apanese
have for the Throne that all through this long contest the main issue
should have been purposely obscured. The traditional feelings of
veneration which a loyal and obedient people feel for a line of
monarchs, whose origin is lost in the mists of antiquity, are such that
they have turned what is in effect an ever-growing struggle against the
archaic principle of divine right into a contest with clan-leaders whom
they assert are acting "unconstitutionally" whenever they choose to
assert the undeniable principles of the Constitution. Thus to-day we
have this paradoxical situation; that although Japanese Liberalism must
from its very essence be revolutionary, _i.e._, destructive before it
can hope to be constructive, it feigns blindness, hoping that by suasion
rather than by force the principle of parliamentary government will
somehow be grafted on to the body politic and the emperors, being left
outside the controversy, become content to accept a greatly modified
rule.

This hope seems a vain one in the light of all history. Militarism and
the clans are by no means in the last ditch in Japan, and they will no
more surrender their power than would the Russian bureaucracy. The only
argument which is convincing in such a case is the last one which is
ever used; and the mere mention of it by so-called socialists is
sufficient to cause summary arrest in Japan. Sheltering themselves
behind the Throne, and nominally deriving their latter-day dictatorship
from the Imperial mandate, the military chiefs remain adamant, nothing
having yet occurred to incline them to surrender any of their
privileges. By a process of adaptation to present-day conditions, a
formula has now been discovered which it is hoped will serve many a long
year. By securing by extra-legal means the return of a "majority" in the
House of Representatives the fiction of national support of the
autocracy has been re-invigorated, and the doctrine laid down that what
is good for every other advanced people in the world is bad for the
Japanese, who must be content with what is granted them and never
question the superior intelligence of a privileged caste. In the opinion
of the writer, it is every whit as important for the peace of the world
that the people of Japan should govern themselves as it is for the
people of Germany to do so. The persistence of the type of military
government which we see to-day in Japan is harmful for all alike because
it is as antiqu