Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/85

 England in 1902, in which Chinese integrity was so carefully guaranteed, she has repeatedly exchanged agreements, notes, secret memoranda, and what not with half the Powers of Christendom, affirming the selfsame principles, her Chinese policy is as purely a Japanese product as are the geta (wooden clogs) of the Japanese people. That policy clatters noisily along the international highroad just as if it were shod in resonant geta so that everyone can see and hear it; but every so often the clogs are slipped off and Japan enters her neighbour's house in her stockinged feet (as good manners demand); and then very secretly behind the shoji (screens) she whispers that unless her tutelage is accepted it will be highly unfortunate for China.

It would be mere repetition of things already outlined to re-examine the problem of the Chinese Revolution from the Japanese standpoint. But this at least ought to be said: that nothing which has occurred in the Far East since the Perry expedition of sixty years ago has more disconcerted Japan than the institution of republicanism at her very doors. Having with vast difficulty and trouble adjusted her national life to the requirements of the modern world from the time of the Restoration of 1868 to the