It is very possible, as I pointed out in “The Russian Advance,” that Japan will attempt the reorganization of China.  Indeed, that development is quite probable.  That is certainly Japan’s plan and ideal.  Any one of a half dozen courses may be adopted.  And, I repeat it, any one of them may present the gravest of situations to American statesmanship.  As I write it is quite sure that Russia is beaten on the field.  Think now, young man, of the immensity of the statesmanship required right now, which five years ago everybody would have declared impossible and absurd.

Especially will Japanese dominance of the Orient, military and commercial, upon which Japan is determined, bring us Americans face to face with a new set of conditions, requiring the highest order of careful thought, the clearest, firmest announcement of national policy.  Do not fear, young man, lest all of this be over before the time has come for you to play your part on the stage of human affairs.  The new problems which the whole Orient will propose to the entire world, and particularly to America, will last for a century at least.

Indeed, it is probable that our relations with the East will become and remain one of the leading subjects of American statesmanship as long as the Republic endures.  For that matter, you may go further, and say that the great human question of modern times is the meeting face to face of Oriental and Occidental ideals, of the white and yellow theory of life and morals, and the gradual destruction of one by the other, or their mutual modification and adjustment.

But we are getting into deep waters now.  That is the point I am making.  They show that, dive you ever so deep, young man, present-day statesmanship has depths which not even the plummet of imagination has yet been able to sound.  And can we doubt that to-morrow’s national and world problems will be deeper still?

There are three or four great international questions for this Republic to solve on this Western hemisphere, the working out of any one of which means immortality for the statesman who does it.

Of course, the great industrial and sociological questions are the profoundest of all.  The world has been at work on these since men arranged themselves into organized society.  But the incredibly swift evolution of modern business itself seems to be hastening the time when some satisfactory solution of these master problems must at least be begun.

So that, if you really have the material of a statesman in you—­the stuff that thinks out the answer to great questions—­there is a field before you compared with which the opportunities of Hamilton and Washington and Jefferson almost seem small, leviathan as those opportunities were and masterfully as those great men improved them.