The position of Japan in the Pacific has to be considered, therefore, in the light of the future rather than of the present. At the time of the conclusion of the war with Russia it seemed supreme. Since then it has steadily deteriorated. If she had succeeded in the realisation of her ambition to undertake the direction of China's military and industrial reorganisation, the Japanese Power would have been firmly established for some generations at least. But the defects in her national character prevented that. Inspiring no confidence among the Chinese, the Japanese found all attempts at peaceful assumption of a controlling influence in China checked by sullen antipathy; and a forced assumption would not have been tolerated by Europe. It will not be found possible, on a full survey of the facts, to credit Japan with the power to hold a supreme place in the Pacific. She is, even now, among the dwindling Powers.
China, on the other hand, has the possibilities of a mighty future. To-day she is in the throes of nation-birth. To-morrow she may unbind her feet and prepare to join in the race for supremacy. The bringing of China into the current of modern life will not be an easy task, but it is clearly not an impossible one. Before the outbreak of the present Revolution (which may place China among the democratic Republics of the world), the people of the Celestial Empire had begun to reconsider seriously their old attitude of intolerance towards European civilisation. To understand fully the position of China it is necessary to keep in mind the fact that the actual Chinese nation, some 400,000,000 of people, enervated as were the Peruvians of South America, by a system of theocratic and pacific Socialism, were subjected about 250 years ago to the sovereignty of the Manchus, a warrior race from the Steppes. Since then the Manchus have governed China, tyrannously, incompetently, on the strength of a tradition of military superiority stronger far than the _Raj_ by which the British have held India. But the Manchus--in numbers and in intellect far inferior to the Chinese--forgot in time their military enterprise and skill. The tradition of it, however, remained until the events of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries showed that the Manchu military power was contemptible not only against the white foreigner, but also against the Japanese _parvenu_. Patient China, finding her tyrant to be a weak despot, revolts now, not only against the Manchu dynasty, but also against the Conservatism which has kept her from emulating Japan's success in the world.