A glance at the map will show that the Power which holds Hawaii with a powerful Fleet can dominate the whole of the Northern Pacific, threatening every point east and west. The American position there is weakened by only one circumstance, the great Japanese population. This, though it may not be recruited with further drafts of males from its native source, will always be a very considerable, if not the most considerable, element of the Hawaiian population, for most of the coolies are married, and the Japanese abroad as well as at home fills the cradle industriously. I remember on the morning of April 1, 1909, coming into Honolulu city from the Moana Hotel on the sea-beach, I found the tram rushed by Japanese at all the stopping places. Two cruisers of their navy had entered the harbour--cruisers which were once upon a time the Russian _Variag_ and _Koreitz_. All Japan in Honolulu was making holiday. A fleet of sampans (the Japanese fishing-vessel) surrounded the ships, which commemorated so signally a great and successful war. The water front was lined with Japanese, the women and children mostly in their national costume. One Japanese father came on to the tram with seven boys, the eldest of whom did not seem more than ten years of age. Asked, he said that they were all his own children. There will never be a lack of a big Japanese population in Hawaii. The definite acquisition of Hawaii may be fairly dated from 1851. Before then there had been a significant proof of America's gaze turning westward by the appointment in 1844 of Mr Caleb Cushing as the United States Ambassador to the Court of China. A little later (1854) the American Power found the Japanese policy of exclusiveness intolerable, and United States warships broke a way into Japanese ports. It had also been decided by then that the task, originally undertaken by a French Company, of cutting a waterway across the Panama Isthmus should be the responsibility of the United States. British susceptibilities on the point were soothed by the Clayton-Bulwer treaty guaranteeing the neutrality of the canal, a treaty which was subsequently abrogated in response to the increasing deference which the growing power of the American Republic could exact. That abrogation created the present position which gives the United States sole control of that canal, and the right to fortify its entrances.