occupation within the limits of respecting China's territorial integrity and guaranteeing equal commercial and industrial privileges to all nations. The explanation is plain. Japan sought to avoid anything that could hurt Russian sentiment. Therefore she did not ask for any withdrawal of troops. She would be content with paper guarantees, though such confidence was scarcely justified by Russia's treatment of pledges in the immediate past. Japanese statesmen put hope in two things. They believed that if all the Powers enjoyed equal privileges in Manchuria, the arbitrary preponderance of any one at the expense of the rest would ultimately be impossible; and they believed that with time and a tolerably free hand in Korea, they could educate among the Koreans some self-defensive competence.

From these proposals Japan never budged: they represented her irreducible minimum.

Of Russia also it may be said that she never budged. From first to last she declined to recognise that Japan had any right to a voice in the fate of Manchuria. Eight years previously a part of Manchuria had become Japan's property by right of conquest. Russia, aided by Germany and France, had required her to evacuate it, on the grounds that the tenure of any part of Manchuria by a foreign State would imperil the Chinese capital, would render Korean independence illusory and would be opposed to the maintenance of peace in the Far East. Therefore, in denying Japan's title to be heard about Manchuria, Russia now constructively declared that Japan had no interest in either the security of the Chinese capital, or in the independence of Korea, or in the peace of the Far East.

Russia never wavered, also, in her refusal to recognise equality of commercial and industrial privileges for all the Powers in Manchuria. She pretended to agree that they should enjoy any privileges already conventionally acquired, but she rendered her agreement practically worthless by vetoing the formation of settlements at newly opened marts. The right to establish settlements had been obtained by treaty and without its exercise a mart would be valueless. Thus Russia not only refused all extension of privileges, but also rendered nugatory those already acquired. She openly constituted herself sovereign of Manchuria, while simulating willingness to recognise Chinese sovereignty, and she openly disclosed her intention of adopting an exclusive policy there in matters of trade and industry.

As to Korea, Russia's counter-proposals were of such a nature as to amount to total rejection of Japan's conditions.

While herself retaining a large military force perpetually in Manchuria and possessing there a strongly fortified naval base she refused to agree that Japan might use any part of Korean territory for strategical purposes in case of necessity, and she asked that the whole of the northern part of the peninsula where she had already established herself, should be declared a neutral zone down to the 39th parallel of latitude.

The negotiations lasted from August 12, 1903, to February 6, 1904. Nothing was more remarkable about them than the haughty deliberation of Russia's methods. Excluding twentyseven days devoted to an immediate interchange of views in Tokio, Russia required 103 days for making three replies and preparing to make a fourth; Japan devoted fifteen days to making her only two replies. It was impossible to reconcile Russia's slowness with any wish to arrive at a pacific settlement, for she knew well that her supercilious tardiness was goading the Japanese nation beyond endurance and was exciting the wonder of the world.

But, in truth, although Russia so greatly delayed her verbal replies, she answered promptly and unequivocally by acts. Commencing from the date that saw her first breach of promise to evacuate Manchuria, she hastened to increase her naval force in the Far East by nineteen ships representing a displacement of over 80,000 tons, and she started upon their outward voyage fifteen others with an aggregate tonnage of over 30,000. Beginning from the moment when the protests of Japanese publicists first became audible, she despatched no less than 40,000 additional troops to Manchuria and issued orders preparatory to the despatch of 200,000 more. In the very month when her representative in Tokio was holding his initial series of conferences with the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, she sent a field hospital to the Chinese provinces. Simultaneously with this preparation for a campaign she applied herself with feverish haste to strengthen the forts at Port Arthur, Dalny, and Vladivostok, and to fortify Haicheng and Liaoyang. At the very time when the Tsar, on the occasion of his New-Year levee, was said to be proclaiming peaceful intentions, his Viceroy was despatching infantry, cavalry, and artillery towards the northern frontier of Korea. Within eight days of the drafting of Russia's last answer-an answer never delivered but well known to have contained no semblance of concession orders to prepare for war were issued in Manchuria. Within two days of the despatch of this nominally conciliatory answer, the Commandant at Vladivostok warned the Japanese Commercial Agent that a state of siege was

imminent, and desired that he and his nationals should move to Habarovsk.

The meaning of all this was never for one moment obscure. Russia's studied tardiness of diplomatic movement, combined with her ominous swiftness of naval and military preparation, meant and could only mean that she proposed to convert herself from a negotiator into a dictator. She did not intend to fight. She did not expect to fight. Her plan was to prepare such an array of force that Japan might not dare to face it. That she deemed easy, first because she believed in the adroitness of her own diplomacy to hold Japan in parley; secondly because she erroneously imagined that Japan had stood in awe of her from the outset.

It was all very palpable, yet Japan hesitated for a long time before she accepted the inevitable interpretation. She hoped against hope that some concession on Russia's part would open the path to a friendly settlement. It seemed incredible to her that any European Power should behave with such insolent arbitrariness as to exclude her from a question in which her whole future as a prosperous State was involved. After infinite patience, however, she had to confess to herself that the choice lay between fighting and effacement. Russia's aggression was pitiless and inexorable. It never paused except to make preparation for a fresh advance. Sooner or later Japan would have to strike for her existence as a Power, and since each day's postponement meant so much addition to the available might of her adversary, she resolved to strike at once.

Tokio, March 18.

F. BRINKLEY.

AN OPEN LETTER TO “PREFERENCE ”

SIR, I am induced to write a few lines to you on the subject of your letter: not because of the fiscal ideas you so ably enunciate, but because your views on the political situation seem to me so little calculated to advance those ideas. It is indeed chiefly because I so cordially agree with your policy that I wish to disagree with your letter.

I would first ask to be allowed to congratulate you on your clear exposition of the futility of retaliation as a real reform ; you well show how a complete Imperial tariff policy is the only issue worth fighting for, and how closely both the material prosperity and the moral fibre of the nation depend on an early realisation of that policy. The Home Country and the Colonies alike cry for the stimulus of common interest, and for England it must be hoped that the definite and practical realisation of her Imperial responsibilities will come before the inertia of Free Trade Little-Englandism corrupts altogether her power of application and energy.

Or is it not possible that zeal which is so true, that the declared

But, Sir, why allow the enthusiasm of youth, which is so apparent in your earlier passages, to outrun the judgment of the later and more weighty arguments of your letter? Why accuse others of an intolerance you are so prompt to display yourself? Why so plentifully abuse a Government which your leader so whole-heartedly supports? Are you so sure of our cause as to think that our countrymen are all longing to endorse it and embrace it on the instant? that you credit others with too much of apparent in yourself? Sir, it may be it is fiscal policy of his Majesty's Government is not in itself complete or final; it certainly does not satisfy those whose aspirations look, as do ours, to the future of the Empire as something more than the future of England. But England, though she moves with sure steps, moves with slow. Her people and it is one of her glories-are not whirled to and fro by every blast of popular sentiment. They move only on a deep and abiding conviction. And I, for one, should think the worse of

my countrymen were they to abandon now that national trait, and go "mafficking" with new ideas and new thoughts which, however much they may have been maturing in their minds, have only within a few months been brought forward as a practical issue. I should think the worse of them, and not the better, were they on an impulse to throw aside the ideas and influences which, however mistaken, have animated them for half a century. They must move with a reasoned conviction, not on the wild impulse of a moment. They need missionaries, such as yourself, to expound the new message. And no one has stated this more clearly than the Prime Minister, who said, in answer to the millers' deputation on May 5 of last year, that fiscal change must come from the hearts of the people. As indeed it will come-but not with a rush.

Meanwhile the half-way policy-half-hearted, if you like— does stand for something. The Prime Minister has committed the Unionist party to a reversal of our fiscal system, to an abandonment of laissez faire. Free Trade, as it has been misunderstood, is dead so far as Unionists are concerned. When we remember where we were only a year ago, still bowing the knee to the fetish, can we not realise the step onward we have made, and is it so much further to the step that will make Unionism more than the Union of England and Ireland, the Union of England and Empire? The principle of change is granted, the details will follow. The leaven is in the lump: let it work.

And, if you will have none of this Government, whom will you have? The party that holds us both has many a fight to fight besides fiscal reform, and cannot consent to purchase preference by selling all its other principles. Are not the state of our navy, the reform of our army, the fruits of a long Imperial war, our reputation in the eyes of foreign countries, all matters of Imperial concern? if we attack and endanger the Government that takes the first (and principal) step towards preference we gravely risk these other matters of immediate Imperial moment, and—we get nothing for it. Open attack is hardly the way to win over a would-be friend. No: let us rather realise that our hope lies in that friend, that our cause is just and must prevail; but that it may be years of strenuous endeavour before the conviction comes. During these years let us not forget that the Unionist party has many a battle to fight, and that to many a Unionist, weaker perhaps than ourselves in the Imperial faith, those other battles seem more worth a blow than your zeal would let you think. But we need all our army for the main attack; and if we prematurely break up