This message was in due time faithfully transmitted to the Emperor of Korea, and was listened to with attention and apparently with the same friendly spirit with which it was sent. Its reception was followed by the “sincere (?) promise to heed its injunctions and with a protestation of respect and affection for Marquis Ito.” This is His Majesty’s habit when he is not excited for the moment by the passions of anger or fear. “In at one ear and out at the other”—such is the description which those who have had most experience with this monarch testify as to the real effect upon him of all such advice. If any honest intention is ever really formed to keep the promises, to be true to the protestations and pledges made on such occasions, it is habitually scattered to the winds by the next impure breath which blows upon him. A master of intrigue himself (an intrigue of the Korean type which combines as, perhaps, nowhere else in the world the unmixed elements of a tenuous subtlety and a fatuous silliness), the Emperor of Korea is also the victim and willing subject of intriguing eunuchs, concubines, sorceresses, Yang-bans, and unscrupulous and unsavory foreign adventurers. From his point of view, his missionary physician is his spy; and, from the same point of view, the guest of Marquis Ito was, as a matter of course, suspected of being a spy—in the one case in behalf of, in the other case against, his cherished interests. And these interests are not the welfare of his country, or even those more important and lasting interests that concern his own crown and the perpetuation of the royal house. They are sensuous and personal. Yet this complex character is truthfully described as amiable, kindly by preference, and ready to smile upon and give gifts to all. But this, too, is a problem which requires further consideration, as one of interest from the psychologist’s point of view not only, but also and chiefly, from the point of view which regards the social and political relations of Japan and Korea. At the time my message was delivered, and even before it was sent, the fatal mistake of sending a Commission to The Hague had been made. In the case of monarchs and of nations, as in the case of common folk—individuals and communities—there are promises sincerely made, but made too late, and penitence which follows but does not anticipate and prevent the last fatal consequences of years of folly and of crime.