Okuma’s opinion has always been that the adoption of English as the standard foreign language,—it is a compulsory subject in the national schools, while all other Western languages are merely optional,—had wide reaching effects on the mental bias of the people and in the direction given to national development. Coming down to very recent times, Count Okuma spoke of the fact that Japan was at the moment unfortunately entangled in war with a great power. In that conflict his country represented, he said, the aspirations of the civilised world, since she was striving in support of the great principle of the open door. She had had to draw her sword to sweep away a great obstacle in the path of the practical realisation of that principle. Her success in the struggle would therefore be the triumph of the common policy of the Commercial Powers. In one of Count Okuma’s best speeches, made not long since in connection with the rise of Japan, he claimed that the whole nation had acted from the beginning on the principle which was so clearly enunciated in the Imperial Rescript at the time of the Restoration in 1868 of “seeking knowledge throughout the world.” The Emperor’s words, in the fifth clause of the Rescript were:— “We shall endeavour to raise the prestige and honour of Our Country by seeking knowledge throughout the world.” The intention was to copy what was worth copying in every country and to enter into an honourable rivalry in culture and civilisation with all nations. It is the fundamental principle which accounts for Japan’s rise: she has never hesitated to adopt anything that she has found to be good; she has ever tried to swim with the current of human progress; she has never shrunk from any sacrifice in eradicating that which she has found to be bad. The voice of the people can make itself heard in the management of public affairs and it was the same Rescript, as Count Okuma always declares, which gave to the country the keynote of a liberal form of administration, when the Emperor bade his subjects “settle affairs by public opinion.” If the principle of swimming breast-high on the tide of human progress is to be adhered to in its entirety, the intellectual faculty, as Count Okuma urges, should be applied to all the concerns of daily life, and that cannot be done without education. For more than thirty years the Government of Japan has devoted much attention and energy to the question of education, and the best training that could be procured has been given with a generous hand to students of political, social, and military affairs, as well as for those preparing themselves for humbler but no less important walks of life in commerce, industry, and agriculture. The country, declared Count Okuma, has also stepped out into the wider area of the world of reality and has become a formidable competitor in the field of international trade and commerce, her policy during the last thirty years having greatly assisted her