Japanese colonists were still pouring into the country by thousands[10] and the class who came, and came as conquerors, was such (as has been noted) as to entail inevitable hardships on the natives. There is an impression abroad that all Japanese are now civilized. This is a great mistake. While in the cities there are large schools and universities of Western learning, it must be remembered there are forty million of people, most of whom live in the country and are very poor, who have never been touched by the wave of civilization that has swept over Tokio, Yokohama, Osaka, Nagasaki and the great cities. They are little if any different from their grandfathers as Commodore Perry found them, and their customs of dress, their ideas as to the seclusion of women, their morals, their habits of thought, their animus is in every way diametrically opposite to that of the Koreans. Easier would it be to mix oil and water than these peoples. [10] There are now over 100,000 Japanese in Korea and they are coming at the rate of 50 to 100 a day (1908). Some Japanese schools were started by the protectors but the Koreans were hardly prepared to profit by these, as the teaching was in Japanese, a language they could not understand, and yet it has been said that the Koreans did not care for education and were not willing or fit to make use of the advantages offered them. But every little village has its schools, and among the Christians nearly every little group has its self-supporting parochial school, where the elements of Western learning are taught and the people are eagerly begging American missionaries for colleges and high schools which, as fast as provided, are thronged with students and could be easily thronged were the capacity doubled. The attitude of the people toward Christianity is stated in another chapter. Let it suffice to say that now is the accepted time to push forward with the standard of the Cross in Korea. A young woman graduate of one of our largest American women’s colleges wrote, “Of one thing I am certain, that Christianity is the force for good and for enlightenment in Korea, in spite of all that may be said concerning Japanese reforms, governmental, educational, social.” Another writes from Korea: “The whole country is ripe for the picking. The direful political conditions have turned the people toward the missionaries and their message is the only succor in sight. The leaders are openly declaring that in Christianity alone is to be found the political and social salvation of the nation. In their extremity the Koreans are ready to turn to the living God. It may not be so two years hence. _Conditions of which I dare not write are changing the character of Korea._[11] If the Christian Church has any conception of strategy and appreciation of opportunity, any sense of relative values, she will act at once--not next year, but _now_.”