nvasion, which our
politicians dismissed as possible only in the dim and distant future,
was actually completed at the beginning of the year 1908. A Japanese
army stood prepared and fully armed right in our midst, merely waiting
until the military and financial conditions at home rendered the attack
feasible.

When we glance to-day through the newspapers of that period, we cannot
help but smile at allowing ourselves to be persuaded that the Japanese
danger had been removed by the diplomatic retreat in Tokio and the
prohibition of emigration to North America. Our papers stated at the
time that Japan had recognized that she had drawn the bow too tight and
that she had yielded because Admiral Evans's fleet had demonstrated
conclusively that we were prepared. That only goes to show how little we
knew of the Mongolian character!

We had become so accustomed to the large Japanese element in the
population of our Western States, that we entirely neglected to control
the harmless looking individuals. To be sure there wasn't a great deal
to be seen on the surface, but it would have been interesting to examine
some of the goods smuggled so regularly across the Mexican and Canadian
borders. Why were we content to allow the smuggling to continue without
interference, simply because we felt it couldn't be stamped out anyhow?
The Japanese did not resort to the hackneyed piano-cases and farming
machinery; they knew better than to employ such clumsy methods. The
goods they sent over the line consisted of neat little boxes full of
guns and other weapons which had been taken apart. And when a Japanese
farmer ordered a hay-cart from Canada, it was no pure chance that the
remarkably strong wheels of this cart exactly fitted a field-gun. The
barrel was brought over by a neighbor, who ordered iron columns for his
new house, inside of which the separate parts of the barrel were
soldered. It was in this way that, in the course of several years, the
entire equipment for the Japanese army came quietly and inconspicuously
across our borders.

And then the Japanese are so clever, clever in putting together and
mounting their guns, clever in disguising them. Did it ever enter
anyone's head that the amiable landlord who cracked so many jokes at the
Japanese inn not far from the railroad station at Reno commanded a
battalion? Did anyone suppose that the casks of California wine in his
cellar in reality enclosed six machine-guns, and that in the ya