Thus preparations for the coming war were conducted on a large scale during the year 1907, until the ever-increasing flow of Japanese immigrants finally led to those conflicts with which we are familiar. At the time we regarded it as a triumph of American diplomacy when Japan, in the face of California's threatening attitude, apparently gave in after a little diplomatic bickering and issued the well-known proclamation concerning emigration to Hawaii and the Pacific States, at the same time dissolving several emigration companies at home. As a matter of fact Japan had already completed her military preparations in our country in times of absolute peace, the sole difficulty experienced being in connection with the concentration of the remaining coolie importations. The Japanese invasion, which our politicians dismissed as possible only in the dim and distant future, was actually completed at the beginning of the year 1908. A Japanese army stood prepared and fully armed right in our midst, merely waiting until the military and financial conditions at home rendered the attack feasible. When we glance to-day through the newspapers of that period, we cannot help but smile at allowing ourselves to be persuaded that the Japanese danger had been removed by the diplomatic retreat in Tokio and the prohibition of emigration to North America. Our papers stated at the time that Japan had recognized that she had drawn the bow too tight and that she had yielded because Admiral Evans's fleet had demonstrated conclusively that we were prepared. That only goes to show how little we knew of the Mongolian character! We had become so accustomed to the large Japanese element in the population of our Western States, that we entirely neglected to control the harmless looking individuals. To be sure there wasn't a great deal to be seen on the surface, but it would have been interesting to examine some of the goods smuggled so regularly across the Mexican and Canadian borders. Why were we content to allow the smuggling to continue without interference, simply because we felt it couldn't be stamped out anyhow? The Japanese did not resort to the hackneyed piano-cases and farming machinery; they knew better than to employ such clumsy methods. The goods they sent over the line consisted of neat little boxes full of guns and other weapons which had been taken apart. And when a Japanese farmer ordered a hay-cart from Canada, it was no pure chance that the remarkably strong wheels of this cart exactly fitted a field-gun. The barrel was brought over by a neighbor, who ordered iron columns for his new house, inside of which the separate parts of the barrel were soldered. It was in this way that, in the course of several years, the entire equipment for the Japanese army came quietly and inconspicuously across our borders.