CO129-437 - Public Offices - 1916 — Page 123

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in connection with recent combined operations. Thus a Hakodate paper (on the 3rd December) complains that the occupation of the Pacific islands was almost entirely Japan's work, and asks if it is true that her share of the proceeds is only one- forty-eighth. When Baron Kato took a moderately broad view of the obligations of the Alliance he was dubbed the dog and slave of England. The Japanese Foreign Office is styled a branch of the British Foreign Office when it issues an (not yet executed) order of deportation against two Indians

In addition to obliquity of vision, the Japanese press exhibits variableness of temper. The Niroku" (to cite only one instance) advocated an alliance with Germany just before the war, yet immediately after its outbreak was the first to organise an enthusiastic lantern procession to this Embassy. Few papers do not alternate friendliness with hostility in bewildering juxtaposition. Pinpricks directed against British lack of patriotism, slights upon British courage, and abuse of British statesmen have latterly become numerous, but have been varied with encouragement to pursue the war to a successful issue.

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In view of this superficial and erratic writing, it is not easy to arrive at a just estimate of the real feeling of the press towards Great Britain in the present war. Such soberly conducted journals as the "Jiji" and "Japan Times have been consistently friendly, but hardly one paper seems yet to have realised that this is a life-and-death struggle for the British Empire. Instead of coming in heart and soul with her Ally, the Japanese press-and the people too, except the navy and some leaders of thought-seem prepared only to give a little nicely calculated help here and there, and anxious to make commercial and political capital for Japan out of the opportunities afforded by the war, This much said, it would be an exaggeration to treat ebullitions of national spite, tempered as they are by frequent kindly allusions, as convincing evidence of a pro-German attitude, while to attach too much weight to them would be to play the German game of widening the rift between our two countries. Germany's military perfection is admired; her duplicity accepted as diplomacy. Japan has imitated both. Frightfulness, however, is condemned as contrary to 'bushido," and Japan has too keen an eye to her own interests actively to desire victory for Germany. On the other hand, the press, except by fits and starts, is not really sympathetic to Great Britain at the present time. Malicious pleasure is taken i. instances of humbled Britanuic pride, which was felt, or imagined, by Japan in the days of extra-territoriality. Ultimate victory for the allied arms

seems to be passively desired, but hardly an out-and-out victory, for that would reconstitute the Englishman a white peril in the Far East, where Japan is beginning to consider herself almighty. In a word, the touchstone of Japanese feeling, as exhibited in the daily papers, is self-interest combined with over-developed national ambition. In general, the press is at bottom neither pro-German nor anti-British, only pro-Japanese. In regard to the Far East, and especially China, it is too frequently really anti-British. A grave disaster to British arms would probably evoke the latent generosity of the Japanese character, but the references to the Alliance have now quite lost the enthusiastic ring of a decade ago. This is not astonishing, for the Alliance covers just the domain where Japan aspires to be first, with the rest nowhere.

20

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