would soon be possible to have a uniform National Currency which would be everywhere accepted and lead to a phenomenal trade expansion.  It should be noted that China is still on a Copper Standard basis,—­ the people’s buying and selling being conducted in multiples of copper cent-pieces of which there has been an immense over-issue, the latest figures showing that there are no less than 22,000,000,000 1-cent, ten cash pieces in circulation or 62 coins per head of population—­roughly twenty-five millions sterling in value,—­or 160,000 tons of copper!  The number of silver dollars and subsidiary silver coins is not accurately known,—­nor is the value of the silver bullion; but it certainly cannot greatly exceed this sum.  In addition there is about 15,000,000 pounds of paper money.  A comprehensive scheme of reform, placed in the hands of the Bank of China, would require at least 15,000,000 pounds; but this sum would be sufficient to modernize the currency and establish a universal silver dollar standard.

The Bank of China requires at least 600 branches throughout the country to become a true fiscal agent.  It has today one-tenth of this number.]

For once Chinese realize that parliamentary government is not merely an experimental thing but the last chance the country is to be given to govern itself, they will rally to the call and prove that much of the trouble and turmoil of past years has been due to the misunderstanding of the internal problem by Western minds, which has incited the population to intrigue against one another and remain disunited.  And if we insist that there is urgent need for a settlement of these matters in the terms we have indicated, it is because we know very prcisely what Japanese thought on this subject really is.

What is that thought—­whither does it lead?

It may be broadly said that Japanese activities throughout the Far East are based on a thorough and adequate appreciation of the fact that apart from the winning of the hegemony of China, there is the far more difficult and knotty problem of overshadowing and ultimately dislodging the huge network of foreign interests—­ particularly British interests—­which seventy-five years of Treaty intercourse have entwined about the country.  These interests, growing out of the seed planted in the early Canton Factory days, had their origin in the termination by the act of the British Government of the trading monopoly enjoyed until the thirties of last century by the East India Company.  Left without proper definition until the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 had formally won the principle of trading-rights at five open ports, and thus established a first basis of agreement between England and China (to which all the trading powers hastened to subscribe), these interests expanded in a half-hearted way until 1860, when in order to terminate friction, the principle of extraterritoriality was boldly borrowed from the Turkish Capitulations, and made the rock on which