Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/35

 the other, by the treatment they have received at the hands of those nations. The most tolerant of Europeans has always regarded the Japanese, and let them see that he regarded them, merely as interesting children. Languidly curious at best about the uses to which they would put their imported toys, his curiosity was purely academical, and whenever circumstances required him to be practical, he laid aside all pretence of courtesy and let it be plainly seen that he counted himself master and intended to be so counted. If the archives of the Japanese Foreign Office were published without expurgation, their early pages would make a remarkable record. Diplomatic euphemisms are the last thing to be sought there. And in that respect they reflect the demeanour of the ordinary foreigner. When not a harsh critic, he was either contemptuously tolerant or loftily patronising. The Japanese chafed under that kind of treatment for many years, and they resent it still; for though a pleasant alteration has gradually been effected in the foreigner's methods, the memory of the evil time survives. Besides, they neither consider the change complete, nor regard its causes with unmixed satisfaction. It is not complete because the taint of Orientalism has not yet been removed from the nation, and the causes are unsatisfactory because they suggest a low estimate of Western morality.

No one who should tell the Japanese to-day that the consideration they have won from the