Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/56

 proofs of Japan's competence to discharge her novel functions with discretion and impartiality before submitting himself to her jurisdiction, it ceased to be a solid and rational case when its champions undertook, not merely to exaggerate the risks of trusting Japan implicitly, but also to demonstrate her radical unworthiness of any trust whatever, and to depict her under aspects so deterrent that submission to her jurisdiction assumed the character of a catastrophe. The struggle lasted eleven years, but its gist is contained in this brief statement. The foreign resident, whose affection for his own systems was measured by the struggle their evolution had cost, and whose practical instincts forbade him to take anything on trust where security of person and property was concerned, would have stood out a wholesomely conservative and justly cautious figure, had not his attitude been disfigured by local journalists, who, in order to justify his conservatism, allowed themselves to be betrayed into the constant rôle of blackening Japan's character and suggesting harshly prejudiced interpretations of her acts and motives. It is one thing to hesitate before entering a new house until its habitable qualifications have been ascertained. It is another thing to condemn it without trial as radically and necessarily deficient in such qualifications. The latter was, in effect, the line often taken by the noisiest opponents of Japan's claims, and, of course, no little resentment and indigna-