If the reader keeps these great facts carefully in mind a new light will dawn on him and the urgency of the Chinese question will be disclosed. The Japanese Demands of 1915, instead of being fantastic and far-fetched, as many have supposed, are shown to be very intelligently drawn-up, the entire Treaty position in China having been most exhaustively studied, and every loophole into the vast region left untouched by the ex-territorialized Powers marked down for invasion. For Western nations, in spite of exorbitant demands at certain periods in Chinese history, having mainly limited themselves to acquiring coastal and communication privileges, which were desired more for genuine purposes of trade than for encompassing the destruction of Chinese autonomy, are to-day in a disadvantageous position which the Japanese have shown they thoroughly understand by not only tightening their hold on Manchuria and Shantung, but by going straight to the root of the matter and declaring on every possible occasion that they alone are responsible for the peace and safety of the Far East--and this in spite of the fact that their plan of 1915 was exposed and partially frustrated. But the chief force behind the Japanese Foreign Office, it should be noted, is militarist; and it is a point of honour for the Military Party to return to the charge in China again and again until there is definite success or definite failure. Now in view of the facts which have been so voluminously set forth in preceding chapters, it is imperative for men to realize that the struggle in the Far East is like the Balkan Question a thing rooted in geography and peoples, and cannot be brushed aside or settled by compromises. The whole future of Chinese civilization is intimately bound up with the questions involved, and the problem instead of becoming easier to handle must become essentially more difficult from day to day. Japan's real objective being the termination of the implied trusteeship which Europe and America still exercise in the Far East, the course of the European war must intimately effect the ultimate outcome. If that end is satisfactory for democracies, China may reasonably claim to share in the resulting benefits; if on the other hand the Liberal Powers do not win an overwhelming victory which shall secure the sanctity of Treaties for all time, it will go hard for China. Outwardly, the immediate goal which Japan seeks to attain is merely to become the accredited spokesman of Eastern Asia, the official representative; and, using this attorneyship as a cloak for the advancement of objects which other Powers would pursue on different principles, so impregnably to entrench herself where she has no business to be that no one will dare to attempt to turn her out. For this reason we see revived in Manchuria on a modified scale the Eighteenth Century device, once so essential a feature of Dutch policy in the struggle against Louis XIV, namely the