gi and Togo, to recognize
that a day of vengeance for Portsmouth was bound to come. In those days
we regarded the Manchurian campaign merely as a spectacle and applauded
the victors. We had no idea that it was only the prelude of the great
drama of the struggle for the sovereignty of the Pacific. We wanted
imperialism, but took no steps to establish it on a firm basis, and it
is foolish to dream of imperial dominion when one is afraid to lay the
sword in the scales. We might bluff the enemy for the time being by
sending our fleet to the Pacific; but we could not keep him deceived
long as to the weakness of our equipment on land and at sea, especially
on land.

The wholesale immigration of Mongolians to our Pacific States and to the
western shores of South America was clearly understood across the sea.
But we looked quietly on while the Japanese overran Chili, Peru and
Bolivia, all the harbors on the western coast of South America; and
while the yellow man penetrated there unhindered and the decisive events
of the future were in process of preparation, we continued to look
anxiously eastward from the platform of the Monroe Doctrine and to keep
a sharp lookout on the modest remnants of the European colonial dominion
in the Caribbean Sea, as if danger could threaten us from that corner.
We seemed to think that the Monroe Doctrine had an eastern exposure
only, and when we were occasionally reminded that it embraced the entire
continent, we allowed our thoughts to be distracted by the London press
with its talk of the "German danger" in South America, just as though
any European state would think for a moment of seizing three Brazilian
provinces overnight, as it were.

We have always tumbled through history as though we were deaf and dumb,
regarding those who warned us in time against the Japanese danger as
backward people whose intellects were too weak to grasp the victorious
march of Japanese culture. Any one who would not acknowledge the
undeniable advance of Japan to be the greatest event of the present
generation was stamped by us an enemy of civilization. We recognized
only two categories of people--Japanophobes and Japanophiles. It never
entered our heads that we might recognize the weighty significance of
Japan's sudden development into a great political power, but at the same
time warn our people most urgently against regarding this development
merely as a phase of feuilletonistic culture. Right here lies the basis