Japan, in traditional Oriental style, has been on occasions alert to play one nation against another, with the view of gaining an advantage of slow prodigious China. When the treaty with America was to expire one year ahead of the termination of treaties with other nations, Japan extended the latter treaties one year, so that her treaties with all the powers might expire together. The obnoxious emigration clause in all these treaties would mainly be taken advantage of, however, in America’s case, and we should have, if the treaty was insisted on by a sudden opposition which gained power, the constant strife of the Japanese labor question in Hawaii, the Philippines and the Pacific coast states, which strife served the deep purpose that America, being technically in the wrong, might neglect to press Japan on greater matters where Japan was taking advantage of treaties, as in Manchuria and Korea. Some of the adroit Japanese statesmen, instead of being wounded at our attitude, really enjoy it in secret. Certain Jingo Japanese, however, would have liked, with this excuse, to have tried America’s naval strength on the Pacific in 1908, and attempted the capture of Manchuria, Fukien province, the Philippines and Hawaii, which test was probably avoided by the dramatic master stroke in sending America’s great fleet of battleships across the Pacific as an object lesson to the Nipponite chauvinist. Japan should for the future be reasonable enough to assent sincerely to an interpretative emendation of the “most favored nation clause”, so that it will really mean the “most favored Oriental nation”, as far as the emigration of laborers is concerned. This will put Japan on a par with China. America sends no laborers to Japan; Japan has discharged American professors in Japan and Korea the very moment the Oriental understudy reported that he was ready to assume charge; America has bought from Japan vastly more than she has sold to her; the timely loans of America to Japan, as Mr. Jacob H. Schiff has said in his notable speech of 1910, enabled Japan to continue the war with Russia until victory was won; American friendship for Japan enabled that nation to secure larger treaty stipulations from Russia at Portsmouth than any other host of the negotiators would have encouraged, and above all, the tactful American, Perry, opened up Japan to modernity in 1854. Japan’s vaunted Confucian and Shinto manners should teach her to protect the blood of her historic friend in his own house, and to respect the greater expense the American laborer nobly goes to in providing, under greater difficulties, for the living and education of his family. There should be no more emigration to the American mainland or Hawaii of Japanese labor than there is of Chinese. Let the Japanese laborers go to Formosa and Korea, where there are wide enough opportunities and where their own government, customs and language rule.