We will not consider Japan’s position as a nominal member of the entente, except for her action at the beginning of the war in capturing Kiauchau, China, the German fortified port and naval base in the Orient, and sweeping Germany out of the Pacific by taking the Marshall islands.  Beyond this, Japan sent soldiers to Eastern Siberia to help in police duty, and in guarding the great stores of supplies accumulated by the Russians at Vladivostok.  These stores had been bought largely upon the credit extended to Russia by the United States.

With Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary gone as monarchies, Japan is the greatest of the remaining imperial states.  We have seen more than a dozen kings, emperors, princes and grand dukes pass into the discard as a result of a war which they themselves brought on.

France tried to discard kings and princes in 1798.  The sovereignty of the people was proclaimed in that war, but the governments which have ruled France since have been many, and presented wide differences.  In this present age, no doubt it will be much easier to establish a stable democracy upon the wreck of a monarchy than it could have been a century ago.  Still, the construction of a democracy is a difficult ordeal for people who have always been imperialists.  The several monarchies, big and little, that have fallen in this war, present most perplexing problems.  There are boundary and racial disputes of the most bitter kind between some of their peoples.  But the great democracies of the world that won this war are taking the part of “big brothers” to these, and are seeing to it that their petty quarrels and internal differences are held in check.  Each of these countries, even though they establish democracies, will have strong royalist parties that will constitute a standing threat.  France even to this day has a royalist group of considerable strength.  Their persistent claim is that France will again be a monarchy.  The United States is really the only democracy without such a party.  It is the only republic that was not founded on the ruin of a monarchy.

WHY I WAS NOT ACCEPTED AS CONSUL TO GERMANY

I have had some personal experience with the late German Imperial Government.  As a war correspondent it was my duty to give to the world an account of the forcible deportation of King Mataafa from Samoa to the Marshall Islands, where he was kept in exile six years.  The Germans had shoved him aside to make room for Malieto, an imbecile and a German figurehead.  I was there again when Mataafa, at the end of those six years, returned to Samoa, to the great joy of his people.

A few years later I discovered that Germany’s policy was to “mark” any individual who wrote or spoke in criticism of anything German.