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in methods of hygiene. Improved farming methods are the subject of intensive study and new tracts are being opened up. Railways and roads are being built. In material benefits the new régime can justly claim to be fulfilling its promise to give the country orderly government. If the story ended there, the Adminis- tration might well merit the sympathy and support of all other nations.

9. Unfortunately, there is a reverse to the picture. The foreigner has a legitimate grievance against his treatment. None the less, prejudice should not blind our eyes to the very substantial achievements of the Government in the directions just indicated.

10. It is probable that if the Japanese professions had been less extravagant, if they ceased to parade Manchukuo as an impossibly perfect paradise and their own aims as pure altruism, appreciation of their achievements would be less grudging. Japan did not overturn the Chinese Administration to liberate 30 million inhabitants crying for aid, but because the Japanese military con- sidered, probably correctly, that Japan's rights under the Portsmouth and subsequent Chinese treaties, on the basis of which she had built up an imperium in imperio in South Manchuria, were being undermined by the Chinese. Similarly, when we come to study the form of government set up in Manchukuo we are faced with layers of high-sounding phrases which have to be stripped away before we come to the bed-rock of actual fact.

(2) Form of Government.

11. The declaration of the new Government on the 1st March, 1932, detailed the misdeeds of the previous régime and the sufferings of the people under its oppression. It then enunciated the principles under which the new Government would proceed. Statecraft should be founded on t'ien tao ("the way of heaven") and the Government must conform to the will of the people. A cynic would observe that we have here two conflicting methods of government, but that too much stress is not to be laid on the second of the two methods is shown by a later statement in the same declaration that it would be the internal policy of the new State to apply, inter alia, the principle of wang tao ("kingly way "). This is the expression that panegyrists of the modern Utopia that has been created are fondest of creating, and since it is the standard by which the Government itself asks to be judged, it becomes necessary to study its meaning.

12.

Wang tao is not a system of government. It is a statement of principles compounded of selected aphorisms of the Chinese sages. Ideal government, it would seem, derives from a benevolent ruler whose sole aim is the welfare of his subjects; the officials are his servants, who draw inspiration from him as the fountain-head; the subjects achieve happiness by cheerful obedience, even when they do not understand the reasons for their instructions, and by contented labour in their respective callings.

13. In plain English, it is a reaction from the so-called republic which is of held to be the source of China's recent troubles and a return to the golden age long ago, when, in defiance of historical record, the Chinese philosopher maintains that his country was well governed and peaceful. Stripped of idealism, it is a doctrine of paternal government as opposed to democracy. As such it is a system which most people would admit is probably better suited to oriental nations than any western system. It had, at the time it was adopted, the added advantage that it was calculated to attract Chinese who felt their allegiance to the former Manchu dynasty of China bound them to follow their late Imperial master to the new State.

14. The reality is very different from the theory. The Emperor is merely the symbol of sovereignty. This feature need not detain us: it is common to many monarchical systems. But in Manchukuo the fiction runs through the whole Constitution. In theory the Prime Minister advises the Emperor and takes responsibility for his advice. He administers through the State Council and is assisted by the Privy and the Legislative Councils. The Prime Minister and the titular heads of the departments and most of the provincial offices are Chinese.(1) (1) N.B.-The distinction between Manchus, Chinese born in Manchuria and Chinese born in China Proper, is one which it is not easy to make and it will not be attempted.

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