Now it is characteristic of the ceremonial respect which all Japanese have for the Throne that all through this long contest the main issue should have been purposely obscured.  The traditional feelings of veneration which a loyal and obedient people feel for a line of monarchs, whose origin is lost in the mists of antiquity, are such that they have turned what is in effect an ever-growing struggle against the archaic principle of divine right into a contest with clan-leaders whom they assert are acting “unconstitutionally” whenever they choose to assert the undeniable principles of the Constitution.  Thus to-day we have this paradoxical situation; that although Japanese Liberalism must from its very essence be revolutionary, i.e., destructive before it can hope to be constructive, it feigns blindness, hoping that by suasion rather than by force the principle of parliamentary government will somehow be grafted on to the body politic and the emperors, being left outside the controversy, become content to accept a greatly modified rule.

This hope seems a vain one in the light of all history.  Militarism and the clans are by no means in the last ditch in Japan, and they will no more surrender their power than would the Russian bureaucracy.  The only argument which is convincing in such a case is the last one which is ever used; and the mere mention of it by so-called socialists is sufficient to cause summary arrest in Japan.  Sheltering themselves behind the Throne, and nominally deriving their latter-day dictatorship from the Imperial mandate, the military chiefs remain adamant, nothing having yet occurred to incline them to surrender any of their privileges.  By a process of adaptation to present-day conditions, a formula has now been discovered which it is hoped will serve many a long year.  By securing by extra-legal means the return of a “majority” in the House of Representatives the fiction of national support of the autocracy has been re-invigorated, and the doctrine laid down that what is good for every other advanced people in the world is bad for the Japanese, who must be content with what is granted them and never question the superior intelligence of a privileged caste.  In the opinion of the writer, it is every whit as important for the peace of the world that the people of Japan should govern themselves as it is for the people of Germany to do so.  The persistence of the type of military government which we see to-day in Japan is harmful for all alike because it is as antiquated as Tsarism and a perpetual menace to a disarmed nation such as China.  So long as that government remains, so long must Japan remain an international suspect and be denied equal rights in the council-chambers of the Liberal Powers.