Now in view of the facts which have been so voluminously set forth in preceding chapters, it is imperative for men to realize that the struggle in the Far East is like the Balkan Question a thing rooted in geography and peoples, and cannot be brushed aside or settled by compromises.  The whole future of Chinese civilization is intimately bound up with the questions involved, and the problem instead of becoming easier to handle must become essentially more difficult from day to day.  Japan’s real objective being the termination of the implied trusteeship which Europe and America still exercise in the Far East, the course of the European war must intimately effect the ultimate outcome.  If that end is satisfactory for democracies, China may reasonably claim to share in the resulting benefits; if on the other hand the Liberal Powers do not win an overwhelming victory which shall secure the sanctity of Treaties for all time, it will go hard for China.  Outwardly, the immediate goal which Japan seeks to attain is merely to become the accredited spokesman of Eastern Asia, the official representative; and, using this attorneyship as a cloak for the advancement of objects which other Powers would pursue on different principles, so impregnably to entrench herself where she has no business to be that no one will dare to attempt to turn her out.  For this reason we see revived in Manchuria on a modified scale the Eighteenth Century device, once so essential a feature of Dutch policy in the struggle against Louis XIV, namely the creation of “barrier-cities” for closing and securing a frontier by giving them a special constitution which withdraws them from ordinary jurisdiction and places foreign garrisons in them.  This is precisely what is going on from the Yalu to Eastern Mongolia, and this procedure no doubt will be extended in time to other regions as opportunities arise.  Already in Shantung the same policy is being pursued and there are indications that it is being thought of in Fuhkien; whilst the infantry garrison which was quietly installed at Hankow—­600 miles up the Yangtsze river—­at the time of the Revolution of 1911 is apparently to be made permanent.  Allowing her policy to be swayed by men who know far too little of the sea, Japan stands in imminent danger of forgetting the great lesson which Mahan taught, that for island-peoples sea-power is everything and that land conquests which diminish the efficacy of that power are merely a delusion and snare.  Plunging farther and farther into the vast regions of Manchuria and Mongolia which have been the graves of a dozen dynasties, Japan is displaying increasing indifference for the one great lesson which the war has yielded—­the overwhelming importance of the sea.[30] Necessarily guardian of the principles on which intercourse in Asia is based, because she framed those principles and fought for them and has built up great edifices under their sanction, British sea-power—­now allied for ever, let us hope,