up to the Sungari river and surrendered to her military control vast grasslands stretching to the Khingan mountains.  This Westernly march so greatly enlarged the Japanese political horizon, and so entirely changed the Japanese viewpoint, that the statesmen of Tokio in their excitement threw off their ancient spectacles and found to their astonishment that their eyes were every whit as good as European eyes.  Now seeing the world as others had long seen it, they understood that just as with the individuals so with nations the struggle for existence can most easily be conducted by adopting that war-principle of Clausewitz—­the restless offensive, and not by writing meaningless dispatches.  Prior to the Russian war they had written to Russia a magnificent series of documents in which they had pleaded with sincerity for an equitable settlement,—­only to find that all was in vain.  Forced to battle, they had found in combat not only success but a new principle.

The discovery necessitated a new policy.  During the eighties, and in a lesser degree in the nineties, Japan had apart from everything else been content to act in a modest and retiring way, because she wished at all costs to avoid testing too severely her immature strength.  But owing to the successive collapses of her rivals, she now found herself not only forced to attack as the safest course of action, but driven to the view that the Power that exerts the maximum pressure constantly and unremittedly is inevitably the most successful.  This conclusion had great importance.  For just as the first article of faith for England in Asia has been the doctrine that no Power can be permitted to seize strategic harbours which menace her sea-communications, so did it now become equally true of Japan that her dominant policy became not an Eastern Monroe doctrine, as shallow men have supposed, but simply the Doctrine of Maximum Pressure.  To press with all her strength on China was henceforth considered vital by every Japanese; and it is in this spirit that every diplomatic pattern has been woven since the die was cast in 1905.  Until this signal fact has been grasped no useful analysis can be made of the evolution of present conditions.  Standing behind this policy, and constantly reinforcing it, are the serried ranks of the new democracy which education and the great increase in material prosperity have been so rapidly creating.  The soaring ambition which springs from the sea lends to the attacks developed by such a people the aspect of piracies; and it is but natural.  In such circumstances that for Chinese Japan should not only have the aspect of a sea-monster but that their country should appear as hapless Andromeda bound to a rock, always awaiting a Perseus who never comes....