and industries of Japan appear to me to be, on
the whole, in a healthy and flourishing condition. In them, and of
course in her industrious population, Japan possesses a magnificent
asset. The country is rich in undeveloped resources of various kinds,
the people are patriotic to a degree, and I feel sure that the
additional burdens which the recent war with Russia has for the time
entailed will be cheerfully borne. I am confident, moreover, that
under the wise guidance of the Emperor and her present statesmen Japan
will make successful efforts to liquidate her public debt, to relieve
herself of her foreign liabilities, and generally to proceed
untrammelled and unshackled on that path of progress and material
development that, I believe, lies before her, and which will, I am
sure, at no far-distant date place her securely and permanently in the
position of one of the Great World Powers.

CHAPTER VIII

JAPAN'S FINANCIAL BURDENS AND RESOURCES

There are a good many people, some so-called financial experts among
the number, who are of opinion, and have expressed themselves to that
effect, that the financial position of Japan is an unsound one. They
depict that country as weighed down with a load of debt, mostly
incurred for her warlike operations against Russia, and the revenue as
largely mortgaged for the payment of the interest on that debt. Some
of these experts have told us that the facility with which Japan was
able to raise loans on comparatively moderate terms in the European
money-markets, and the rush that was made by investors to subscribe to
her loans, are matters which must have a baneful effect on the rulers
of Japan. These latter, we are assured, found themselves in the
position not only of being able to raise money easily, but of
positively having to refuse money which was forced upon them by eager
investors when the Japanese loans were put upon the market. The result
was, so it has been said, to encourage extravagance in expenditure and
to lead Japan to suppose that whenever she wanted money for any
purpose she had only to come to Europe and ask for it. The financial
experts who so argue, if such puerile assertions can be dignified by
the name of argument, talk as if Japan were like a child with a new
toy. The Japanese statesmen--in which term I of course include the
Mikado, one of the world's greatest statesmen--are by no means so
simple as some of these financial experts would have us believe.