Great progress must be made before Japanese business may be considered a "menace" to any nation enjoying Eastern trade, for the yearly value of Japan's manufactures is now only about $150,000,000, an average of about $3 per capita of the population. America has single cities that produce more. The combined capital of all organized industrial, mining, shipping, banking and agricultural undertakings in Japan is $475,000,000, or less than half the capital of the United States Steel Corporation. The Mikado's empire is bound to Great Britain by a political alliance of unusual force, but industrial Japan must of necessity be linked to the United States by commercial ties even stronger. Distance between Europe and Japan, and excessive Suez Canal tolls, give unassailable advantage to the United States as purveyor of unwrought materials to the budding New England of the Far East. The custom of speaking of our friends of the Island Empire as "the little Japanese," is a fault that should be promptly mended. Japan is small, it is true, but the people are numerous to the point of wonderment. Consequently, it can do no harm to memorize these facts: That Japan has an area actually 27,000 square miles greater than the British Isles, and 5,000,000 more inhabitants; in other words, the population of Japan is 47,000,000, while that of Great Britain and Ireland is but 42,000,000. That Japan's population exceeds that of France by 8,000,000, of Italy by 14,000,000, and of Austro-Hungary by nearly 2,000,000. That outside of Asia there are but three countries in all the world with greater populations than Japan--Russia, the United States, and Germany. There was reason for calling the Jap the "Yankee of the East," or the "Englishman of the Orient," for otherwise the phrases could not have been forced into popular use. It is the judgment of many who have studied the Japanese at close range that they are endowed with attributes of mind and body which make them equal, man for man, with the people of America and Great Britain. Asiatic though they are, it will be unwise to permit the brain to become clogged with the idea that they are "Asiatics" in the popular acceptance of the word. The Japan of the present is the antithesis of "Asiatic," and the Japan of the near future promises to be a country best measured by Western standards.