“Why,” said the admirer of Chamberlain, “the British Empire needed unifying; it needed to be bound together by ties of sentiment, by all those means which consolidate a nation.  Its connections were too loose.  Chamberlain has, by the Boer War, begun its unification.  Canadians have fallen on the same field with England’s soldiers.

“Australians have poured out their blood as a common sacrifice for England’s flag.  The empire has been knit together by a common heroism, a common sacrifice, a common glory, and a common cause.  It should not be hard to induce all portions of the empire to unite on a great scheme of parliamentary representation.  I call that great statesmanship.”

“Yes, indeed it is,” said the English litterateur, “but Joseph Chamberlain never had such a thought.”

The point of the conversation is that, whether Mr. Chamberlain had this thought or not, the materials for the thought existed.  The conditions for this really constructive statesmanship were there.  They awaited the hand of the master.  Conditions of equal magnitude exist in half-a-dozen places in the world.  Russian development of Siberia and seizure of Manchuria are one.

It had for several years appeared to me that Manchuria was the point about which the international politics of the world would swirl for the next quarter of a century.  So certain did this seem, that I hastened to this great future battle-field in the year 1901; and while the diplomats of all the nations, including our own, scoffed at the possibilities of war between Russia and Japan, the certainty of that mighty contest could be read in the very stars that shone above Manchuria, in the very Japanese barracks, on every Japanese drill-ground.

Settlement of this tremendous dispute will call for larger statesmanship than the world has seen for half a century.  The movements of all the powers at the present crisis, and, indeed, their entire Oriental policy, are of the most solemn concern to the Republic not only for the immediate moment, but even more for the future.

This is especially true of Japan; for, with cheap labor, rare aptitude for manufacture, and propinquity of position, the Island Empire now becomes the most formidable competitor for the trade of China.

And China is the only—­or at least the richest—­unexploited market where American factories and farms can, in the future, dispose of their accumulating surplus.  England almost monopolized China’s coast markets until, recently, Germany began rapidly to overhaul her.  But Japan will, in the near future, distance both.  American interests in the Far East are vital even now; and they are only in their beginning.  We cannot longer be indifferent to any statesmanship that involves the commercial development of Asia.  Solution of the great problems which the Russo-Japanese war has stated, and the resultant steps thereafter taken, are of keenest interest, and may be of most serious import, to the American people.