The evacuation of the peninsula was a great respite to our national energy, howsoever it be regretted. First of all, Japan was not yet a match for China of the T'ang. Moreover, to keep up our prestige on the peninsula was too costly a matter for us, even if we had been able to sustain it, and by this evacuation we were saved from squandering the national resources which were not yet at their full. After all, for Japan at that time the urgent necessity lay not in geographical expansion abroad, and affairs on the peninsula were of far less importance when compared with driving the Ainu out of Hon-to. Against an enemy coming from the west, we could defend ourselves without much difficulty, the rough sea being a strong bulwark. It is quite another kind of matter to divide the Hon-to with the Ainu for long. Japan wanted a geographical expansion not without, but within. The development of political consolidation received also much benefit from our renunciation on the west. Our national progress, and therefore our political concentration, got a great stimulus in the intercourse with the peninsula. If we had, however, meddled with peninsular affairs too long, we would not have been able to turn our attention exclusively to inner affairs. The reform laws had just been published, and they required time to be thoroughly assimilated. Unless amended and supplemented according to practical needs, those laws would be mere black on white, or sources of social confusion. Absolutely and without question we were in need of peace, and that peace was obtained by the evacuation. By this peace the reform legislation could work at its best possible. If it had not enhanced the merit of the new legislation, at least it developed the benefit of the reform to the full, and prevented much evil which might have arisen if it had been otherwise.