N OTHING connected with the Russo-Japanese War has so startled Russians
as the unanimous sympathy expressed by Americans for the apparently weaker side. They have always relied, one does not quite understand for what reason, upon sympathy from the people of the States, and once actually sold territory to them to gain their goodwill. They have, we fancy, had an impression that America and Great Britain could never agree, and that the power of one section of the English-speaking race could be paralysed by the steady hostility of the other. They relied, too, we imagine, on the special distaste of Americans for all coloured races, as well as on certain fears which Americans, they thought, might feel as to Japanese desire for the acquisition of the Philippines, which no doubt the Government of Tokio once offered to buy. The declaration of war, however, though it has disturbed some American trade, has been followed by an explosion of nearly unanimous feeling in favour of the Japanese. Count Cassini's protests, which, though ill-judged in form, have been most numerous and earnest, have been received with a chorus of derisive laughter ; and if we may judge by several votes in the State Legisla- tures, the sympathisers with Russia are less than five per cent. throughout the entire territory of the Union.
The incident, historically considered, is a very curious one, and yet it is natural enough. The Americans, who never forget that the Panama Canal will be constructed, regard their trade with the Far East as of vital importance, and rejoice to think that among white men they are the nearest neighbours to China and Japan. To keep this trade in the hands of the world at large, as they believe, Japan must win, at least sufficiently to maintain the " open door." If Russia won, they think, she would try to recoup herself for her gigantic expenditure in removing the barrier of distance, and in garrisoning a region larger than Europe, by enforcing a close monopoly of all Chinese trade. We do not ourselves believe that Russian statesmen are quite such idiots economically as to bar out the sea-borne trade for which Siberia and Manchuria are thirsting ; but that is the American conviction, and it is supported by many most injudicious statements from Russian officials on the spot. The people of the States therefore incline to wish for a Japanese victory, and the inclination is not weakened by the horror felt at the mercilessness with which the Russian officials have " read lessons " to the Jews in places like Kishineff and Irkutsk, and to the Chinese in Blagovest- scbensk. They like the Japanese, too, as we do, as pleasant people who show a disposition to confide in them. The astute statesmen of Tokio understand per- fectly well that America is one of the greatest among the white Powers, and at the same time the one which has least interest in thwarting Japanese ambition. America has no longing for Asiatic territory, and it hardly matters to the States, so long as the " door " is open to commerce, how much of the continent of Asia the Mikado may rule or may " protect." Even Great Britain in this respect is not so perfectly disinterested. Japan, for example, to give a single illustration, might conquer all the wonderful islands of the Eastern Archipelago without exciting in America, any emotion except one of half- admiring surprise. We, on the contrary, in that con- tingency should have Australian ambitions to think of. The Japanese, therefore, regard the Americans as potential friends, and have from the first taken all the means that occur to them of showing that they hold them in some special regard. They cannot, indeed, make an excep- tion in favour of American special correspondents, which to New York journalists is rather an exasperating fact. But they leave the guardianship of their in- terests in St. Petersburg to the American Minister, and take unusual pains to explain to the general American public their own view of the causes of the war. Mr. Kogoro Takahira, for example, has published in the North American, Review—one of the most influential of American periodicals—the ultimate motive of Japanese hostility to Russia. There is nothing very new in his account:; but there are in it three implications of great interest. One is that the Japanese statesmen did not believe a single word of any Russian assurance that the Czar woul stop short of supreme dominion on the shore of the North Pacific ; another is that they thought the independence Of China as much threatened as that of Manchuria or. Sorea; and a third is that they had from the first, no hope except in. war. No one in Western Europe, whether, friendly to Russia or the reverse, doubts the accuracy of the first two opinions, and no one who has closely . watched Japanese preparations can have felt much hesitation as to the third; but it is as well that the truth of these points should be perceived, because they diminish the impression of any un- expectedness in this war. It can, at all events, have; been unexpected to no one except to the Russians, and to them only because they have rather bemused themselves with the contemplation of their own gigantic area and inexhaustible potential resources. The Buddhist who sits for years contemplating his own navel necessarily loses all accurate sense of the proportions of the, human frame.
We by no means, of course, accept the Japanese 3rmister's account of the motives which governed his Master and his advisers as a complete revelation. It is quite possible that the Japanese, while thinking that they were only on the defensive, were unconsciously influenced by the stirrings of ambitiOn: Had they con- eentrated all effort on their Fleet they could, we imagine, have secured themselves against attack from the continent as completely as we have done in very similar circum- Mallow It is true that the Czar appears to them as formidable as Napoleon appeared to us, and that when we were equally alarmed we struck at our enemy as they have done,—by land as well as sea. Still, we cannot forget that their overcrowded population involves a necessity for seeking more room, and that if they do not desire direct dominion. beyond Korea, they do and must desire predomi. ;ant influence in Pekin. Their history inspires that if nothing else; and even admitting their account of their own motives, it would be foolish to forget that in every success- ful people, much more in a people who to the energy of Englishmen add something of the vanity of Parisians, success develops new kinds and ranges of ambition. That they desire to be a Great Power we know, and the hunger of acquisition which grows in. Great Powers, be it an evil quality or simply a, natural one, is one of the keys of history. To regulate policy by fear of the ambitions which Japanese may display if they succeed is, perhaps, to plunge into those prophetic politics by which the most far-sighted. are - constantly deluded—for example, all Europe was quailing with the fear of Russian aggrandisement when this little tsetse-fly settled on her vast bulk—but it is as well when politicians are gravely considering the war not to forget that a new Great Power must inevitably disturb much, and will, if history is any guide, indulge aspirations usually most unlike those which have been foretold for it. There is another island. Power with which we are well acquainted, and nothing in its history suggested that it would acquire and keep the most widely diffused Empire of which history has any record. Money, it is said, usually accretes to the rich, and power is certainly very apt to accrete to the powerful.
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