among the Liberals themselves, mainly on the question of Home Rule for Ireland. As it was said at the time, John Morley and Harcourt had nailed their colors to the mast in the maintenance of Gladstone's policy, while other men of influence were more or less avowedly for the hauling down of the flag. The common idea among those whom we may call the seceders, although they did not openly secede, was that a new Liberal party might be created which should be, above all things else, what was now described as Imperialist, which should concern itself mainly about Imperial interests and should regard Home Rule as out of the question. Sir Henry CampbellBannerman was certainly not one of those men, but his election to the leadership of the Opposition in the House of Commons was a step which, for the moment, did not proclaim as impossible the development of the new policy.

CHAPTER V

ANOTHER DAYBREAK IN THE EAST”

ANOTHER day was indeed beginning to break in the East, although not by any means according to the sense of that passage in Shakespeare which has been taken as the title of this chapter. Daybreak is not always, even in our atmosphere, the signal of coming light, hope, and tranquillity. The daybreak in the East which now began to show itself was but a portent of new troubles to the world. From long before the days of Alexander until long after the days of Napoleon Bonaparte the ambition to hold the gorgeous East in fee has been portentous of disturbance and trouble to Europe. Once again a fresh outbreak of such disturbance and trouble was making its coming manifest. A new claimant for influence and sovereignty in the Eastern world was appearing, and new rivals from the West were showing their resolve to contend for Eastern territory. Japan had suddenly shaken off the traditions and the ways of ages and faced the world with a lately acquired mastery of all the Old World's mechanisms and methods in the arts of war as well as of peace. For long years after Queen Victoria came to the throne Japan remained as she had been from her historic dawn, a rigidly isolated nation, refusing with resolution and tenacity to have any intercourse or association with the world of the West. As she seemed to the Portuguese traders in the sixteenth century, as she seemed to William Adams, as she seemed to Commodore Perry

when America wooed and won her reluctant hospitality, so she continued to seem to strangers till the thirtieth year of the Queen's reign. Till 1867 Japan was a feudal nation living for itself, and content with the manners, the customs, and the knowledge of the past. In 1867 and the succeeding year feudalism was overthrown in a civil war, and the victorious party, the party of progress, completely reversed the old policy of aloofness and grasped with both hands at all it could gather of European civilization and European learning.

Russia had now become in a certain sense an Oriental Power, and had plainly no intention of remaining content with such territory as she had already acquired. It was also quite evident that Germany as a great military Empire and also a great trading Power did not intend to allow the East to be recast and remoulded without herself having some share in the arrangements and advantages of such a transformation. The question of frontier lines was becoming with every year a subject of greater difficulty and of more animated dispute. The policy of England was, in the minds of most of her statesmen, merely to guard and hold what she already possessed; but the minds of others among her political leaders were filled with the creed of Imperialism-the creed that it is the duty and the mission of England to spread her Empire to an unlimited extent.

On December 18, 1897, it was announced to the world through leading newspapers that the Russian fleet was, with the consent of China, to winter at Port Arthur. The announcement was accompanied by an intimation that this act was not in any sense an act of hostility to European or Asiatic Powers. This additional announcement, intended obviously to allay all alarm, had on many readers only the effect of arousing apprehension. In England at least the general public had up to the ap

pearance of this news felt no alarms on the subject of Port Arthur, and indeed to a large proportion of that public the Port Arthur question was as yet an unknown quantity. Not long before the Russian squadron had sought for shelter in Port Arthur a German fleet had occupied Kiau-Chau as a coaling-station, and this occupation, it was declared, had been approved of by the Chinese Government. The officer in command of the German fleet had issued a proclamation announcing that his Sovereign, the German Emperor, had instructed him to land at Kiau-Chau Bay at the head of his forces and occupy the bay and all its islands and dependencies. This occupation was to continue until the case of certain German missionaries murdered in Shantung had been settled. The proclamation went on to say that the inhabitants of the region occupied were free to continue peaceably in their several occupations, and were advised to pay no attention to any unauthorized words coming from disreputable personages, who were only striving to create disturbance. As a matter of fact, so said the proclamation, Germany and China had always been friendly and at peace, and the Germans were not now in those waters as enemies of China. Further explanations were given by the official organs of the Government in Germany itself. The organs announced that the Chinese Government had transferred all the rights of sovereignty it possessed in ceded territory to the Imperial German Government on a long lease. The peaceful protestations of Germany had not in themselves quite the effect of allaying the alarm now spreading abroad.

The attention of the world began to be drawn directly and keenly towards the peninsula of Corea in Eastern Asia, a region which had long been tributary to China and from which all foreigners were shut out until 1882. It was a region of almost perpetual disturbance, and there

were frequent risings against the Sovereign of Corea and frequent interventions on the part of Japan in order to restore peace. The Japanese were greatly interested in the promotion of peace and order in Corea. The general impression of the outer world was that the attentions of Japan were not merely moved by a beneficent design to establish tranquillity and good government there, but were much impelled by the wish to make Corea a tributary of Japan. China asserted once again her sovereign rights over Corea, and there were several European interventions and mediations, England, among other Powers, asserting in the interest of peace and for the sake of her commerce in the East her claim to have a station in the peninsula. The Coreans became impatient of Chinese sovereignty, entered into a sort of alliance with Japan, and the result was a treaty of alliance between Japan and Corea and a war with China. The Chinese got the worst of it, and Port Arthur, an important naval arsenal, was taken by the Japanese in 1894. Peace was made at last under conditions which still recognized the independence of Corea, but allowed the Japanese to retain the places which they had captured. Against this arrangement Russia, Germany, and France protested on the ground that the practical annexation of Corean territory by the Japanese was a danger to foreign commerce and to the interests of peace. Finally, a treaty was made between Russia and Japan providing for the maintenance of Corea's independence under the combined protection of these two Powers. This combined protection did not give much satisfaction to the rest of the world. England and Japan afterwards came to an arrangement between themselves for the maintenance of Corea's independence with the concession of certain stations to each of these Powers, while still recognizing Corea as an independent State.