alliance, which expires in 1921, in its present form, particularly now that an Anglo-American agreement has been made possible. China knows that in spite of all coquetting with both the extreme radical and military parties which is going on daily in Peking and the provinces, the secret object of Japanese diplomacy is either the restoration of the Manchu dynasty, or the enthronement of some pliant usurper, a puppet-Emperor being what is needed to repeat in China the history of Korea. Japan would be willing to go to any lengths to secure the attainment of this reactionary object. Faithful to her "divine mission," she is ceaselessly stirring up trouble and hoping that time may still be left her to consolidate her position on the Asiatic mainland, one of her latest methods being to busy herself at distant points in the Pacific so that Western men for the sake of peace may be ultimately willing to abandon the shores of the Yellow Seas to her unchallenged mastery. The problem thus outlined becomes a great dramatic thing. The lines which trace the problem are immense, stretching from China to every shore bathed by the Pacific and then from there to the distant west. Whenever there is a dull calm, that calm must be treated solely as an intermission, an interval between the acts, a preparation for something more sensational than the last episode, but not as a permanent settlement which can only come by the methods we have indicated. For the Chinese question is no longer a local problem, but a great world-issue which statesmen must regulate by conferences in which universal principles will be vindicated if they wish permanently to eliminate what is almost the last remaining international powder-magazine. A China that is henceforth not only admitted to the family of nations on terms of equality but welcomed as a representative of Liberalism and a subscriber to all those sanctions on which the civilization of peace rests, will directly tend to adjust every other Asiatic problem and to prevent a recrudescence of those evil phenomena which are the enemies of progress and happiness. Is it too much to dream of such a consummation? We think not. It is to America and to England that China looks to rehabilitate herself and to make her Republic a reality. If they lend her their help, if they are consistent, there is still no reason why this democracy on the shores of the Yellow Sea should not be reinstated in the proud position it occupied twenty centuries ago, when it furnished the very silks which clothed the daughters of the Caesars. APPENDIX DOCUMENTS IN GROUP I (1) The so-called Nineteen Articles, being the grant made by the Throne after the outbreak of the Wuchang Rebellion in 1911 in a vain attempt to satisfy the nation. (2) The Abdication Edicts issued on the 12th February, 1912, endorsing the establishment of the Republic.