the outer world is divided into two schools of thought, one believing implicitly in Japan’s bona fides, the other vulgarly covering her with abuse and declaring that she is the last of all nations in her conceptions of fair play and honourable treatment.  Both views are far-fetched.  It is as true of Japan as it is of every other Government in the world that her actions are dictated neither by altruism nor by perfidy, but are merely the result of the faulty working of a number of fallible brains and as regards the work of administration in Japan itself the position is equally extraordinary.  Here, at the extreme end of the world, so far from being in any way threatened, the principle of Divine Right, which is being denounced and dismembered in Europe as a crude survival from almost heathen days, stands untouched and still exhibits itself in all its pristine glory.  A highly aristocratic Court, possessing one of the most complicated and jealously protected hierarchies in the world, and presided over by a monarch claiming direct descent from the sacred Jimmu Tenno of twenty-five hundred years ago, decrees to-day precisely as before, the elaborate ritual governing every move, every decision and every agreement.  There is something so engaging in this political curiosity, something so far removed from the vast world-movement now rolling fiercely to its conclusion, that we may be pardoned for interpolating certain capital considerations which closely affect the future of China and therefore cannot fail to be of public interest.

The Japanese, who owe their whole theocratic conception to the Chinese, just as they owe all their letters and their learning to them, still nominally look upon their ruler as the link between Heaven and Earth, and the central fact dominating their cosmogony.  Although the vast number of well-educated men who to-day crowd the cities of Japan are fully conscious of the bizarre nature of this belief in an age which has turned its back on superstition, nothing has yet been done to modify it because—­and this is the important point—­the structure of Japanese society is such that without a violent upheaval which shall hurl the military clan system irremediably to the ground, it is absolutely impossible for human equality to be admitted and the man-god theory to be destroyed.  So long as these two features exist; that is so long as a privileged military caste supports and attempts to make all-powerful the man-god theory, so long will Japan be an international danger-spot because there will lack those democratic restraints which this war has shown are absolutely essential to secure a peaceful understanding among the nations.  It is for this reason that Japan will fail to attain the position the art-genius and industry of her people entitle her to and must limp behind the progress of the world unless a very radical revision of the constitution is achieved.  The disabilities which arise from an archaic survival are so great that they will affect