AMERICAN INTEREST WORLD-WIDE
'Theoretically you do not participate, actually your participation bears upon international events everywhere. Witness Secretary Hay's initiative respecting the Jews, as well as despatch after despatch aimed at Russian aggression in Manchuria. The world's interests are becoming woven into a solid fabric. Great nations cannot escape the responsibility this involves. American theory and practice, in my judgment, will go on diverging until the notion of non-participation will be merely an antiquated abstraction.
'Therefore I refuse to regard as hopeless the idea of an American-Anglo-Japanese alliance, guaranteeing the peaceful development of the vast resources of the Far East. Such an alliance exists essentially now—an alliance springing from cognate ideas, wishes, purposes and principles. This is the best possible foundation for that formal compact which the evolution of industry and commerce seems to me unmistakably to foreshadow.'
[1] An extract from the Chicago Daily News.
NOTE TO DIALOGUE V.
Since the bulk of the present work went to press, I came across the following communication printed in the Outlook. I take the liberty of subjoining it herewith, without any vain intention of flaunting the virtues of my countrymen.—K.S.
JAPANESE CHARACTER
To the Editor of the OUTLOOK
SIR,—I have received during the last few weeks letters bearing such eloquent testimony to the nobility of Japanese character that I am sending you some extracts in the hope of your publishing them. The letters are from a friend of mine, who with her husband has lived in Yokohama for many years, and can therefore speak with considerable authority. The first extract is about the soldiers themselves—