But the shrewd Japanese are making more progress than is commonly supposed. Not only have they already obtained the great island of Formosa, but they have for years been quietly making their commercial interests paramount in Korea. Their first move in the war with Russia was to occupy that strategic peninsula with a large military force and to secure a treaty with the Emperor which gives Japan a virtual protectorate over the Land of the Morning Calm. The promise to respect the independence of Korea of course deceives no one. It is probably sincere, as diplomatic promises go; but he is innocent indeed who imagines that Korea will be free to do anything that Japan disapproves. The freedom will doubtless be of the kind that Cuba enjoys--a freedom which gives large liberty in matters of internal administration, which relieves the protecting country of any trouble or responsibility that it may deem inconvenient, but which does not permit any alliance with a third nation, and which, for all important international purposes, especially of a military character, regards the ``independent'' nation as really dependent. It is quite safe to predict that no European power will be unsophisticated enough to assume that Korea is ``a free and independent nation.'' The arrangement will be in every way to the advantage of the Koreans, who have suffered grievously from the pulling and hauling of contending powers and from many evils from which the abler and wiser Japanese will, in a measure at least, protect them. For a long time, too, the Japanese have been strengthening the ties which bind them to China. The brainy Japanese can be seen to-day in almost all the leading cities of the Middle Kingdom. There is a Japanese colony of 200 souls in Chefoo and of 1,400 in Tien-tsin. Already the Japanese are advising China's government, reorganizing her army, drafting her laws and teaching in her university. Even more distant countries are not beyond the range of their ambition. The leaders of India, restive under British rule, are beginning to look with eager sympathy to Japan as the rising Asiatic power. Even the Grand Vizier of Persia has paid a state visit to Japan. Any hopes of India and Persia are likely to be vain, for Britain has a hold upon the former and Russia upon the latter which it would be Quixotic in the Japanese to attempt to break. The Islanders are not fools. But the Siamese, helplessly exasperated by the encroachments of the French, would doubtless be glad enough to enter into an alliance with Japan and China. In 1902, the Crown Prince of Siam visited Japan, where he was most graciously welcomed, and increasing numbers of Japanese who know what they are about are obtaining increasing influence in the Land of the White Elephant.