Mr. von Schierbrand contributes to the solution of this question a very entertaining and instructive volume. From his standpoint, which is a most interesting one, the importance of the trade of the Far East to ourselves is not to be overestimated. The wonderful productive energy of the United States makes the need of new markets imperative. Four hundred millions of Chinese can furnish us such markets. Basing our figures on the precedent of Japan, China, if she would, could buy of the world $35,000,000,000 more. Her mineral wealth, still undeveloped, is greater than that of North America. The author’s masterly marshaling of the means and the methods necessary to increase our commercial opportunities is the feature of his book. The political school to which he belongs and to which an immense majority of Americans belong, if the recent election meant anything, studies, at the same moment, the tonnage of the battleships and the quality of the cotton blouse on the Chinese coolie’s back. It carries us around the immense circle of the Pacific and calls the roll of the powers and principalities of the future—Canada, America, Java, Sumatra, Celebes, Borneo, Australia, the Philippines, Japan, China, Siberia,—and asks which of the nations shall share with us these riches. England’s claim the writer dismisses with few words. England is conservative and decadent. Russia is more dangerous. She aims to absorb all Asia and close the door in the face of the world. The writer has an interesting discussion of the Russo-Japanese war in the course of which he prods the English again for not choking the Russians while they can. Germany he pronounces our most formidable rival. German industry, frugality, patience and skill have brought her up since 1870, when she was purely an agricultural state, to the front rank in manufactures and in foreign trade. It may be added, parenthetically, that she is making persistent efforts to free herself from the American cotton monopoly. Turning to the Japanese, the writer mentions a fact whose significance is little appreciated in America. Japan practically monopolizes now the trade in manufactured cotton with China, and, what is still more significant, she gets nearly all her raw cotton from India. What is the secret purpose of Japan? Nobody knows. Does she see herself supplanting the wornout Manchu dynasty and leading the millions of the East to the mastery of Asia by the strength of her military genius? Will she then shut the doors to the outside world, as, in the sixteenth century, she shut her own? The writer makes light of the so-called Yellow Peril, arguing that Japan does not wish to exploit the latent military strength of China, but aspires to lead her in the path of industrial progress after the Western models upon which Japan has fashioned herself.