extremists like Mr Hearst, who controls a large number of newspapers in the United Statos, and who has been vehemently and bitterly anti-Japanese in his press organ, thereby creating new '

difficulties for Mr Root, who was t specifically charged with finding for \ the Washington Government a solu- t I tion that would be satisfactory to £ Japan. Mr Hearst quite recently was I raising: a cry that the United States ( battleship fleet, which recently ar- i rived at Hampton Roads, after cir- < cu.nnavigating the globe, should be \ despatched forthwith to the Pacific s coast again, on the ground that Japan I was ready to seize upon any unim- 1 portant incident as a "casus belli." : Mr Takahira, the Japanese Ambas- . sador at Washington, in his speech at the Peace Society's dinner, also aimed quite clearly at Mr Hearst, and those associated with him. Mr Root certainly deserved the kind things that were said of him, because he, at any rate, succeeded in spite of all the tension, in bringing about the Ameri:an-Japanese Agreement, which was signed towards the close of last year, arid which provides for the maintenance of the status quo by both parties in the Far

East, thereby ensuring in the interests of the United States the maintenance of the open door in Manchuria, and the preservation of the I integrity of China, while Japan gets a second string to her bow in looking for support against any future attack by Russia. President Roosevelt's declaration that anti-Japanese legislation in California would be disallowed by the Federal Government must relieve the tension between Washington and Tokio, though it replaces it by possibilities of new tension between Washington and San Francisco. And in spite of all the oratory at the Peace Society's dinner it is probable that in the long run order and discipline in the Western States of the Union will be maintained by limiting the influx of Japanese immigrants by direct legislation at Washington.