ABSTRACT
Japan is repeating the experience of our Teutonic ancestors, as they came into contact with the Roman polity and the Christian Church. The advantage to her and to us that it may reasonably be claimed for our civilization that it is not now in the condition of incipient political, and advanced moral, decadence which Rome had then reached, and which the Christian leaven, though it had begun to permeate, had not been able sensibly to retard. While the urgency of the conditions in China, in which all the great European nations, with ourselves and Japan, have an equal concern, is evident, and constrains the action of the Powers to a common end, if not too concerted action, it is clear enough that only on the surface can there seem to be any departure, other than temporary, from the policy heretofore pursued by each state.
