From some points of view, Asia, including Russia, may be regarded as a unity; but from this unity Japan must be excluded.  Russia, China, and India contain vast plains given over to peasant agriculture; they are easily swayed by military empires such as that of Jenghis Khan; with modern railways, they could be dominated from a centre more securely than in former times.  They could be self-subsistent economically, and invulnerable to outside attack, independent of commerce, and so strong as to be indifferent to progress.  All this may come about some day, if Russia happens to develop a great conqueror supported by German organizing ability.  But Japan stands outside this order of possibilities.  Japan, like Great Britain, must depend upon commerce for power and prosperity.  As yet, Japan has not developed the Liberal mentality appropriate to a commercial nation, and is still bent upon Asiatic conquest and military prowess.  This policy brings with it conflicts with China and Russia, which the present weakness of those Powers has enabled Japan, hitherto, to conduct successfully.  But both are likely to recover their strength sooner or later, and then the essential weakness of present Japanese policy will become apparent.

It results naturally from the situation that the Japanese have two somewhat incompatible ambitions.  On the one hand, they wish to pose as the champions of Asia against the oppression of the white man; on the other hand, they wish to be admitted to equality by the white Powers, and to join in the feast obtained by exploiting the nations that are inefficient in homicide.  The former policy should make them friendly to China and India and hostile to the white races; the latter policy has inspired the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and its fruits in the annexation of Korea and the virtual annexation of Manchuria and Inner Mongolia.  As a member of the League of Nations, of the Big Five at Versailles, and of the Big Three at Washington, Japan appears as one of the ordinary Great Powers; but at other moments Japan aims at establishing a hegemony in Asia by standing for the emancipation from white tyranny of those who happen to be yellow or brown, but not black.  Count Okuma, speaking in the Kobe Chamber of Commerce, said:  “There are three hundred million natives in India looking to us to rescue them from the thraldom of Great Britain."[56] While in the Far East, I inquired of innumerable Englishmen what advantage our Government could suppose that we derived from the Japanese Alliance.  The only answer that seemed to me to supply an intelligible motive was that the Alliance somewhat mitigates the intensity of Japanese anti-British propaganda in India.  However that may be, there can be no doubt that the Japanese would like to pose before the Indians as their champions against white tyranny.  Mr. Pooley[57] quotes Dr. Ichimura of the Imperial University of Kyoto as giving the following list of white men’s sins:—­

     (1) White men consider that they alone are human beings, and that
     all coloured races belong to a lower order of civilization.