THE BROWN AND YELLOW PERIL IV THE BROWN AND YELLOW PERIL A FEW FACTS This essay, which is a logical conclusion of the last, requires neither rhetoric nor adornment, were I able to decorate it with them. It is a statement of plain fact, and I make no apology for writing it as simply as possible. The paper is to be regarded in the light of an appendix to the article on the Oxford Historicides rather than a separate excursus in line with the others in the volume. The facts are accurate, and if I could turn them into an easily-understood diagram and post it up on every hoarding in the kingdom, I believe that I should be doing a public service. In 1885--the year when we failed to rescue Gordon--Mr. W. S. Gilbert produced his “Mikado.” Which nation or government were, in 1885, the more fitting themes for satire--the English or the Japanese? The scandals of the Crimean and Boer Wars; the uniform successes by sea and land of the Japanese in their struggles with China and Russia, supply us with no uncertain answer. The Itos, Togos, Oyamas and Kurokis, whom our librettist represented to us as Ko-Ko, and so on, have taught us--and even the disciples of Moltke--that the supreme artists of war are at Tokyo and Osaka, not in London, Washington, Berlin, Moscow or Vienna. The thirty millions of Japanese who, in the sixties of the last century, were at the mercy of the white powers, are to-day engaged--politely enough--in ushering out of China the trades of Europe and North America. During the last half century a yellow race, a non-Christian people, has caught up the white races and, so far as the _ultima ratio regum populorumque_ is concerned--in the bloody tournament of war--has even surpassed them. Like every one else, I have been alarmed at the sudden transformation scene. The Mikado who stage-managed the Chino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars, is very unlike that Mikado who danced for us on the boards of the Savoy Theatre. “_My object all sublime I shall achieve in time: To make the punishment fit the crime The punishment fit the crime._”... sang Mr. Gilbert’s Mikado. The punishments which Mutsuhito, the real Mikado, has fitted to the Czar’s crimes of seizing Port Arthur and Manchuria have been-- (1) The sinking or capture of every Russian man-of-war east of Suez. (2) The siege and capture of Port Arthur. (3) The defeats of The Yalu, Nan-shan, Telissu, Laio-Yang, The Sha-ho and Mukden. (4) The expulsion of the Russians from Manchuria and Korea. (5) The cession of half of the island of Sakhalin and indirectly (6) Civil War and bankruptcy in Russia. One little point of comparison between ourselves and the Japanese will make my meaning clear.