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 about £21,000,000 to over £350,000,000. At the same time the ordinary revenue of the State grew from £8,500,000 to nearly £22,000,000 in the last financial year before the war; and the population of the country, which at the first census in 1872 was only 33,000,000, has steadily increased, until it now exceeds 50,000,000 souls (including Formosa).

In these circumstances the preservation of foreign markets tor her trade and of a convenient outlet for her redundant population gradually assumed as great an importance in the eyes of Japanese statesmen as it has long possessed in the eyes of British statesmen. It was naturally towards China that Japan looked for the former, and towards Korea for the latter. She thus necessarily found herself brought into line with the Powers whose policy was that of the 'open door,' as against those whose object was to create for their own benefit zones of political ascendancy which were also to be zones of economic monopoly. To that extent she could count on the moral support of the United States as well as of Great Britain. But she wanted more than merely moral support. For if her economic interests were threatened by the general trend of events in China, her very security as a nation was threatened by Russia's ambitions. Not content merely to entrench herself in Manchuria and to dominate Peking from the Great Wall, Russia was already clutching at Korea, and casting about for another Port Arthur at Masampo, which faces the Japanese islands across the now famous Tsushima Straits. The advance of Russia in the Far East was an even greater menace to the safety of Japan than the advance of the same Power in the Middle East was to the safety of India. The community of commercial interests in China was thus reinforced by a community of political interests, and of both the Anglo-Japanese Agreement of 1902 merely constituted the logical corollary and the public expression.

The Japanese Alliance opened up a new era in the history not only of our relations with the Far East, but