Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/87

 Let us explain. Already after the Russo-Japanese war—i.e. fourteen years ago—all classes of Japanese knew that their material development was wholly insufficient for the fierce competition of the modern world, and that Russia had really been defeated by a miracle. Crushed by taxation to pay the war debt incurred, the Japanese people instinctively favoured a double policy—the exploitation of China for her raw products and the stimulating of Chinese opinion in such a way as to secure, if not the union of the yellow races, at least the general acceptance of the idea that internationally the Far East must be considered as one entity under the hegemony of Japan.

It was when Japanese people were in this mood that the Knox Neutralization scheme of the Manchurian railways was presented to the world (1908) as a solution for the political-territorial tangle which the Russian war had left. That such a proposal, in the circumstances narrated, should have struck the Japanese people much as the Kaiser's telegram to Kruger struck the British people at the time of the South African imbroglio is not at all surprising. It was looked upon as unwarranted interference, almost as an affront. For there was the diplomatic record of the days prior to