As time went on and Russian prestige increased in the peninsula it became evident that diplomacy would again fail to save the situation and Japan was again driven to arms. The result bids fair to be another Japanese success. So far as Korea is concerned the situation is much the same as it was at the close of the Japan-China war. Japan is in a position to do about as she pleases here. The question arises whether, during the years that have elapsed since her former failures to handle the Korean problem, she has gained the requisite ability to do so. At the beginning of the present war she concluded a special agreement with Korea by virtue of which the latter gave her the right of way through the peninsula for war purposes. Korea, on her side, received the solemn pledge of Japan to uphold her independence and to work for her welfare. To review the successive steps of the policy which Japan has pursued in Korea since the ratification of that agreement is not a particularly agreeable task. It must always be borne in mind that the Japanese are working under a terrible strain. Hundreds of thousands of their people are perishing on the battle field and millions of treasure are being poured out to secure to the Japanese nation a guarantee of continued existence. It is a life and death struggle and when a man is in the midst of such a struggle we do not expect from him the niceties of courtesy which we should expect from him at other times. There have been many criticisms of Japan’s course in Korea during the past year. She is charged with having done little or nothing to stem the tide of official corruption, that she has not bent her energies to the bettering of the condition of the common people, that nothing has been effected in the line of currency reform. Whatever may be the reasons for this it must appear to the unprejudiced observer that the charges are substantially true. We do not dare to say that Japan has no intention of effecting these needed reforms and it may be that there are cogent reasons why they could not be. Leaving out of view what the intentions of the Japanese may be and holding ourselves strictly to what has been actually accomplished we are bound to admit that up to the present time the results have been disappointing. But the fact that the needed reforms have not been instituted should not lead us to a wholesale condemnation of the Japanese regime. The problem is an extremely complicated one and those who expected that by a single wave of the hand a condition of official corruption that has been fostered and fed by centuries of precedent could be rectified were doomed to disappointment from the start.