THE CASE FOR JAPAN.
WHAT was the real origin of the war in Corea ? Why did the Japanese send their troops there, and what are their intentions in regard to the future of the Peninsula ? Do they mean to conquer and keep it, and what excuse have they for causing a conflagration in the Far East which may have results of the utmost gravity on the whole of Asia ? Some observers have seen in the internal politics of Japan the genesis of the invasion of Corea, and have pronounced the war distinctly an eleotion war. Japan was in a tight place at home, and made use of a piece of spirited foreign policy to draw off the attention of her factions. Others declare that the war is part of a deliberate policy of aggression on the part of Japan. She has made herself an army and a navy, and is now anxious to provide herself with an amount of prestige sufficient to get her regarded as the Power paramount of the Far East. She will show Europe that she at least is not to be considered a neglectable quantity. Views of this sort, which in a more or less acute form attribute to Japan motives and actions of an evil order, are strongly combated by Sir Edwin Arnold in the current number of the New Review. As all the world knows, Sir Edwin is a great lover and admirer of Japan and things Japanese, and he undertakes the defence of Japan con amore. According to him, Japan had no choice in the matter. She was obliged in self-defence to step in and prevent Corea from falling into hands hostile to her. Japan, he declares, has only done what England would have done in her place, and, indeed, almost precisely what England has before now done, in Afghanistan and in Egypt. " The fate of Corea, is as much bound up with the present and future safety of the empire of the Mikado as that of our Egyptian bridge to India, or of the buffer- State of the Ameer Abdurrahman, with the fortunes of this empire. But whereas Egypt and Afghanistan are far from our shores, only a few hours' steaming could bring hostile troops from Corea to Nagasaki, and into the inland sea. It is a condition of the imperial life of Japan that that peninsula should either be independent or under her own joint or direct supervision and protection." Japan does not wish, and never has wished, to possess Cho-sen ; "albeit, she may hereafter be driven to that necessity," but it is essential to her that Corea should be independent. It is also essential to her that order should be maintained throughout the peninsula, for the trade of Corea is almost entirely in Japanese hands ; and Japanese settlers are scattered throughout the southern ports. Those who believe that the Japanese Government made war because it was desperately occupied " by home politics and worried by the Parliamentary situation," are making, says Sir Edwin Arnold, a complete mistake. As a matter of fact, the Japanese Parliament is quite impotent. The Japanese Houses of Parliament count, socially and politically, as nothing, against the policy of the Ministers. " These the Emperor appoints and removes at his sole pleasure." " When the Deputies make themselves impossible they are simply sent home ; when they refuse supplies public funds are taken quietly on account ; and when they bring things to a deadlock the Emperor and his advisers carry on the business of the country, after dissolving Parliament, which, amid all these vagaries—the lively working of a new and generous wine—remains steadfastly loyal and ardently patriotic." Sir Edwin Arnold plays his final card, in the way of excuses for the Japanese, by darkly hinting at Russian intrigues. Every one does that, and possibly rightly, when they write about the East. Mr. Curzon seems almost to think that the Russians may be inciting Japan. Sir Edwin Arnold is sure they are supporting China. War was declared, argues Sir Edwin Arnold, not as a political alternative, nor because Japan considered her military and naval forces complete, but because the crisis had came when Japan must act, or see Corea abandc ned to disorder, " first, to Chinese mandarins and eunuchs, next, and finally, to Russian intrigue, made all-command- ing by occult arrangements with Peking, and by the com- pletion of the trans-Siberian railway." Japan, in a word, had to send her troops to Seoul because she must, and not because she would. Sir Edwin is not, however, content with trying to establish the fact that Japan was obliged i to act as she has done, in order to maintain her safety in i her home waters. He holds that, in attacking China in Corea, she is guarding the civilised world. There are, according to Sir Edwin Arnold, two dangers always over- hanging the civilised world, the " Mongol " and the " Slav," China and Russia. The rest of the passage must be quoted in Sir Edwin Arnold's own words. We should not dare even for the purposes of making an abstract to dip our pen into those hues of earthquake and eclipse which he knows so well how to employ. Cyclones and glaciers, Attila, the Goths, and Confucius, may come natural to Sir Edwin, but we distinctly fear to tread such icy horrors : —" It is no more their fault, of course [i.e., the fault of the Mongol and the Slav], that they thus impend above the progress of humanity—perpetual and terrible menaces to human history—than it is the blame of the cyclone to be gathering black and massive over the shipping in the Formosa Channel on a September day, or of the glacier to have accumulated its icy horrors above some fertile Swiss valley. They are as they are, creations of Nature and events ; and being so, they have their instincts, their tendencies, their ethnical necessities, which • will bring them some day down into the lowlands of peace and progress, as the Goths swept across the Roman Empire and Attila's Huns poured over Europe. Those do well who dread the sullen and sombre weight of China, con- trolled, as it is, by the social system springing from that arch-opportunist Confucius, the most immoral of all moralists. China, to-day, is perhaps only held back from a prodigious immigration into all the fields of labour by one slight doctrinal bond."
We will not, however, attempt to follow Sir Edwin Arnold into his.big predictions as to the ruin which Chinese cheap labour may spread through Europe. We draw back in horror from the thought of how cheap life might be made if Chinese pertinacity and ingenuity were once freely employed. It is enough to say that Sir Edwin holds that the Japanese were amply justified in invading Corea, and that they only did it from stern necessity. We have- given the substance of Sir Edwin Arnold's interesting plea for his friends, the Japanese, because it is the best piece of advocacy yet put forward on behalf of the action of the Mikado. We do not, however, think that it is a plea which will in the least bear examination. When tested by facts it almost entirely breaks down. The facts necessary for testing it are supplied in a remarkable article sent by the Seoul correspondent of the Times, and published in the issue of Tuesday. Here we get an account of what the Japanese have actually done, and from this account it is not difficult to form a pretty good guess as to their motives. In the first place, the Times' correspondent shows clearly that the Japanese did not, as Sir Edwin Arnold suggests, intervene by right of stern necessity, on an. immediate need, to save themselves from being placed in a dangerous position. Action of that kind would have been taken, not deliberately, but on an emergency, more or less sudden. The Times' correspondent declares that the invasion of Coma had been planned for years, and gives grounds for his declaration. He tells us that it soon became obvious to eye-witnesses that the facts would not bear out the Japanese allegation that they were sending troops. to Seoul because the Chinese had sent an army into the Peninsula nominally to help put down a rebellion. Various circumstances began to be recalled which proved that the- invasion of Corea had been decided upon three years ago, and that the plan of operations had been secretly maturing, even to the minutest detail. " Topographical military maps of the whole of Corea had been constructed, show- ing every road and every river, with the crossing-places• marked and the depth and width of the water stated. Pontoon. trains made accurately to measure have been got ready and now wait in the Government stores to be brought over. Every military preparation has, in short, been made for the complete conquest of Corea." This dces not look much like Sir Edwin Arnold's stern necessity. An examination of the course of Japan's diplomacy at Seoul shows still more clearly that for the last three years and more Japan has been finding occasion for picking a quarrel with her neighbour. Mr. Otoris, the Japanese Minister seems to have passed his time in making impossible proposals to the Coreans. It was, indeed, by no means an easy matter to bring a Government so hopelessly flabby as the Corean, up to the quarrelling point. The Times' correspondent, who, it must be remembered, is writing from Seoul, though nearly two months ago, thus sums up the situation. The Japanese Government has, he says, given but one reason for the Corean Expo- dition,—the imperative necessity of reforming the internal administration of a State only "a stone's throw" from her own shores. The exponents of the Japanese ease, authorised or not, add that China is the obstructor of Corean reforms. " The diplomatic action of the Japanese Government through its Minister in Seoul—so far as it has yet gone—is in harmony with this official declaration. The demands made on Corea have been formulated with consummate ability, for while going to the root of all her institutions, striking at the heart of prerogative and aiming at the deposition of high personages, they still retain the innocent appearance of necessary administrative reforms. Yet were Japan to be successful, it would not be reform, nor even revolution, but subjugation in its literal and drastic form, that would necessarily result, no matter whether actually contemplated by her at present or not." Possibly the Times' correspondent is a little too harsh in tone in regard to Japanese action, but substantially we suspect he is right. Our own belief is that Japan is anxious to expand. Her own country is already full of people, and every year a large number of emigrants leave her shores. Naturally enough, an alert, pushing, and at the same time intensely patriotic people, dislike what they regard as a drain of blood. Let us, they say, obtain territory in which our emigrants can settle, and yet still remain Japanese. But at the very door of Japan, just opposite the entrance to the inland sea, lies a land which is almost vacant, and yet full of resources. How natural that the Japanese should say, " Let us take Corea from those who do not know how to use it, and give it to those who do." This hankering after Corea, from the point of view of national expansion, is increased by the desire for safety. Corea, in the hands of a strong Power, would be a terrible danger to Japan, say the politicians. But any day Corea, which yields at a touch, may pass under the influence of or into the actual possession of Russia or China. Japan, then, should secure Corea while she has yet time, and when an excellent excuse is provided her by Corean disorder. Yet another motive impels Japan to an. invasion of Corea. She hates, dreads, and yet feels contempt for China. But China would be humiliated and injured by the conquest of Corea. Lastly, we have what we may call Japanese Jingoism,--- the desire of the Japanese to show that they have got the ships and the men and the money, and know how to use them. Here, then, are the reasons why Japan has gone to war. She has been drawn into it by (1) her desire for national expansion ; (2) her dread of Corea falling into the hands of a strong Power ; (8) her hatred of the Chinese ; • (4) her Chauvinism. The first of these is probably the strongest, but all play their part, and, combined, make a force which is doubtless quite irresistible. It may be, however, that three or four years of pummelling with the 'Chinese " tar-baby " will make Japan feel not quite so • certain that war was a necessity. Brer Rabbit was very clever, but it may be remembered that he ended by deeply regretting his encounter with the amorphous and sticking -" contraption" which he had so light-heartedly assailed.
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