their country has succeeded in almost completely infeodating China and has became the sovereign arbitrator of all quarrels, as well as the pacificator of the Eastern World.  Statements which were incautiously allowed to appear in the Japanese Press a few days prior to the Chinese Note of the 9th February disclose what Japan really thought on the subject of China identifying herself with the Allies.  For instance, the following, which bears the hall-mark of official inspiration, reads very curiously in the light of after-events: 

...  “Dispatches from Peking say that England and France have already started a flanking movement to induce China to join the anti-German coalition.  The intention of the Chinese Government has not yet been learned.  But it is possible that China will agree, if conditions are favourable, thus gaining the right to voice her views at the coming peace conference.  Should the Entente Powers give China a firm guarantee, it is feared here that China would not hesitate to act.

“The policy of the Japanese Government toward this question cannot yet be learned.  It appears, however, that the Japanese Government is not opposed to applying the resolutions of the Paris Economic Conference, in so far as they concern purely economic questions, since Japan desires that German influence in the commerce and finance of the Orient should be altogether uprooted.  But should the Entente Powers of Europe try to induce China to join them, Japan may object on the ground that it will create more disturbances in China and lead to a general disturbance of peace in the Orient.”

Now there is not the slightest doubt in the writer’s mind—­and he can claim to speak as a student of twenty years’ standing—­that this definition of Japanese aims and objects is a very true one; and that the subsequent invitation to China to join the Allies which came from Tokio after a meeting between the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Allied Ambassadors was simply made when a new orientation of policy had been forced by stress of circumstances.  Japan has certainly always wished German influence in the Far East to be uprooted if she can take the place of Germany; but if she cannot take that place absolutely and entirely she would vastly prefer the influence to remain, since it is in the nature of counterweight to that of other European Powers and of America—­foreign influence in China, as Mr. Hioki blandly told the late President Yuan Shih-kai in his famous interview of the 18th January, 1915, being a source of constant irritation to the Japanese people, and the greatest stumbling-block to a permanent understanding in the Far East.