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N a previous issue of THE CENTURY
MAGAZINE I pointed out the paral-

lel that exists between the relations of Japan and the United States to-day and those of Great Britain and Germany twenty years ago. I stated my conviction that barely understood forces are drawing Japan and the United States remorselessly to the same destination. I desire now to show why those forces, powerful as they may be, are in our own control and are capable of arrest; why, further, in bare common sense and not in altruism or humanitarianism, they must be arrested. I want, in short, to subject to analysis what may be called the inevitability complex that is already working in both nations.

It is a ghastly subject. It is incredible that one should have to discuss it. With the blood scarcely dried on the battle-fields of Europe and the horror not yet out of the eyes of mankind, it is incredible that one has even to think of the next war. But we are both thinking and talking of it. Events constrain us, whether we will or no. Let there be no misunderstanding of the meaning of the events that have been going forward since signature was put not three years ago to the compact that ended the war that was to end war. Let there be no misunderstanding of the meaning of the succession of

claims and counter-claims, of intrigue matched with intrigue, for possession of bases and ports in the Pacific, dots in a broad ocean valueless other than for war. More important, let there be no misunderstanding of the meaning of the transfer of America's main naval strength to the Pacific. We ourselves may be oblivious of the meaning of that. The Japanese are not. To them it is a portent. Nor can they be blamed for so taking it, and for acting on it. Let there be no self-deception also as to the meaning of the international conference in Washington. It is corroboration of the seriousness of the situation in the Pacific, not refutation. Nor can it achieve solution of that situation. It can at best bring about amelioration. A situation that has been building for years, building out of elements inherent in the nature of international politics, cannot be undone in weeks. The law of cause and effect is not suspended by declaration. Lasting benefits may accrue from this conference. The evil of competitive armaments may be lessened, some of the more conspicuous misunderstandings in the Far East may be removed; but the basic relations of Japan and the United States cannot be determined now. The conference may give them direction; the working of time will give them ultimate form. For the imme

diate future they will remain serious, even if less serious than now.

What is this situation? What is this juncture of affairs that has brought America, long proud of its isolation and its freedom from foreign involvements, and only three years ago major prophet of a new international régime for peaceful accommodation of national disputes-what is it that has thrust America into, perhaps, its most dangerous foreign entanglement, five thousand miles away? Therein is an irony of history, an anomaly entirely inexplicable. For some historian there will some day be a fascinating piece of research in tracing back the accident of circumstance that has brought America into direct conflict with Japan over the Far East in general and China in particular; that has made it, as I have said before, protagonist of the West against Japan; that makes this conference not so much an international assembly as a diplomatic duel between Japan and America.

Japan as one of the participants in such a duel, yes; but why America as the other? It is a practical, material, realistic world, yet America's stake in the Far East, in China, has always been smaller than that of three or more other great Western powers. Even to-day, increased as it may be, it is yet vastly less than Great Britain's. If Japan menaces the Western powers in the Far East, if it jeopardizes Western interests in China, it menaces Great Britain far more than it does America. But explicable or not, ironical or not, America does stand as protagonist of the West and champion of China. It stands in direct conflict with Japan over the future of the eastern hemisphere. Between the aims of

the two countries as now formulated there is a clear-cut breach. Japan's foreign policy is based on the principle of dominance of the Asiatic continent and the establishment of its own position of intermediary in all relations between the West and the Far East. America's Far-Eastern policy is based on the principle of an equal standing for all powers in China. The two are irreconcilable. Eventually, one power or the other must change its policy or yield. That, in its briefest, is the Far-Eastern situation and perhaps the key problem of world politics in the next half-century.

On the premise there can be no difference of opinion: there is this fundamental conflict of policy. The purposes of Japanese imperialism are hostile to the development of legitimate American interests. As to the nature of Japanese imperialism also there need be no disagreement. I am not offering here the conventional defense of Japan; I am not pro-Japanese. In passing it may be noted as significant that one must already declare oneself "pro" or "anti." That is significant not so much of the pass to which our relations have already come, as of the peculiar reaction of Occidentals to Japan. There is something about Japan and its actions that makes nine men in ten definitely one or the other, "pro" or "anti." More conspicuously than in the contact of any other two races nerves come into play rather than reason. am not pro-Japanese. I live in China. I have seen the working of Japanese imperialism at first hand in Peking, in Shan-tung, in Korea. It is a hideous, sinister thing, cruelly brutal in its inflictions on the helpless peoples over whom it strides. It is militarism

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