for his country may be regarded the fact that her position in the East rose, through the North China campaign, considerably higher in the esteem of the powers than even after the Chinese war of 1894-1895. Otherwise the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902 probably would not have been so soon formed. Nor could Japan have since proceeded with her national activities with such a calm confidence. How far Japan had outrun in the march of national progress her neighboring empire of China, whose disciple she once was, was strikingly illustrated by the telegraphic messages that the emperors of the two nations exchanged both before and after the capture of Peking. Nor can a stronger refutation of the oft-repeated theory that one day Japan will revive the moribund China and form with her a pan-"yellow" alliance powerful enough to exclude the Caucasian influence from the Orient, be found than in the comparison of the Chinese epistles and the Japanese replies in which both emperors faithfully expressed the attitude of their respective nations. On July 3, or half a month after the fall of the Taku forts, his majesty the emperor of China telegraphed a personal message to the Japanese emperor in which he laid great stress upon the idea that in the present rivalry between the East and the West, the former was supported by only two nations, the Chinese and the Japanese. Could it be China alone that the Occidental powers covet with their tiger's eye? "If China should fall," said his majesty, "perhaps your country would be unable to stand alone." On the strength of this argument, the Son of Heaven made an earnest appeal to his fellow-sovereign to sink minor differences and rescue the Orient from the impending crisis. To this remarkable communication responded the emperor of Japan, saying that he considered it incumbent upon China immediately to suppress the internal disorder and save the foreign envoys, whose persons were inviolable, and that after the restoration of normal order by China's own efforts Japan would, during the negotiations of the powers, safeguard the interests of the great empire. The author of the original message may have thought Japan a renegade of the Orient, but the reply of the latter's sovereign implied her irrevocable policy of acting upon the dictates of the most advanced standards of mankind--a policy which is infinitely removed from the defensive position of one form of civilization or one section of the earth's surface as over against another. Nearly three months later, on September 24, the Chinese emperor again communicated from Ta-yuan to the Japanese sovereign his sense of gratitude for the work of the latter's soldiers, and solicited his persuasion of the other powers to expedite the conclusion of peace. In reply, Japan's ruler suggested that peace would follow if the court should at once return to Peking, calm the minds of the people, and manifest to the powers its sincere regrets for the recent outrages, and