The rôle of the prophet in his predictive function, and with reference to the destiny of nations, is always a delicate and dangerous part to play. The danger is particularly great when the complex and largely unfamiliar ideas and emotions of Oriental peoples constitute the controlling factors in the situation; it is made still greater at the present time, as regards the future of the Far East, by the increasing admixture of foreign and Western influences. Above all, however, is the situation complicated by the unsettled and totally uncertain condition of China. Here are countless millions of an industrious, patient, and thrifty, but almost incredibly ignorant and superstitious, population; corrupt and intriguing official classes and an essentially foreign Court; indefinitely great resources of soil and mines, and an almost limitless capacity for foreign trade, which makes it the coveted territory for exploiting schemes by both European and Asiatic nations. Into this hitherto relatively inert mass the ferment of new conceptions of civilization and of life, of the things which are worth the having and which may be had, if men will struggle and fight for them, is now being everywhere introduced. The restlessness of feeling, with its stimulus to violence, which has formerly resulted for the most part in local uprisings against excessive squeezing from their own officials, or against too obvious interference with their ancient institutions and present material interests by foreigners, is now taking the form of a purpose which may quickly change, and by bloody revolution if necessary, the character of the Chinese Government and even the nature of Chinese characteristic civilization. What will be the effect of all this upon the entire Far East, is a question which would require of any student of history a bold, an audacious front to answer in a confident tone.[111]

In this uncertainty as to the future of the Far East, Korea shares, as a matter of course, to a large extent. For, even now that certain important factors in the problem of the Japanese Protectorate over Korea seem to be relatively stable, the problem as a whole remains exceedingly difficult and complex. How will Japan succeed in solving this problem? Will it be by the way of developing the material resources of the land, on the whole peacefully, and chiefly for the benefit of the Koreans themselves; of reforming the economic, administrative, and judicial condition of the common people; and of making a foreign rule to be esteemed a blessing rather than an odious imposition? Or, will it be by the way of reducing Korea to a condition of virtual vassalage, and of making its people a dissatisfied nation, ever ready for revolt and only kept down from successful revolt by the strong arm of a foreign police and a foreign military force? Will Japan really succeed in solving this problem at all? All suggestions in answer to these and similar questions are of value only as they are rendered more or less probable in view of such facts as those to which attention has been directed in the preceding chapters of this book.

The future of Korea and of the Japanese Protectorate over Korea will inevitably depend upon the action and reaction of three classes of factors. These are the attitude and behavior of other foreign nations; the native capacity for self-government and the actual conduct of the Koreans themselves; and the policy of Japan, not as a theory or an experiment merely, but as embodied in industries, laws, institutions and other forms of practical effect.

In all past time, but especially during the last half-century, the relations of Japan and Korea have been chiefly determined by the attitude and behavior of other foreign nations, both toward and within the Korean peninsula. It was the desire of Japan to get at China through Korea, and the determination of the Chinese Government to resist and thwart this desire, and to retain for itself the supremacy in the control of Korean affairs, which brought about the invasion of Hideyoshi, with its persistent train of consequences lasting well down into modern times. Until the end of the Chino-Japan war, and especially in the events of 1882 and 1884, as well as in those events which immediately preceded the war, it was what China did or proposed to do, which formed the principal influence to determine the relations of Japan and Korea. After this war had definitively and finally delivered the peninsula from all Chinese claims to suzerainty, or even to predominating influence, it was chiefly the attitude and actions of Russia which decided the more active relations of Japanese to the Korean Government. France and Germany at the close of the war with China, and France during the period just preceding the war with Russia, exercised considerable influence—of a less obvious and direct character, however—upon the relations of these two governments. During the last three or four years which cover the period that began toward the close of the Russo-Japanese campaigns, Great Britain and the United States have powerfully, but for the most part indirectly, affected the newer relations that have been in the process of forming between Japan and Korea. The Government of Great Britain has been the fair ally and sensible counsellor of the Japanese Government; the United States, while maintaining an official attitude distinctly favorable to giving the Residency-General a “free hand” for his plans to accomplish reforms in Korea, has been, by complicity of some of its private citizens with a false and corrupt Emperor, a no inconsiderable source of embarrassment. The same thing would have to be said of some of the British residents in Korea.

Recent Treaties and Conventions with Great Britain, France, and Russia, have now, however, made it as certain as anything in the political future of human affairs can well be, that none of these powerful nations will for some years to come interfere in the policy or administration of the Japanese Protectorate in Korea. So far as their action is concerned, Japan has only to maintain her pledges of “equal opportunity,” the “open door,” and “hands-off” from China for purposes of plundering its territory, and she may now try without foreign interference her plans for the improvement of her relations with this hitherto most troublesome neighbor. Indeed, the way in which the Convention of July, 1907, with its increase of legal rights to control the internal administration and reshape the entire code and economic and social system of the Korean peninsula, has been received by the Powers generally, shows that no formidable objection from without would be raised if Japan should substitute out-and-out annexation for the now-existing Protectorate. The four great nations whose territorial possessions give them a supreme interest in the Far East, have already formally accepted the existing situation; there is less and less likelihood of meddling, as authorized by other European or American nations, on the part of their diplomatic representatives.

Furthermore, in Korea itself, those squabbles with foreigners which have arisen out of conflicting promoting schemes and claims to concessions, since order is being rapidly brought out of the confusion they have occasioned, are likely to cut less of a figure in the future. The anti-Japanese missionaries and other foreign residents in Seoul are being either won over, or their complaints silenced, by the policy of the Residency-General. If the criticisms of the dealings of Japan with Korea were much more just and severe, they would not be likely to involve international complications of any serious magnitude. Only China remains—huge, mysterious, incalculable both for good and for evil, a vast overhanging cloud, with here and there a flash of lightning or streak of sunlight shining through. But for some time to come it is altogether unlikely that the Celestial Empire will be able, however willing, to re-establish any claims to a dominating influence, much less to a restored suzerainty, in the Korean peninsula. This first class of factors, which have been so influential and even determinative in the past, may therefore not improperly be eliminated in making up one’s calculations as to the probable future. In other words, the issue will now be determined by the behavior toward each other of the two peoples immediately concerned. Japanese and Koreans will now be allowed to work out the problem of the relations—for the weal or for the woe of both peoples—to exist and prove effective between Japan and Korea.

What shall be said, however, as to the part which the Korean Government and the Korean people themselves are likely to contribute toward solving the difficult and intricate problem of the future relations of the two nations? The basis for a plausible answer to this question must be found in an estimate of the material resources of Korea and in a calculation as to the share which the Koreans are destined to have in the improved conditions brought about by the development of these resources. It has already been shown that the soil of the peninsula, under improved methods of cultivation, can easily be made to support double the existing population. Reforestation and proper treatment of the forests remaining can easily supply this increased population with fuel and with timber. The introduction of new crops, and the increase of the products of cotton and silk, the fostering of such forms of manufacture as are fitted to the country, and the development of the mines, can just as easily be made to place this two-folded population in circumstances of greatly increased comfort and prosperity. And with it all will go, of course, the building up of foreign trade and the securing of all the benefits that follow in its train. But who will actually possess the fruits of this development; will it be the Koreans themselves, or the Japanese immigrants?

So far as the answer to this question depends upon the enactment and the enforcement of a just legal code—the right to an equal chance, and security of this right if only the man is able to seize and improve it—the Japanese Residency-General is solemnly pledged and actually committed. But laws, courts, educational institutions, and banking facilities cannot do everything. After all these, and in the midst of all these, there is the man—his physical and mental characteristics, his moral and spiritual impulses. Overwhelming Japanese immigration is perhaps, then, greatly to be dreaded by the Koreans, even when the former can no longer take from the latter by fraud or by violence. The dread, however, that the Koreans will be supplanted by the Japanese would seem by no means to be wholly warranted in view of existing facts. The actual native population of the Korean peninsula is difficult to ascertain; but the latest census, taken in the spring of 1907, shows that it was probably greatly overestimated by the previous statistics. This census gave the numbers as 9,638,578 people inhabiting 2,322,457 houses. A census of the Japanese population in Korea, January 31, 1907, returned the figures of 81,657 in all, of which 31,754 were females. As compared with the returns for March 31, 1906, this census showed an increase of about 20,000 in the non-official Japanese population (a calculation not differing greatly from that based upon the returns of the steamship agency at Fusan, see p. 143 f.). Making allowance for those immigrants who failed to register, we may calculate that not far from 100,000 Japanese, exclusive of the army and the civil officials, were resident in Korea during the summer of 1907. The great majority of these immigrants were traders, artisans, and common laborers; but an increasing number of Japanese farmers were settling, especially in the fertile valleys of Kyung-sang-do and Cholla-do. Of these traders, artisans, and common laborers, many are engaged in building Japanese houses and in construction work on the Japanese railways; by no means all such immigrants are likely to become permanent residents in Korea. With the farmers the case is not the same.

Is the annual rate of Japanese immigration into Korea likely to increase greatly in the future? No one can tell positively; but the negative answer seems much the more likely. The day of temptation to the mere adventurer is largely gone by; the Koreans themselves are likely to become acquainted with the way of doing things as the Japanese demand requires they should be done, and then many of these foreign traders, artisans, and laborers will have their places taken by Koreans. Formosa, Manchuria, and Hokkaido are rivals of Korea for the Japanese agriculturists and other kinds of permanent settlers; South America and other countries offer greater inducements to the emigration companies. Moreover, at about the same time that the results of these censuses were published, a local paper in Seoul published the birth and death statistics of the Japanese colony there. These statistics showed that during the previous year there had been an excess of deaths over births among the Japanese in Seoul. Of births there were 312—187 male and 125 female, while the deaths amounted to a total of 464—308 male and 156 female. And yet there are few old people, and almost none who came as invalids, in this foreign population.

Let it be supposed, however, that the annual net increase of Japanese population in Korea amounts to 20,000 for the next fifty years. There will then be only somewhat more than one million of this now foreign population. But meantime the Korean peninsula will have become quite capable of supporting double its present native population. Besides this, there are those—to the opinion of whom the present writer is strongly inclined—who feel confident that fifty years from now the distinction between Korean and Japanese, among the common people, will be very nearly, if not quite completely, wiped out. And, indeed, the two nations are of essentially the same derivation, so far as their dominant strains of ancestral blood are concerned; and great as are the present differences between the Japanese in Japan and the Koreans in Korea, there is no real reason why both Japanese and Koreans should not become essentially one people in Korea.

There is then, it would seem, no essential and permanent reason of a material sort why Korea should not remain Korean in its principal features, if the next half-century shows the expected results in its material development. We have seen that the present Residency-General is committed to the policy of developing the land in the behalf of its own inhabitants, while according all just and natural rights, and all reasonable encouragement, to foreign immigration and to foreign capital. Again, however, the same decisive but as yet unanswered questions return: Can the Court be purified? Can an honest and efficient Korean official class be secured, trained, and supported by the nation? Can that middle class—which is in all modern nations the source of the controlling economic and moral factors—be constituted out of the body of the Korean people? And, finally, can the great multitude, the Korean populace, be made more intelligent, law-abiding, and morally sound?

As to the purification of the Court at Seoul under the ex-Emperor, and so far as his influence could be extended—such a thing was found impossible by the Resident-General. Warnings, advice, experience of evil results—all were of no avail. This weak and corrupt nature would not free itself from its environment of sorceresses, eunuchs, soothsayers, and selfish or desperate, corrupt, and low-lived native and foreign advisers; and without the conversion of the Emperor, under the former conditions, the Court could not be made more intelligent, honest and patriotic. So long and so far as the ex-Emperor can exercise his parental influence upon the present Emperor in national affairs, the part which the Court plays in the redemption of the nation will be comparatively small. But this influence is now broken; and the measures which are being taken wholly to nullify it can scarcely fail to succeed. If it becomes necessary, His ex-Majesty can be given a residence remote from Seoul. The Convention of July, 1907, gives to the Japanese Resident-General a hitherto impossible control over the entourage of the Emperor. It is therefore altogether unlikely that any future ruler of Korea, even if he should wish to follow this bad example, this most disastrous precedent, will be able to rival for mischief his predecessors, by way of encouraging fraud, violence, and sedition at home, and foreign misunderstandings and interferences through the help of unwise or unscrupulous “foreign friends.” Moreover, the present Emperor, so far as can be judged by the brief experience under his rule, is either not disposed, or not able, to continue the evil practices of his Imperial ancestor. The proposals for reform brought before His Korean Majesty seem now to meet with neither open nor secret opposition. Best of all, the palace horde of evil men and women is being reduced from within, and excluded from without; and this, in the absence of complaints and petitions for pity, sent over the civilized world, from the royal “prisoner” under a blood-thirsty Japanese guard! Thus there is solid ground on which to build hopes of a far less corrupt, a much more intelligent and honest, Korean Court.

That honorable and brave leaders—generals, civil rulers, magistrates, and judges—can come out of Korean ancestry, there is the evidence of history to show. True, the number of such leaders, through all the past centuries of Korea’s sad and disgraceful career, has been relatively small. But, as has been repeatedly pointed out, this fact has been largely due to the corrupt official system, and the ever-present corrupting influence, which has come from across the Yellow Sea—that is, from China. The Cabinet officials who had to meet the severely trying emergency which ended with the abdication of the Emperor, a new Convention with Japan, and the pacification of a people much given over to local disorders and to the spreading of the spirit of riot and sedition, on the whole acquitted themselves well. It is, indeed, difficult to see how they could have done better for the country under the existing circumstances. That timber can be grown in Korea, out of which may be hewn in the future enough material for a sound and fair official edifice, there is, we think, no good reason to doubt. Under the recent Convention the responsibility for framing laws, policing the country, securing order, appointing a just and intelligent magistracy, as well as developing schools and industries and arts, rests primarily upon the Japanese Government. If moderation and wisdom can be secured here, a sufficient force of native official helpers and partners in all the benevolent projects of the Marquis Ito can probably in due time also be secured. In order, however, that Japanese and Korean officials should co-operate heartily, and should live and work together in peace, it is necessary that the underlying principle of their co-operation should be not selfish, but controlled by devotion to duty and by an intelligent and sincere desire to secure the welfare of both nations. Only such high motives can unite men of different nationalities, or even of the same nation, in works of economic reform and moral improvement. This is only to say that in Korea, as everywhere else in the ancient and the modern world alike, the real and lasting success of the government must depend upon its intelligence and its righteousness. It is to be hoped that the capacity for both these essential classes of qualifications for self-government is in the Korean blood, if only it can have tuition, example, and freedom for development.

With the improvement of the economic and industrial conditions in Korea, and especially with the enlarged opportunities for foreign commerce, a fairly intelligent and well-to-do middle class population is likely to result from the Japanese Protectorate. This class is in a process of evolution in Japan itself. It is essentially the product, “natural”—so to say—where public schools exist and thrive, and where the conditions are favorable to manufacture, trade, and agriculture on any large scale. But especially is such a class one of the most sure and valuable results of a more highly moral and spiritual religion. Christianity distinctly favors, when it becomes practically operative, the formation of a middle class. In Korea hitherto there have been only, as a rule, corrupt and oppressive rulers and officials, and ignorant, oppressed, and degraded multitudes. The foundation of schools of the modern type, especially for technical and manual training, and the spread of Christianity, will, almost inevitably, combine to raise a body of thrifty, fairly intelligent, and upright, self-respecting citizens. This will go far toward solving the problem of the reform and redemption of Korea.

As to the destiny of considerable numbers of the lower orders of the people, that is perhaps unavoidably true which has been said of the Korean farmers: “A large percentage of them are past all hope of salvation.” The professional robbers and beggars, the riotous “pedlers,” the seditious among the disbanded troops or the “tiger hunters,” the wild and savage inhabitants of the mountainous regions, the people who live by thieving, counterfeiting, soothsaying, divining, and other illicit ways, will have to submit, reform, or be exterminated. Doubtless, many of them will prefer to be exterminated. But our examination of the previous chapters encourages and confirms the hope that something much better than this is possible for the great multitude of the peasants among the Korean people. Marquis Ito has set his heart on helping this class toward a much improved condition. The promise of this he has distinctly affirmed in both private and public addresses, and has indeed done all that he possibly could to confirm. It is this also upon which every true-hearted missionary is most intently bent. For it was to these same multitudes—sheep without a shepherd—that Jesus came; on their uplift and salvation he set his heart. It would be contrary to the experience of the centuries to suppose that an enlightened form of education and a spiritual religion could combine in the effort to raise the multitudes of any nation, without resulting in a large measure of success.

It would seem, then, that the responsibility for a successful and relatively permanent solution of the difficult problem offered by the geographical, historical and other important relations of Japan and Korea, under the now existing Convention between the two governments, rests most heavily upon the Japanese themselves. They have at last “a free hand”; the material with which they have to deal in order to construct a new and improved national structure is, indeed, in bad and largely unsound condition; but it is not hopeless, and it is not radically deficient in the qualities necessary for a sound and durable structure. Korea is, inherently considered, capable of reform; but at present it is not capable of self-government, much less of self-instituted and wholly self-controlled reform. Japan has taken upon herself the task of furnishing example, stimulus, guidance, and effective forces, to set this desirable ideal into reality. No other nation has this task; no other nation is going seriously to interfere with Japan in its task. On the Japanese Government and the Japanese people rests the heavy responsibility of securing a new and greatly improved national life for the millions of the Korean peninsula; if they succeed, to them will chiefly be the praise and the profit; if they fail, to them will chiefly be the shame and the loss. At present, and in the near future, it is the last of these three sets of determining factors—namely, the policy and practice of Japan herself with reference to Korea—which will have the final word to say in the solution of this difficult problem. The judgment of the civilized world is already pronounced upon this matter. Korea has already been judged impotent and unworthy to be trusted with the management either of her own internal affairs or of her relations to other nations in the Far East and in the world at large. Japan has been judged to be most favorably situated and, for the protection of her own interests, best entitled to undertake and to carry through the reform and reconstitution of Korea. Japan also will in the future be judged, by the judgment of the civilized world and by the verdict of history, according to the way in which she fulfils her duties, and accomplishes her task, in Korea.

Will Japan prove equal to the management and the development of the internal resources, civil government, and foreign relations, of her weaker neighbor in such a way as to command the title to a righteous and genuine success? No one can answer this question with a perfect confidence. In many important respects the present is an exceedingly critical time for the Japanese Government and the Japanese nation in respect of the condition of its own internal affairs. The same thing is true of Japan’s relations to foreign nations. The army and navy deserved and won praise from all the civilized world for its bravery, skill, and moderation in the last war. And after the war terminated in a treaty of peace which, while it was at the time wisely made on the part of the real leaders of the nation, was exceedingly disappointing to the military and naval forces and to the people at large, the whole of Japan, with the exception of few and brief demonstrations of resentment, obeyed the wise counsels and injunctions of His Imperial Majesty, its Emperor. In obedience to these injunctions the nation turned quietly and diligently to the pursuits of peace. But in these pursuits Japan is by no means so far advanced, when judged by modern standards, as she was in the preparation for, and conduct of, war both by land and by sea. In manufactures and every form of industry, in trade and commerce, in the devising and management of the means of communication, in education, science, and literature—everywhere in these lines of peaceful national activity there is a great deficiency of trained and trustworthy helpers, even for the supply of her own immediate needs. In all these matters of national interest and import, the cry of her leaders is for the right sort of men. How, then, shall Japan at the present juncture supply in sufficient numbers the workmen to meet the needs of the hour in the reform and uplift of Korea?

Moreover, as the nation of Japan advances in these many lines, it is inevitable that it should meet the same difficulties, embarrassments, and dangers which in yet severer form are testing the leading nations of Europe and America. Trusts and labor unions—both likely to become the enemies of the Empire as they have so largely in the United States become the enemies of the Republic—are already growing apace. Even more, perhaps, than anywhere else outside of Russia and parts of Germany, insane theories of ethics, philosophy, and religion, are captivating the minds, and controlling the conduct, of not a few of her students and other young men. As in the United States, especially, but also in all the countries of Europe, the old-fashioned parental control and discipline of the home-life is being greatly relaxed. The over-estimate of so-called science and the conceit of modernity are working mischief in the character of not a few. And the life of the millions of the people is not yet lifted to the higher grades of morality and religion.

With regard to the right national policy toward Korea there has also been, as we have seen, a long-standing difference of opinion. This difference still exists, although it was for the time submerged by the tide of enthusiastic approval which welcomed the policy of Marquis Ito when, under the grant of liberty of action from His Imperial Majesty, with the consent of the Elder Statesmen, and the co-operation of Minister Hayashi, the Convention of July, 1907, was successfully concluded. Many of the military leaders, however, continue to favor a more punitive and war-like attitude toward any resistance on the part of the Koreans. The mailed fist, with its threats, rather than the open palm, with its promise of friendly assistance, seems to them better fitted to the situation. And it can never be expected that there will be a cessation of the desires and efforts of that crowd of Japanese adventurers, promoters, and unscrupulous traders, who are as ready to make game of the resources of Korea as are the smaller number of no less selfish foreigners residing in the peninsula but claiming the protection for their schemes of other nationalities. Of the two, the latter are in not a few cases much the more difficult to deal with in a manner satisfactory both to the honor of the Japanese Protectorate and also to the interests of the Korean people. All these schemers, as a matter of course, have scanty faith in the slow and patient methods of education, economic and judicial reform, which are deliberately chosen and persistently followed by the present Residency-General.

Such tendencies as those just mentioned undoubtedly make it more difficult to predict with confidence the success of Japan in the task of building up a strong and healthy national existence out of the so largely dead and decayed material furnished to its hand. But there are other tendencies, and other forms of influence, now existing and growing in vigor among the Japanese of to-day, which strongly encourage the hopeful view. The nation emerged from the war with Russia in much more sober and thoughtful frame of mind than that which followed upon the close of the Chino-Japan war. The enormous losses of life, and the heavy debt left upon them by the expenditure of treasure, tended to keep down the self-conceit and headiness which might have followed an easier victory. And in spite of the immediate disadvantages growing out of the fact that the terms of the Treaty of Portsmouth fell so far below their expectations, and below what seemed to them at the time their just deserts, it was probably best in the preparation for their future enterprises and struggles to have the war end as it did. Of the sincere desire of Japan for peace with the whole world, no one who knows the nation can have the slightest honest doubt.

There has also been a great awakening of interest in moral problems since the Russo-Japanese war. This interest is not confined to any one class. In all the Government schools, of every description, especial attention is being given to ethics. This is the one study which is kept most constantly before the minds of the pupils, from the earliest stages of their training to the end of the graduate courses in the university. Aware of the unworthy reputation of its business men, in respect of business morality, the commercial schools, higher and lower, government and private, are placing emphasis upon the side of moral instruction and discipline in preparation for business life. The men, now past middle life, who were trained to the respect for honor and the feelings of devotion which characterized the Samurai (or Puritan knights) of the old régime, and who have been the inspirers and guides of all that has been best in the “New Japan,” are still, though they are growing old and fewer in number, controlling the destinies of the nation. They have the confidence of His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of Japan, who steadily throws the great weight of his influence upon the side which favors combining these ancient virtues with a modern education. Among the men in middle life there still lingers, indeed, much of those influences and practices which have cost the New Japan so dearly, in loss of reputation and of failure to make good use of some of her choicest opportunities. But the new and better spirit is most conspicuous with the younger educated men; the boys and girls in the public schools are receiving a form of education and discipline which, considering Japan’s poverty and newness of resources, surpasses that of any other country in the civilized world. Moreover, the ear of the nation is open to religion as never before in its history. This increased feeling of need, and this higher estimate of the value of an improved morality and a more spiritual religion, together with the arousing and directing of the nation’s energies into the development of its material resources and its foreign trade, are the distinctive features of the national life of the Japanese at the present time.

There is another thing about the temperament of the Japanese which is often of most powerful influence, and yet most difficult for foreigners to appreciate. This is the force of sentimental considerations, which frequently triumph over those considerations that are regarded by other peoples as of more importance in practical affairs. Already, the sentiments of generosity, of pity, and of a sort of condescending kindness, have triumphed in the management of Korean affairs by the Japanese. The history of the relations of the two countries has amply illustrated this fact. These sentiments, which are certainly dominant to a large extent with the Residency-General, when reënforced by the growing respect for morality and religion, will—it seems fair to suppose—be even more powerful in the future.

Still further, Japan has successfully overcome many enormous difficulties, and has bravely and well met many most threatening emergencies, during the last fifty years. Over and over again during this period, her case has seemed almost desperate. But each time the nation has rallied and has climbed upward to a higher and better level in its national life. True, this has been due, to a large extent, to the wisdom and skill of the men who have thus far led the nation. And they are passing off the stage. That the younger spirits who are coming on will serve their day with equal courage, wisdom, and success, is our hope and our belief. Then there will be assured the third and most important class of the factors which, in their combination with the other two, will secure the new, redeemed Korea in friendly relations, in amity and unity, with Japan, her benefactor as well as her protector.

There is no essential reason why Japanese and Koreans should not become one nation in Korea. Whether this nation will be called Korea or Japan, time alone can tell. That it will be a happier, more prosperous, more moral and truly religious people than the present Korean people, there is sufficient reason to predict. Indeed, considering the brief time which has elapsed since the Convention of November 17, 1905, the improvement already accomplished under the control of the Japanese Residency-General, if not all that could be wished, has been all that could reasonably have been expected. The two peoples have learned to live peacefully and happily together, in certain places, both of Japan and of Korea, in past times. The conditions favoring their union, and indeed amalgamation, in Korea itself are to-day incomparably better than they ever were, in any large way, before. If Marquis Ito, and his sympathetic, effective supporters, at home and in the Residency-General, can be sustained for five years, and can be succeeded for a generation by those of like purpose and character, then the problem of the relations of Japan and Korea will have been solved. The present opportunity has cost both countries centuries of trouble, strife, and loss. That all the difficulties should be at once removed, and all the reforms at once efficiently be carried out, it is not reasonable to expect. But now that Japan has won this cherished opportunity, the civilized world requires, and the civilized world may expect, that the opportunity will be on the whole well improved. Such will undoubtedly be the issue if His Imperial Majesty of Japan, the Marquis Ito, and others of like mind, have their way.

The Korean problem has become a part of the larger problem—namely, the realization by Japan of a worthy national ideal. We close, then, this narrative of personal experiences, and its following presentation and discussion of diplomatic proceedings and historical facts, with a quotation that expresses our hopes and our beliefs, and that is taken from a bronze tablet which is to stand in the campus of the Government School of Commerce at Nagasaki, Japan: