Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/98

 Denmark, followed more or less consistent lines under British-American leadership, until the collapse of China in the Korean war destroyed what was sound and creditable in the past record; and by putting the maritime Powers ashore in leased territories and spheres of influence in a vain effort to combat Tsarism and Japanese imperialism, gave policy a wrong twist, and produced general disarray. The conditions which we now face have their origin, then, in events exactly twenty-five years old. They all come by direct descent from the Korean war of 1894-95; and if we are to find a radical and lasting solution for all the perplexing ills of the day it is from the Korean period that the work must commence.

Let it first be understood that the annexation of Korea by Japan in 1910 was an intolerable and unnecessary mistake. The acknowledged protectorate which had existed in that peninsula as a result of the Manchurian war of 1904-05 was all that was necessary to safeguard Japan's strategic interest: anything more than a protectorate inevitably constituted an international danger. For if England requires in Egypt no more than paramountcy to guarantee a vital waterway in her water-empire, certainly Japan has satisfied strategy when she has se-