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THE NEW POWER. THE political results of this war must be great, what- ever its immediate fortunes. It is improbable that Russia will escape grave political changes ; but even if she does, the fear of Russia, which for half-a-century has weighed upon the nations of Europe, must be materially lightened. The soldiers of Russia are numerous, and have shown throughout this campaign all their traditionary devotion ; but it is obvious that her military organisation, considered as a scientific one intended for conquest, is not so strong as it has been believed to be. She has no right to the claim, which the autocracy has made for so long, of being always ready for battle, and her officers, though splendidly brave, are probably inferior in resource and energy to those of Central Europe or the Western Powers, or of the Japanese. The initiative is crushed out of them by the very strength of the machine which they are compelled to obey, and which in crushing individual thought and hopefulness drives them to seek in pleasure a refuge from despondency. Russia, it is clear, can be beaten when once her armies are off their own ground ; and formidable as she always must remain while her soldiers obey, the charm of invincibleness, which takes the heart out of enemies, has for the moment passed away. Moreover, the task before her must for some years to come constitute a preoccupation. Looking at the position, not like the "dreamers of the West," but as any sane Russian must look, it is obvious that if the war continues, her whole strength must be employed for years to secure what at the best can be only a. partial victory. If, on the other hand, she makes peace, the energy of her governing bureaucracy must be devoted to reorganisation. A new fleet has to be built, manned, and taught by experience the lessons which cannot be learned at Kronstadt, or even in the Black Sea. The Army must be provided with better officers, must be made more mobile, and must be trained to think a little as well as to obey. All these operations take time, a process of education, and a supply of money which, though Russia is richer than the world imagines, can only be created by financial ability of a kind which "the system" is not well fitted to develop. Quarrelling with all the Jews in the world, for instance, is not wholesome work for a great Treasury. To say, as has been said, that Russia will for the next generation be a negligible quantity is, in the absence of revolution, mere foolishness ; but that she will weigh less in the politics of the world is, we venture to believe, quite certain. The spell which has paralysed diplomatists even more than peoples for the moment has snapped, and we shall find that the relations of all States to each other have been perceptibly modified. This will be the case even if there is no internal outbreak ; while if there is, and its result is any permanent diminution of Russian force, the external politics of Europe will of necessity all be rearranged. Think, to take only one small example, what it would mean to all the Baltic Powers to feel that they had no longer a potential master in St. Petersburg.
This change, however, great as it is, is not the greatest. There is no longer any doubt that a new Power of the first magnitude has arisen on the edge of Eastern Asia. Its rise has been almost miraculously rapid, for though everybody is recalling premonitions which might have taught us all something, a truth in politics is not a truth until it has been realised and acknowledged. Japan has sprung to the front in less than half a generation. The experts of the Continent, political, military, and diplomatic, who have for months refused to believe what to them all was most unwelcome, now accept the evidence, and in a tone of resignation, which would be comic if it did not mean so much, admit that they have been lacking in knowledge as well as imagination. The Power which can place half-a-million of men upon a mainland separated from it by the sea, which can main- tain successfully a siege like that of Sebastopol, and defeat great European armies in battles which rival in magnitude and in slaughter those of Napoleon with the Russians, or of the Germans with the French, cannot be characterised even by the stupidest of Courts as either an inferior or a who control conscript armies, while the soldiers around them regard one quality which the war has revealed in the Japanese with an admiration not untinged with fear. The Japanese officer can call on his men after a bloody battle with a confidence which even conquerors like Napoleon only secured after a long career of victory. Whether their courage is inherent in their race—which has a thread in it other than Mongolian—or whether it arises from the absence in them of any creed which makes death alarming, or whether their love for Japan has risen in the course of centuries into a furious passion, or whether all these peculiarities act together, the fact remains that the Japanese Army is composed of the kind of men who in other armies volunteer for forlorn hopes. The Russian officers, them- selves commanding men of singular courage and endifrance, profess themselves amazed by the daring of the Japanese, and sometimes give utterance to the half-treasonable doubt whether such men can be defeated by any troops in the world. The new Power is, in fact, acknow- ledged to be one of the first class, far-seeing, resolute, and possessed of immense resources for battle, and with that acknowledgment the bottom falls out of many of the data of European diplomacy. In a very short time the Japanese- Fleet may be made, its advantages of position being considered, the strongest on the Pacific ; and even as it is, the current of the action of European Powers towards the States on the North Pacific will be abruptly arrested. Who is to seize the Eastern Archipelago, now the object of so many ambitions, if Japan remarks : " No ! that is part of my reversionary heritage " ? Who is to dictate to China if Japan prohibits ? The Frenchmen who say that Indo-China is in danger from Tokio may be talking nonsense, but it is certain that if Japan claims Siam as an ally, Siam will not be invaded, and the grand idea of the French colonising party, which is, to speak plainly, the absorption of Siam and Yunnan, will not be realised. Japan may not be able to rule China, as those who believe in the "yellow peril" think that she will, for the pride of an ancient Empire may forbid, and the Chinese governing classes may have gone too rotten to be regenerated; but the protection of China from disintegration has already become a Japanese interest of the fundamental kind, for though her first necessity is room to expand, and China cannot find her that room, her second necessity is economic prosperity, and her own idea is that prosperity will come from a virtual, though not official, monopoly of the Chinese market. She will have no necessity to close ports while she can undersell competitors. Japan, once left at peace, will be an energetic trading Power, will produce a great merchant fleet, if only to feed her Navy, and will regard the Pacific as we think of the Atlantic, as her own waterway. That in such circum- stances she should regard a contemptuous exclusion from the American Pacific States, from British Columbia, and from Australia with anything but angry annoyance seems to us impossible ; and an annoyed Japan will be a weighty factor in the arrangements of the Eastern world. Japan no doubt may honestly intend to make her civilisation solidly Western, and to be admitted in all respects, benevolence included, as one of the Western Powers ; but to claim the privileges of a corporation, if you sacri- fice yourself for its interests, is only human. The meekest Christians are impatient of insult, and the last of the Christian virtues which Japan will display will be humility.
THE SURVIVAL OF THE GOVERNMENT.
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