d the mines. The
reader is assumed to be familiar with those facts. The German seizure
was outrageous. It was a flagrant case of Might making Right. As von
Buelow cynically but frankly told the Reichstag, while Germany did not
intend to partition China, she also did not intend to be the passenger
left behind in the station when the train started. Germany had the
excuse of prior European aggressions, and in turn her usurpation was
the precedent for further foreign rape. If judgments are made on a
comparative basis, Japan is entitled to all of the white-washing that
can be derived from the provocations of European imperialistic powers,
including those countries that in domestic policy are democratic. And
every fairminded person will recognize that, leaving China out of the
reckoning, Japan's proximity to China gives her aggressions the color
of self-defence in a way that cannot be urged in behalf of any
European power.

It is possible to look at European aggressions in, say, Africa as
incidents of a colonization movement. But no foreign policy in Asia
can shelter itself behind any colonization plea. For continental Asia
is, for practical purposes, India and China, representing two of the
oldest civilizations of the globe and presenting two of its densest
populations. If there is any such thing in truth as a philosophy of
history with its own inner and inevitable logic, one may well shudder
to think of what the closing acts of the drama of the intercourse of
the West and East are to be. In any case, and with whatever comfort
may be derived from the fact that the American continents have not
taken part in the aggression and hence may act as a mediator to avert
the final tragedy, residence in China forces upon one the realization
that Asia is, after all, a large figure in the future reckoning of
history. Asia is really here after all. It is not simply a symbol in
western algebraic balances of trade. And in the future, so to speak,
it is going to be even more here, with its awakened national
consciousness of about half the population of the whole globe.

Let the agreements of France and Great Britain made with Japan during
the war stand for the measure of western consciousness of the reality
of only a small part of Asia, a consciousness generated by the
patriotism of Japan backed by its powerful army and navy. The same
agreement measures western unconsciousness of the reality of that part
of Asia which lies within the confi