Page:A wandering student in the Far East vol.1 - Zetland.djvu/49

Rh faults, encourages the nefarious in their ways, and disseminates impressions which the cold and impartial evidence of fact is unable to sustain. When those who are responsible for the course and direction of Japanese progress succeed in inculcating in all classes a due sense of the immense value of an unimpeachable honesty in every branch of commercial intercourse, they will have succeeded in removing a serious stumbling-stone from the path which the nation is striving to pursue, and will have placed their country immeasurably nearer the attainment of the goal which they keep steadfastly in view.

Japan, then, has, with an astonishing rapidity, become a powerful force in the world's economy; but will the metamorphosis of Japan continue to be the only, or even the most significant, feature of the new order in the Far East? If commercial and industrial rivalry is more and more to take the place of the rude panoply of war—as who can doubt must be the case?—there are in China potentialities before which the possibilities of Japan pale into insignificance. Against an