Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/77

 China's suzerainty or Korean independence. To secure Korea's immunity from foreign — especially Russian — aggression was of capital importance to both empires. Japan believed that such security could be attained by introducing into the peninsula the civilisation which had contributed so signally to the development of her own strength and resources. China thought that she could guarantee security without any departure from old-fashioned methods, and by the same processes of capricious protection which had failed so signally in the cases of Annam, Tonquin, Burmah, Siam, and Riukiu. The issue really at stake was whether Japan should be suffered to act as the Eastern propagandist of Western progress, or whether her efforts in that cause should be held in check by Chinese conservatism.

But from this synopsis of reasons it would be unjust to omit the state of Japan's domestic affairs in 1894. Unquestionably the friction between the Government and political parties had reached such an acute stage that even a foreign war might have been welcome as a diversion. Some publicists have attached overwhelming importance to that phase of the story. They insist that Japan forced war upon her neighbour in order to escape a worse alternative at home. Others deny strenuously that the rupture was influenced in any respect by Japan's domestic embarrassments. The truth, as usual, seems to lie between the two extremes. Japan would probably have been more