PRESENT JAPAN
cause is readily discernible. China's attitude towards Korea, her fitful interference in the little kingdom's affairs, her exercise of suzerain rights while uniformly disclaiming suzerain responsibilities, created a situation intolerable to Japan, who had concluded a treaty with Korea on the avowed basis of the latter's independence. A consenting party to that treaty, China nevertheless ignored it in practice, partly because she despised the Japanese and resented their apostasy from Oriental traditions, but chiefly because her ineffable faith in her own superiority to outside nations absolved her from any obligation to respect their conventions. Japan's material and political interests in Korea outweigh those of all other States put together. In asserting her commercial rights she could not possibly avoid collision with a Power behaving as China behaved. But there was another force pushing the two States into the arena: they had to do battle for the supremacy of the Far East. China, of course, did not regard the issue in that light. It was part of her immemorial faith in her own transcendence that the possibility of being challenged should never occur to her. But Japan's case was different. Her position might be compared to that of a lad who had to win a standing for himself in a new school by beating the head boy of his form. China was the head boy of the East-Asian form. Her huge dimensions, her vast resources, her apparently inexhaustible "staying power," entitled
17
