Japan's next move came in March and April, when she quietly withdrew all the regular troops from the Manchurian garrisons and replaced them with reserve regiments fully able to repulse for a time any attack on the part of Russia. The meaning of this move was not revealed until weeks later, when it became known that the transport ships from Dalny and Gensan, which were supposed to have returned to Japan, were really on their way to San Francisco and Seattle with the second detachment of the invading army.
After the destruction of the Philippine squadron, the Japanese reduced their blockade of the Bay of Manila to a few old cruisers and armed merchant-steamers, at the same time isolating the American garrisons in the archipelago, whose fate was soon decided. The blockading ships could not of course venture near the heavy guns of the Corregidor batteries, but that was not their task. They had merely to see that Manila had no intercourse with the outside world, and this they did most efficiently. The Japanese ships had at first feared an attack by the two little submarines Shark and Porpoise stationed at Cavite; they learned from their spies on land, however, that the government shipyards at Cavite had tried in vain to render the little boats seaworthy: they returned from each diving-trial with defective gasoline-engines. And when, weeks later, they at last reached Corregidor, the four Japanese submarines quickly put an end to them. The strongly fortified city of Manila had thus become a naval base without a fleet and was accordingly overpowered from the land side.
As the far too weak garrison of scarcely more than ten thousand men was insufficient to defend the extensive line of forts and barricades, the unfinished works at Olongapo on Subig Bay were blown up with dynamite and vacated, then the railways were abandoned, and finally only Manila and Cavite were retained. But the repeated attacks of the natives under the leadership of Japanese officers soon depleted the little garrison, which was entirely cut off from outside assistance and dependent absolutely on the supplies left in Manila itself. The only article of which they had more than enough was coal; but you can't bake bread with coal, and so finally, on August twenty-fourth, Manila capitulated. Twenty-eight hundred starving soldiers surrendered their arms while the balance lay either in the hospitals or on the field of battle. Thus the Philippines became a Japanese possession with the loss of a single man, Lieutenant Shirawa. All the rest had been accomplished by the Filipinos and by the climate that was so conducive to the propagation of mosquitoes and scorpions.
Hawaii's fate had been decided even more quickly than that of the Philippines. The sixty thousand Japanese inhabitants of the archipelago were more than enough to put an end to American rule. The half-finished works at Pearl Harbor fell at the first assault, while the three destroyers and the little gunboat were surprised by the enemy. Guam, and Pago-Pago on Tutuila, were also captured, quite incidentally. About the middle of May, a Japanese transport fleet returning from San Francisco appeared at Honolulu and took forty thousand inhabitants to Seattle, where they formed the reserve corps of the Northern Japanese Army.
Japan's rising imperialism, the feeling that the sovereignty of the Pacific rightly belonged to the leading power in yellow Asia had, long before the storms of war swept across the plains of Manchuria, come into conflict with the imperialistic policy of the United States, although invisibly at first. Prior to that time the Asiatic races had looked upon the dominion of the white man as a kind of fate, as an irrevocable universal law, but the fall of Port Arthur had shattered this idol once and for all. And after the days of Mukden and Tsushima had destroyed the belief in the invincibility of the European arms, the Japanese agents found fertile soil everywhere for their seeds of secret political agitation. In India, in Siam, and in China also, the people began to prick their ears when it was quite openly declared that after the destruction of the czar's fleet the Pacific and the lands bordering on it could belong only to the Mongolians. The discovery was made that the white man was not invincible. And beside England, only the United States remained to be considered—the United States who were still hard at work on their Philippine inheritance and could not make up their mind to establish their loudly heralded imperialistic policy on a firm footing by providing the necessary armaments.
Then came the Peace of Portsmouth. Absolutely convinced that his country would have to bear the brunt of the next Asiatic thunder-storm, Theodore Roosevelt gained one of the most momentous victories in the history of the world when he removed the payment of a war indemnity from the conditions of peace. And he did this not because he had any particular love for the Russians, but because he wished to prevent the strengthening of Japan's financial position until after the completion of the Panama Canal. America did exactly what Germany, Russia and France had done at the Peace of Shimonoseki, and we had to be prepared for similar results. But how long did it take the American people, who had helped to celebrate the victories of Oyama, Nogi and Togo, to recognize that a day of vengeance for Portsmouth was bound to come. In those days we regarded the Manchurian campaign merely as a spectacle and applauded the victors. We had no idea that it was only the prelude of the great drama of the struggle for the sovereignty of the Pacific. We wanted imperialism, but took no steps to establish it on a firm basis, and it is foolish to dream of imperial dominion when one is afraid to lay the sword in the scales. We might bluff the enemy for the time being by sending our fleet to the Pacific; but we could not keep him deceived long as to the weakness of our equipment on land and at sea, especially on land.
The wholesale immigration of Mongolians to our Pacific States and to the western shores of South America was clearly understood across the sea. But we looked quietly on while the Japanese overran Chili, Peru and Bolivia, all the harbors on the western coast of South America; and while the yellow man penetrated there unhindered and the decisive events of the future were in process of preparation, we continued to look anxiously eastward from the platform of the Monroe Doctrine and to keep a sharp lookout on the modest remnants of the European colonial dominion in the Caribbean Sea, as if danger could threaten us from that corner. We seemed to think that the Monroe Doctrine had an eastern exposure only, and when we were occasionally reminded that it embraced the entire continent, we allowed our thoughts to be distracted by the London press with its talk of the "German danger" in South America, just as though any European state would think for a moment of seizing three Brazilian provinces overnight, as it were.
We have always tumbled through history as though we were deaf and dumb, regarding those who warned us in time against the Japanese danger as backward people whose intellects were too weak to grasp the victorious march of Japanese culture. Any one who would not acknowledge the undeniable advance of Japan to be the greatest event of the present generation was stamped by us an enemy of civilization. We recognized only two categories of people—Japanophobes and Japanophiles. It never entered our heads that we might recognize the weighty significance of Japan's sudden development into a great political power, but at the same time warn our people most urgently against regarding this development merely as a phase of feuilletonistic culture. Right here lies the basis for all our political mistakes of the last few years. The revenge for Portsmouth came as such a terrible surprise, because, misled by common opinion, we believed the enemy to be breaking down under the weight of his armor and therefore incapable of conducting a new war and, in this way undervaluing our adversary, we neglected all necessary preparations. No diplomatic conflict, not the slightest disturbance of our relations with Japan prepared the way for the great surprise. The world was the richer by one experience—that a war need have no prelude on the diplomatic stage provided enough circumstances have led up to it.