The pernicious influence of the yoshiwara and the demi-monde in Japan and the Japanese settlements and colonies throughout the Far East, is fully covered in the tenth chapter of Price Collier’s _The West in the East_. If the fire which destroyed the extensive, obtrusive yoshiwara quarter in the Susaki section of Tokio in 1911 had swept the whole institution away, womanhood throughout the world would not have the grievance against Japanese society which it now has. Neither China nor India ever sank this low in morals, despite all the talk about concubinage and slavery. The fault lies in the inherent weakness of religion in Japan. The Buddhism and Confucianism (Shintoism) which Japan imported, have degenerated and lost soul in the exotic state. If China needs Christianity, Japan needs it more. The Japanese women are delightfully vivacious; it is a pity so many should lose their self-respect. Possibly some of it substantiates the eternal teaching that no nation can persistently ignore poverty and not suffer in morals. The Japanese government is now doing something to remedy conditions and raise the moral tone. The fault lies largely with the people themselves; too great a love of money and too little a love of real religion, with the usual result that sacred womanhood is the first to be driven down at the wall. XIV PRESSURE OF RUSSIA AND FRANCE ON CHINA Many books have been written on the Russian advance to the Pacific, and they eventually induced Britain to hurl Japan on the aggressor. These volumes include Putnam Weale’s fervid volumes, works by Lord Beresford, Senator Beveridge, Norman, Chirol, Colquhoun, Alexandria Hosie, Younghusband, Krausse, Lord Curzon and others. That advance has been pushed back as far as the borders of Shingking, the southernmost of Manchuria’s three provinces, and out of the Korean Peninsula, but it is marking time in the other two Manchurian provinces of Kirin and Helung-Kiang, and in vast Mongolia, Jungaria and Turkestan. Some critics have said that in having Russia pushed back from the Pacific, the wave has backed up on Persia. The American one-time treasurer of Persia, Mr. Shuster, believes Britain has recently lost to Russia in the buffer states of the Indian border. Certainly a new party has risen in British diplomacy, whose writers are Maurice Baring, Hardinge and others, which is not at all Russophobic. Many believe that Russia intends to try again in Manchuria, and others believe that Japan will concede to Russia the two northern Manchurian provinces; or again, that Japan will occupy all Manchuria, and support Russia’s occupation of Mongolia and part of the Pechili province. As long as there is oligarchic rule in Russia, there will be danger of the Russian advance, as the aristocracy wishes to keep an army employed, so as to use it when necessary on an ambitious Duma, or a people who demand real representation in return for the tax privilege. Therefore Russia will