The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-10-20

America will always stand immutably for the open door policy.
 Betns an island Kingdom, she real izes the possibility of great American heet, with an Asiaatic base, cutting of nor communicatfon with China Fur thermore, as she has been turning her eyes out over the Pacific for the con- trol of the commerce. of that great ocean. she finds America constructing the Panama Canal and holding the islands that give her the key to that ocean.
 The treaty of Portmouth turned her eyes upon us. While we believed we were performing a gracious act for Japan, as well as for the civilized world, urging peace, even without an tndemnity--as we have gladly accept ed peace with spain--ths Japanese construed our action es unfriendiy and designed to cramp her progress in the Pacific.
 On all sides--in Korea, in Manchurfa, in China. on the Pacific and over the world--Jepan saw her present and fu- ture sphere overlapped by the sphere oI America, standing everywhere for equal opportunities for all, as a bar rier to her own natural desire to reap the exclusive privilege of power.
 The fhoughtIof spells, always upper most in such waves Of conquest, lures JJapan onward with prospect of se- curing the Philippine Islands. to com plete her island Rirth about China, and the Hawaiian Islands, the stepping stone across the Pacific, together with the Aieutian Islands and Alaska, with their seals and their gold. with gain ing territory on the Pacific slope to sell back to conquered America for a fabulous war indemity,
 It is therefore perfectly natural that instead of coming down to a peace footing after the war with Russia, Ja- pan should have proceeded to increase her military and naval strength, and should utilize her new prestige to raise great loans with which to rush these preparations before her great enemy should awaken to the danger.
 For two years Japan has been work ing in her shipyards and arsenals and has been placing rusit orders for war material in Europe. with a feyerish activity beyond anything manifested when she prepared for war with Rus sia- Her citizen soldiers have been fiocking to American possessions and swarming on the mainland, spying out American shipyards, torpedo boats, gun factories. and forts. Steadily she has pushed her diplomatic preparations. se- curing hard and fast alliance. offen-a sive and defensive, with the British Empire. and securing an understand- ing and special treatics with the prin- c,pal continental powefes of Europe.
 Judging from her attitude over the trivial incidents in California. an at- tftude far more peremptory and menace. ing than even her attitude toward Rus sia when she broke of negotiations, Japan must now regard the time as ripe It is clear that she is only wait ing for the first opportunity to find plausible pretext before the eyes of the world. She is assiduously manoeuver- ing to create this opportunity. With the unstable conditions on the Pacific slope, with the question of exclusion. with conditions in the Hawaiian Islands, with the Bering Sea sealing season ap- preaching, and other sources of frict- ion, the opportunity may come any day. The day it eones---that day Japan will strike.
 And yet. in the midst of these omin- ous rumblinEs. America continues asleep on the volcano.