Japan has been the first nation in the world to attack the land taxation question, and Germany and Britain have followed recently, a long way off, however, and America will probably also follow the example. Until recently the large estates held by barons and corporations have been taxed on the old feudal medieval system of an infinitesimal valuation, while the small holder has been taxed on the full selling value. This has now been changed, and large owners in Japan can not hold at little cost to await unearned increment. They must work the land or sell it. Until this system is adopted the poor of the nations will be decapitalized by tariff, food, clothing, building material, head, war, permit, excise, export, subsidy, educational and other high taxes. Land values are about one-tenth what they are in America, and the land tax is about eight per cent. on selling value. As in China under the Manchus, land in Japan is nominally the property of the emperor. Perpetual leases can only be owned outright by Japanese subjects, or by a company which is incorporated only in Japan. A foreigner in Japan can not own land, but his Japanese incorporated company can, as the land would then be at Japan’s command, Japan having no extraterritoriality exemption law favoring the foreigner, as has China, in civil and criminal matters. As is well known, the police are an arm of the central government and not of the municipality, which savors of despotism and Russia’s example. There is therefore no really free press in Japan, for state trials may not be reported or commented on. The police exercise a censorship of news under their Marunouchi Club of Tokio. There could be no Roosevelts, Wilsons, Bryans and Lloyd Georges in Japan as in America and England! They have their money trust question in Japan, for while there are thousands of small gathering banks, they all deposit in the trust banks, which thus control the use of “other people’s money”, i. e., credit. These large banks, whose presidents confer in the meetings of the “Eel Society”, are the Bank of Japan, Yokohama Specie Bank, Hypothec Bank, Japan Credit Mobilier, Hokkaido Colonial Bank, Bank of Formosa, Bank of Korea, and Mitsui’s Bank. Japan must have its Gifford Pinchot somewhere. She has taken quick action against states’ rights when conservation was endangered. It was found that the provinces were selling water-power concessions to speculators and dummies of the monopolies. The central government in January, 1911, immediately suspended all provincial and colonial grants until a national survey could be made, and applicants looked into. It is proposed to harness several million horsepower of waterfalls on the Switzerland, and not the Niagara plan (so as not to mar the scenery), which, with cheap labor, will be a great asset of industrial Japan. [Illustration: CHINESE REPUBLIC]