Page:The Ifs of History (1907).pdf/172

 powerful, masterful Japanese empire of the present day, thrilling with a new life in which all the civilization of the Occident is made the handmaid of an ancient and undaunted Asiatic people, would not have been.

In the unlikely event that the Japanese, in default of Perry's expedition, had been left quite alone for another generation or two, their case would not have been better in the long run. They would simply have missed the chance they got. Left a "hermit nation," they would sooner or later have fallen under the influence of one Western country or another, and been so seriously retarded in the race of civilization that they could never have caught up.

America was the only country that could have opened to them the wonderful career that they have had. The high noon of the nineteenth century was the golden moment for the commencement of their development along the line of Western civiliza-