The Carlisle independent., 1915-07-08

nMEsl discontent at the "compro- mise" with China. This was bound to be so in the most war. like nation on earth But Japanese who are better informed know there has been no compromise Group V may have been left for later discus sion," but the Japanese leaders will exact every demand embodied in it from time to time
 Thus Okuma, the one-legged grand old man of Japan, sees his great idea coming to fruition. He knows the Japanese people will willingly spend their blood like water. All Japan has needed for conquest is money. Japa- nese strategy is not of the year or the decade, but of the century and the millennium. Money, but not enough, has come out of Korea and South flanchuria. Money-money for bat tesh1ps and siege guns. for sub- marines and aeroplanes-will now flow from China into Japan.
 Centuries ago untutored Japan made conquests on the mainland and adopted Chinese culture. Sixty years ago she threw off the culture of Japan for the efficiency of the West. Now she will go a step farther and with iron fist impose western efficiency on China
 Modern wars are fought with fac tories. With 400000,O00 Chinese la boring to supply munitions of war in her rear, sixty millions of Japanese will present the front of their warrior nation to the white race and tell it to get out of the western Pacific and some day will tell the French to get oet of Cochin China and the Brit tsh to get out of India.
 These are the aims of Okuma. They are not hay national aspirations, but active policies that Japan is working every minute of her time to carry out Okuma proclaimed them openly and loudly when he was of the party of the opposition. On this platform of mili- tarlsm he won his campaign in the spring of 1914 and busted the Yama- moto party. For year he has been In control and his hold is stronger than ever.
 Being at the head of the nation his words soften. He exudes honey to Great Britain and sends messages breathing the spirit of peace to the United States. Japan is not deceived They have long seen these two ir- reconcilable currents of expression flow from Okumas mouth-and they know which one to believe. They be- lieye only the one which accords with the spirit of the samurai, the two sword man"
 In Japan both the nobles and the commoners are militaristic Okuma is noble, but he has chosen to lead the commoners. Perhaps this is be- cause he came from neither of the two leading clans which for many years controlled Japan, but of weaker clan, the Hizen. Throughout his life he has fought against the clan sys- tenn and in favor of the constitutional monarchy, now for years strongly es tablished.
 At seventy-seven, Okuma is still fiery and energetic. He was a boy of twenty, living in a small Japanese town, when the visit of Commodore Perry and the granting of treaty rights to foreigners by the shogun set all Japan to talking about the red haired" barbarians. Okuma had great curiosity to learn about the world outside Japan. He heard of an American missionary, Doctor Veer- beck, and went to him secretly-not to embrace Christianity, but to learn. First of all he learned to read the Bible. Then came the one political document the devoted missionary pos sessed. the Declaration of Indepen- dence
 His soul was set on fire. When seventy years old. he said: "The read ing of the Declaration of Independence when I was boy made such an i'm pression upon my soul that the doc trines proclaimed by 1t have ever been my guiding rule in life" Thomas Jefferson became his model and he studied everything he could find about the American statesman.
 In his youth came the great Jap- anese civil wars between the mikado's party and the old feudalists. Okuma left school and plunged into the thick of the fray. The mikado's party, hay- Ing adopted western military tactics. won it's battle. and the mikado was es- tablished as supreme in Tokyo. Oku- ma was put in position in the office of foreign affairs.
 The intricacies of Japanese politics in the last half of the nineteenth cen tury are difficult for an American to understand without long study. Suffi- cient to say that Okuma was in the
 
 EAM0IIS I'M ENGLISH HISTORY