Japan's asset of importance is the awakened energy of her people--this was the soundest security back of the bond issues. It won the war over Russia, and persons familiar with the Japanese character believe it is now going to win commercially and industrially. Better proof of this is not wanted than the fact that Japanese bonds stood as firm as the rock of Gibraltar on the world's exchanges when it became known that Russia was to pay no indemnity. The information provoked street riots in Tokyo, but Japanese securities moved only fractionally in New York and London. Two countries have long been keenly observed by enlightened Japanese. They study America as a model industrial land, and get manufacturing ideas from us; but they look to Great Britain for everything having to do with empire, with aggrandizement, and with diplomacy. To them England is a glittering object lesson of a nation existing in overcrowded islands extending its rule to other lands and other continents, producing endless articles needed by mankind, and carrying these to the ends of the earth in their own ships. These Japanese have perceived that the interchange of commodities between most countries of the globe is preponderatingly in the hands of the British--in fact, that the enterprise of British merchant or British ship-owner has placed practically the universe under tribute. May not insular Japan become in time the Asiatic equivalent of Great Britain? Japan is advantageously located, and by common consent is now dominant in the Far East. Years ago England ceased to be an agricultural country, and the products of British workshops now buy food from other nations and allow for the keeping of a money balance at home. Nature has decreed that Japan can never be an agricultural land. Why, then, may she not do what England has done? England has her India, pregnant with the earth's bounty, and her Australia, yet awaiting completer development Kingdom become the handmaiden of Japan, without disturbing dynastic affairs, and primitive Korea be a fair equivalent of the Antipodean continent? It is known to be Japan's plan to permanently colonize Korea and Manchuria, teeming in agricultural and mineral riches, with her surplus population. "Prestige and opportunity make this attainable," insist the ambitious sons of Japan; "and while it is probably too late to expand the political boundaries of our empire, we surely may make Nippon the seat of a mighty commercial control, including in its sphere all of China proper, Manchuria and Korea--welding them into 'commercial colonies' of Japan." This is precisely what the modern Japanese wants his country to do, and this Japanization of the Far East is an alluring project, certainly. "But are not these 'open-door' countries, stipulated and guaranteed by the powers--meaning that your people can enjoy no special trade advantage in them?" the American asks the man of Japan.