before white men first came to the Pacific in the early sixteenth century, Japanese mariners had started colonies on the opposite shores of its great expanse. Then was Japan's opportunity to make good her overseas colonial "plantations." She had an old, highly developed and dense civilization. America and Australia were relatively barbarous and vacant. No powerful force contested her transit of the ocean. Then was her golden chance to make for her own future generations the extensive provisions that have since been made for the future generations of Americans, Canadians, and Australians.

That the Japanese then had no aversion to overseas conquest is shown by the attempt they made in 1592 to land an army of 200,000 men in Korea. But as Bywater points out in his "Sea Power in the Pacific" "The leaders of the expedition had failed to grasp the first lesson of naval strategy-that command of the sea is an essential prerequisite of successful oversea invasion." And he adds, "that the Japanese suffered a stunning defeat at the hands of the Koreans is acknowledged by all their historians."

Not very long after this defeat all foreigners were expelled from Japan, no Japanese were permitted to leave the islands and, according to Latourette's "The Development of Japan," "The building of any vessels large enough for overseas traffic was interdicted. . The land entered on more than two centuries of hermit life."

In other words, while the vacant spaces of the earth still were in a state of flux, while the forbears of the leading world powers of to-day were competing for the extensive opportunities recently discovered by their countrymen, Japan, having had overseas experience, chose of her own will to withdraw from the contest, to forsake all opportunity to expand her domains. Just as the failure of the sixteenth century Germans in America was a basic mistake that lay at the root of modern German imperialism, so the deliberate decision of Japan, three hundred years ago, to become a hermit was a basic mistake that lies at the root of her recent moves.

When Japan, in 1853, renewed relations with the world, she had to choose, as Germany had had to choose. Either she could remain peacefully in her own territory, as the Scandinavian nations have done, trusting to industry and commerce for support, or she could take aggressive steps to retrieve her earlier mistake and

to provide extensive spaces for her future generations as we have provided for ours. It was the choice between a life of industrious peace or a career of aggressive war.

During the earlier part of the modernization of Japan it was to the United States that she looked for example and guidance. But feudalistic leaders should not have been expected long to favor the adoption of American liberalism by their people. So it was to imperial Germany that the Japanese Government turned as being the most promising exemplar of the ways and means that would carry Japan quickly into the front rank of nations.

It followed from this that, as popular liberalism and internal factionalism seemed to the Japanese Government to be weakening the empire, a foreign war was provided upon which all patriotically could concentrate their energies. The Chino-Japanese war of 1894 resulted in the acknowledgment by China of the Japanese contention that Korea was an independent empire, in the cession to Japan of Formosa and the Liaotung peninsula and in China's agreement to pay about $150,000,000 as a war indemnity.

The effects of this war upon the Japanese people justified the expectations of their government and proved that the "blood and iron' doctrines of Bismarck were as efficacious in developing aggressive imperialism in Japan as they had been in Germany. But the effects of this success on the European powers and on their policy toward China must have been a surprise to the Japanese Government.

What Japan had really done was to start the segregation not of Chinese vassal states but of Chinese provinces. And the European powers were not slow to realize that if they did not each acquire all the rights they could wrest from China, the probability was that Japan would take the lion's share. Consequently, the closing years of the nineteenth century saw most of the great powers of Europe engaged in an unprecedented campaign for the virtual partition of China which led that country's dowager empress to exclaim: "The various powers cast on us looks of tiger-like voracity, hustling each other in their endeavors to be the first to seize upon our inmost territory." And in the presence of these mighty contestants Japan was relatively impotent to assert herself in proportion to what she deemed her interests to be.

In other words, instead of taking advantage

of her natural opportunities peacefully to develop a predominant economic influence in China, Japan, by choosing war, started the partitionment of China by the great European powers who overtopped her as competitors. It was a great mistake—a mistake more characteristic of obtuse German objectiveness than of Oriental subtlety. But then, Japan was copying German methods.

THE OPEN DOOR DOCTRINE

T WAS evident that the grabbing of "spheres of influence" in China by the powers would result in the political disruption of that country and in the carving up of its territory among the powers. Whereupon it might be expected that each power, in its own section of China, would discriminate against the trade of all other nations with the Chinese. Thus the Chinese would be subjugated by the aggressive powers and, since the United States sought no share in the spoliation of China, American trade with the Chinese would be destroyed. Such were the considerations that led the American Secretary of State, John Hay, to evolve the Open Door Doctrine in 1899.

The situation presented in China at the close of the Nineteenth Century was analogous to that which had called the Monroe Doctrine into being eighty years earlier. But it differed in two important respects: First, the powers were in actual process of dismembering China, whereas there had been only an expression of intention to do this to Latin America; and, second, Great Britain was participating with all the great powers of Europe, and with Japan, in the dismemberment of China, thus leaving the United States as the only power free to stem the situation.

In these circumstances, Hay took advantage of a contention long maintained by Great Britain to the effect that trade open to all without discrimination followed the British flag. He realized that because of this contention, Great Britain would agree to a statement to the effect that there would be no trade discrimination in her "sphere of influence" in China; and he hoped that if Great Britain were to make such a statement, the other powers would realize the propriety of falling in line with such a policy.

Accordingly Hay issued similar notes to all the powers concerned on September 6, 1899, stating the presumption, among other things, that there would be no trade discrimination

in the "sphere of influence" of each; and special steps were taken to secure promptly Great Britain's expected acquiescence. In course of time after this had been received, France, Japan, Russia, Italy, and Germany all indicated their acquiescence. indicated their acquiescence. As Thayer pithily described it in his "Life of John Hay:" "It was as if, in a meeting, he had asked all those who believed in telling the truth to stand up: the liars would not have kept their seats."

When in June, 1900, the Boxer outbreak occurred, it threatened to give the powers plausible excuse to proceed with the definite carving up of China. Hay's work was menaced. But he seized the occasion to state the policy of the United States in the following terms.

the policy of the Government of the United States is to seek such a solution which may bring about permanent safety and peace to China, preserve Chinese territorial and administrative entity, protect all rights guaranteed to friendly Powers by treaty and international law, and safeguard for the world the principle of equal and impartial trade with all parts of the Chinese Empire."

This was a reassertion of the Open Door for trade, a warning lest treaty rights be lost by any power making war on China, and the assertion of the territorial integrity of China.

The preoccupations of Great Britain in other quarters were such that she would have been handicapped if a general scramble for Chinese territory had broken out. Consequently she got Germany to join in a note against any such move and all the powers in effect agreed to this, thus establishing world accord to the doctrine of the territorial integrity of China before the close of 1900.

By this series of moves the United States, with essential aid from Great Britain, attained both the territorial integrity of China and trade throughout China open to all the world without discrimination, by the subscription of all the leading powers of the world to the Open Door Doctrine. And incidentally this doctrine aimed to prevent any particularly aggressive nation from acquiring virtual control of China and of her vast human and natural resources; and this because an imperialistic menace to the peaceful nations of the world would result from such a development.

The procedure whereby the Open Door Doctrine had been established had differed from that preceding the Monroe Doctrine; but the ends corresponded.

It should be added that when the AngloJapanese alliance was first signed, January 30, 1902, it stated, as Hornbeck phrases it in his "Contemporary Politics in the Far East," "that both countries desired to maintain the status quo and peace in the Far East, the territorial integrity of China and Korea, and the open door."

As all eastern continental Asia, excepting China and Korea, was then otherwise protected or in strong hands, this spread the Open Door Doctrine over the whole of eastern Asia that was liable to assault or disintegration. From this there might be grounds for the inference that, in intent, the Open Door Doctrine covers all areas in eastern Asia lacking other protection and incapable of self-defense.

JAPAN'S OPPORTUNITY THROUGH THE OPEN DOOR

WHILE

WHILE the Open Door Doctrine was designed to "preserve Chinese territorial and administrative entity," as Hay phrased it, and to open all parts of China to the trade of all nations without discrimination, it must be apparent that there was one nation better circumstanced to profit by this throwing open of trade opportunities with 400,000,000 people than were any of the others.

If Japan had chosen industrial England instead of imperial Germany as her model, immediately she would have bent every energy to the development of Japanese manufactures for the Chinese market; and in exchange for her manufactures she could have drawn from China raw materials of every description and without limit.

Peacefully the virtual control of the overseas trade of China might not have been secured in a decade. But the opportunity was unique, and if realized, could not but have led Japan to unprecedented prosperity and power. It would have solved all her problems. How did Japan react to the special opportunity given to her by America's peace-fostering Open Door Doctrine? JAPAN'S COURSe after the dOOR WAS OPENED

T IS current knowledge in certain quarters That current of becoming the firmest propo

nent of the Open Door Doctrine as a fair and square solution for China and for all the powers, the Japanese Government chose to follow a tortuous course.

First, its agents are said to have appeared in Petrograd and to have pointed out that if the Russian Empire would enter into alliance with

the Japanese Empire, the latter could create such an acute situation for British interests in China that Great Britain would be powerless to stop Russia from obtaining control over Persia and Afghanistan; whereupon India would be open to Russia while Japan would compensate herself at the expense of Britain's interests in China. It was logical. But imperial Russia then held Japan in contempt and spurned the proposition.

From Petrograd the Japanese went to Berlin where the plans were then being drawn for the Berlin to Bagdad railroad. It is said that there the Japanese pointed out to the Germans that, if a German-Japanese alliance were formed, Japan could exert such pressure on Russia and Great Britain in the Far East that Germany would have a free hand in the Near East and could carry out the Berlin to Bagdad plan; whereupon Germany would command Britain's line of communication with India which could be taken after Germany had forced Russia to withdraw from influence in Persia and Afghanistan, while Japan would compensate herself at the expense of Britain and Russia in the Far East. The report is that the Germans assured the Japanese of their profound interest in such astute and gratifying proposals; but they added that, unfortunately, the European situation was not yet quite ripe for some of the developments incidental to the procedure suggested.

Having failed at Petrograd and Berlin, the Japanese took up the situation in London. Russia was giving Great Britian serious concern in Persia and Afghanistan. Evidently an Anglo-Japanese alliance would give Russia pause both to the northwest of India and to the northeast of China. Eager to avoid an outbreak, Great Britain accepted the suggestion and Japan, by becoming the ally of mighty Britain, received official recognition as a peer among the white powers of the world.

The first of January, 1901, may be taken as having seen the Open Door Doctrine in full force. Within the next thirteen months Japan had made proposals to Russia and to Germany for actions that looked to war for conquest in China and to the destruction of the Open Door Doctrine; and she had entered into an alliance with Great Britain that was hardly in consonance with it and which has done more than any other one thing to thwart it ever since.

Of necessity the outlook and moves of Japan were known to Russia and to Germany. As Japan initiated the proposals she did, it would

seem difficult not to regard Japan as the power that inaugurated the militaristic return to imperialism on the part of Russia and other powers in 1902-to the great impairment of the Open Door Doctrine.

This is not the place to recite the various moves that Japan has made between 1902 and the present time to expand her domains and to acquire exclusive trade opportunities in direct violation of the Open Door Doctrine. Suffice it to recall that Japan's war of 1904 with Russia ultimately led to her acquiring control over the Chinese dependency of Manchuria, and to her eventual absorption of the independent Empire of Korea; to her obtaining control over Shantung, eastern Mongolia, and the former Pacific German islands north of the Equator as a result of the late European war; and to her obtaining a dominant voice in Pekin. Morally, politically, and territorially, during the last thirty years Japan has been the leading disrupter of China and monopolist of its trade in spite of the Open Door Doctrine.

The following tabulation, derived from "The Statesman's Year Book," summarizes the expansion, since 1894, of the domains under the

emperor of Japan, and shows the extent of Japan proper and its population, according to the Japanese census of 1921:

Japan produces more than 80 per cent. of all the food she consumes. England produces less than 40 per cent. of the food she consumes. Yet she supports a population nearly twice as dense as that of Japan! How? As everyone knows, by industry and trade; for in England about 25 per cent. of the population are industrial workers whereas but about 2.5 per cent. of the Japanese are industrial workers. England's present industrialism proves that at least ten times as many Japanese could gain their living by industrialism in Japan. The fact that England, Belgium, and Holland support themselves by peaceful industry and trade, on the one hand proves that Japan does not need to force her people into other lands; and on the other hand it shows the solution of the problem that the dense population of Japan is alleged to present.

THE OBJECT OF JAPANESE COLONIZATION

WHY, then, is the world made to ring with

appeals for domiciles for Japan's surplus population-that does not exist. To any one intimately conversant with the principles that have been deduced from the history of the expansion of Europe overseas, the answer will be apparent. Japan wants to make overseas colonial "plantations" of her people on all shores of the Pacific. She wants to develop extensive overseas commerce as well as the intensive navigation in her home waters. As well as concentrated sea power at home, she wants extensive sea power throughout the Pacific. Mahan told her that the way to develop sea power, the command of the ocean, was to plant colonies. Hence Japan's outcries about her overcrowded population. It is merely propaganda for an ulterior purpose-the command of the Pacific.

But to say that Japan is not overcrowded is not to say that Japan has no problem.