Japan is a young country, so far as Western civilization is concerned. She is the youngest of the Great Powers. She desires the good will of the world, and is willing to do much to win it. Be frank with her. You owe it to her to deal faithfully with her.
When you ask me if I would risk a war over Korea, I answer this: Firm action to-day might provoke conflict, but the risk is very small. Act weakly now, however, and you make a great war in the Far East almost certain within a generation. The main burden of the Western nations in such a war will be borne by America.
To the Japanese themselves, I venture to repeat words that I wrote over eleven years ago. They are even more true now than when they were written:
"The future of Japan, the future of the East, and, to some extent, the future of the world, lies in the answer to the question whether the militarists or the party of peaceful expansion gain the upper hand in the immediate future (in Japan). If the one, then we shall have harsher rule in Korea, steadily increasing aggression in Manchuria, growing interference with China, and, in the end, a titanic conflict, the end of which none can see. Under the other, Japan will enter into an inheritance, wider, more glorious and more assured than any Asiatic Power has attained for many centuries…. Japan has it in her to be, not the Mistress of the East, reigning, sword in hand, over subject races—for that she can never permanently be—but the bringer of peace to, and the teacher of, the East. Will she choose the nobler end?"
End of Project Gutenberg's Korea's Fight for Freedom, by F.A. McKenzie