Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/36

 West is due solely to their progress in peaceful arts would find serious listeners. They themselves held that belief as a working incentive twenty years ago, but experience has dissipated it, and they now know that the world never took any respectful notice of them until they showed themselves capable of winning battles. At first they imagined that they might efface the Oriental stigma by living up to civilised standards. But the success they had attained was scarcely perceptible when suddenly their victorious war with China seemed to win for them more esteem in half a year than their peaceful industry had won for them in half a century. The perception of that fact upset their estimate of the qualifications necessary for a place in "the foremost files of time," and had much to do with the desire they henceforth developed for expanded armaments. Their military and naval forces had been proved competent to beat China to her knees with the utmost ease, yet they proceeded at once to double their army. Onlookers watch these doings with interest and speculate whether Japan's financial resources can bear such a strain, but do not seem to consider seriously what it all signifies, or how Japan accounts to her own conscience for these extravagances. Yet the answer appears to lie not far from the surface. To reach it we must first recognise why she drew the sword against China in 1894,—not the approximate cause of the struggle, but its remote cause. The approximate