with American power—­nevertheless remains and will continue to remain, in spite of what may be half-surreptitiously done to-day, the dominant factor in the Far East as it is in the Far West.  Withdrawn from view for the time being, because of the exigencies of the hour and because the Anglo-Japanese Alliance is still counted a binding agreement, Western sea-power nevertheless stands there, a heavy cloud in the offing, full of questionings regarding what is going on in the Orient, and fully determined, let us pray, one day to receive frank answers.  For the right of every race, no matter how small or weak, to enjoy the inestimable benefits of self-government and independence may be held to have been so absolutely established that it is a mere question of time for the doctrine not only to be universally accepted but to be universally applied.  In many cases, it is true, the claims of certain races are as yet incapable of being expressed in practical state-forms; but where nationalities have long been well-defined, there can be no question whatsoever that a properly articulated autonomy must be secured in such a way as to preclude the possibility of annexations.

Now although in their consideration of Asia it is notorious that Western statesmen have not cared to keep in mind political concepts which have become enthroned in Europe, owing to the fact that an active element of opposition to such concepts was to be found in their own policies, a vast change has undoubtedly been recently worked, making it certain that the claims of nationalism are soon to be given the same force and value in the East as in the West.  But before there can be any question of Asia for the Asiatics being adopted as a root principle by the whole world, it will have to be established in some unmistakable form that the surrender of the policy of conquest which Europe has pursued for four centuries East of the Suez Canal will not lead to its adoption by an Asiatic Power under specious forms which hide the glittering sword.  If that can be secured, then the present conflict will have truly been a War of Liberation for the East as well as for the West.  For although Japan has been engaged for some years in declaring to all Asiatics under her breath that she holds out the hand of a brother to them, and dreams of the days when the age of European conquests will be nothing but a distant memory, her actions have consistently belied her words and shown that she has not progressed in political thought much beyond the crude conceptions of the Eighteenth Century.  Thus Korea, which fell under her sway because the nominal independence of the country had long made it the centre of disastrous international intrigues, is governed to-day as a conquered province by a military viceroy without a trace of autonomy remaining and without any promise that such a regime is only temporary.  Although nothing in the undertakings made with the Powers has ever admitted that a nation which boasts of an ancient line of kings, and which