The five groups into which the Japanese divided their demands possess a remarkable interest not because of their sequence, or the style of their phraseology, but because every word reveals a peculiar and very illuminating chemistry of the soul. To study the original Chinese text is to pass as it were into the secret recesses of the Japanese brain, and to find in that darkened chamber a whole world of things which advertise ambitions mixed with limitations, hesitations overwhelmed by audacities, greatnesses succumbing to littlenesses, and vanities having the appearance of velleities. Given an intimate knowledge of Far Eastern politics and Far Eastern languages, only a few minutes are required to re-write the demands in the sequence in which they were originally conceived as well as to trace the natural history of their genesis. Unfortunately a great deal is lost in their official translation, and the menace revealed in the Chinese original partly cloaked: for by transferring Eastern thoughts into Western moulds, things that are like nails in the hands of soft sensitive Oriental beings are made to appear to the steel-clad West as cold-blooded, evolutionary necessities which may be repellent but which are never cruel. The more the matter is studied the more convinced must the political student be that in this affair of the 18th January we have an international _coup_ destined to become classic in the new text-books of political science. All the way through the twenty-one articles it is easy to see the desire for action, the love of accomplished facts, struggling with the necessity to observe the conventions of a stereotyped diplomacy and often overwhelming those conventions. As the thoughts thicken and the plot develops, the effort to mask the real intention lying behind every word plainly breaks down, and a growing exultation rings louder and louder as if the coveted Chinese prize were already firmly grasped. One sees as it were the Japanese nation, released from bondage imposed by the Treaties which have been binding on all nations since 1860, swarming madly through the breached walls of ancient Cathay and disputing hotly the spoils of age-old domains.