ing batteries, go ashore with an armed party and demand audience with the Shogun.

Japan was too weak to resist. The Shogun did not wish to grant the audience but dared not refuse, nor did he dare refuse to sign the treaty.

The Japanese people were, however, not at all satisfied with the situation. Though there were some who, like the Shogun, realized that resistance would be futile, the large mass of Japanese were resentful, and not only maintained an attitude of hostility to foreigners, frequently attacking and killing them, but developed a feeling of hostility to the Shogunate also, because it was through the Shogunate that the treaties had been made.

A number of the great clan leaders were also verging on rebellion against the Shogunate, and finally they seized upon this opportunity, putting forward the Emperor, then hardly more than a youth, as the champion of an anti-foreign party. A battle occurred in which the Shogun's forces were worsted, and soon thereafter the Emperor removed from his seclusion in Kyoto and going to Tokyo took up the reins of government.

There remains, however, some doubt as to whether or not the last of the shoguns, Yoshinobu Tokugawa by name, made any real endeavor to resist the Emperor's forces. His own followers felt at the time

that he had failed them, and there are those who, in the light of history, believe that he actually desired to see the Imperial Family resume its power. At all events the Emperor did not cause Yoshinobu to be executed, but after he had been for thirty years in seclusion brought him to Tokyo and created him a prince of the new regime."

Prince Tokugawa who has for many years been president of the Japanese House of Peers, and who was a delegate to the Conference on the Limitation of Armaments, which met in Washington in 1921, is a son of the last Shogun, and the moated palace in Tokyo, now the chief Imperial residence, is the home of Prince Tokugawa's forefathers. Japanese friends of mine have called my attention to the moat and walls surrounding the palace grounds as being out of accord with Imperial tradition; for it is true that Japanese Emperors have not customarily resided in fortified houses, those to be seen in Japan having been built by the great feudal lords. And though-as we are reminded by the recent assassination of Premier Harathe lives of Japanese statesmen are not safe from murderous malcontents, the lives of members of the Imperial Family have never, so far as I know, been attempted.*

* Since this was written an attempt was made by a radical on the life of the Prince Regent.-J. S.

Fortunately for Japan, the late Emperor (whose posthumous name is Meiji, meaning "enlightenment") was a man of great wisdom and was surrounded by able and patriotic statesmen. Fortunately, too, his reign was long, covering the period of the nation's transition from medievalism to modernity.

He and those nearest to him saw in China and India what was the fate of Oriental nations lacking the military strength to resist foreign powers. Perceiving, however, that the anti-foreign sentiment on which they had ridden into power was an impractical ideal, they did not attempt to abrogate the Shogun's treaties, or to expel foreigners from Japan, but contented themselves with trying to maintain good relations with other powers, at the same time making breathless haste to build up an army and a navy, so that if difficulties should arise in future Japan would be in position to defend herself and to assert her rights. Simultaneously railroads were being built, mines developed, and modern machinery and methods adopted. The very ground seemed to be changing under the feet of the people of Japan. And the change has continued ever since.

Within comparatively few years from the time when military preparation began, Japan was able to win a war against China, and soon after that against Russia, whom with good reason she had feared. Thus,

when hardly out of the swaddling clothes of her new civilization she defeated the two most populous nations of the world.

It is well, when we consider Japanese militarism, to remember that militarism was forced upon Japan by the United States and other foreign powers.

Coming down to our own day, among the great leaders of Japan, when the true story of this troubled time comes to be written, there will shine out the name of Tomosaburo Kato, Prime Minister, Baron and Admiral of Japan, statesman, patriot and practical idealist. While the older Christendom, apostate to its ethics, is rent with hatred and worn out with war, this Japanese officer and statesman, who is ranked by our missionaries as a heathen, who was trained in a navy to blood and iron, and to the stern code of duty known as bushido, emerges as one of the loftiest-minded men of his day; a man having faith in mankind, and the courage to back that faith to the utmost. His death was a loss not only to Japan but to the world.

At the Washington Conference Admiral Kato was a conspicuous yet modest figure-a frail seaman, slight and spare of build, with hands delicate and nerveless, as if all the energies of life were withdrawn from the body and concentrated in the brain. Known as the Nelson of the Japanese navy, to the western observer

he seemed inscrutable. But it is also true that, to the eastern observer, our faces are not less inscrutable; and Kato was manifestly observant. Nothing escaped his quiet eye, so dark, so piercing yet so calm.

He was as much the maker of Japan's latest navy as Tirpitz was maker of the German navy, and Fisher, the maker of the British navy. To his finger tips, he was, moreover, an aristocrat, bred to his very bone in the pride of Japan. To the last he was skeptical of a broad electoral franchise and was in that respect held to be a Conservative. Also, he had none but peers as ministers in his Cabinet.

Belonging thus to the hereditary ruling class, it is fair to suppose that he, like others having a like training, cherished dreams of an Asiatic Empire for Japan.

This, then, was the man, who as an Elder Statesman and as Japanese delegate at Washington, was asked by the United States to put all his achievements, including the navy and Shantung, into the melting pot of an international conference and to adopt for his country a creed so liberal that it is accepted by few statesmen in Europe. And hardly had Secretary Hughes made his proposals, when an event in Japan cut off Kato, as it were, from his base. Prime Minister Hara, a Liberal and a believer in conciliation, was assassinated, and Japan was left without a gov