The Daily News FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23. OUR BROWN ALLIES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 81893, 23 November 1906, Page 2

The Daily News FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23. OUR BROWN ALLIES.

SOONER or later, Britain will have cause to regret her alliance with the Japs, who have used Britain as a means to an end, and that end is a selfish one. A Dunedin re-ident who has just returned from a visil to the East tells some truths about our brown allies to a contemporary, lie says : —''Japan is the land of besetting credit. 1 visited practica'ly evuy one of the larger cities of Jap.;ii and observed for myself, so tar as lime and my necessarily limned knowledge of the people would permit, those things likely to interest commercial people. It may very i well be that the present is not the m..st favorable time for studying our biowu allies in their own islands. They are suffering from swelled head. In defeating Russia they did realty achieve a feat almost without parallel in modern history—and they know it. They ae invulnerable, magnificent! In many quarters it [ l.< believed thai they ale looking for more trouble, and, should it come, they must emerge witn a nationally smaller head or a head that will be perilously near bursiing. The pinch of war is still felt in the ancient Nippon. Living is fully 25 per cent ■ dearer and the Government are, reputedly at least, by no means too well off as regards funds.'' "Arc the

Japanese appreciated at their own estimate of tnemselves out-ide Japan?" asked the interviewer. "By no manner of means. They are very much disliked. The Germans speak of them as robbers, cheats and spies. In Hong Kong the Britishers are hardly le.'ss scathing. Everywhere f went, in fact, outside Japan itself, I found that our allies hat] a bad name. There is a feeling in the Orient that trouble is brewing. The Japanese are raising an army in China, and it is estimated that they have at the present moment a million trained soldiers. What they are aiming at it is imposible to say, but . there is an uneasy feeling abroad, which may of course be fanciful, that we are on the eve of a war of exterrnmalhon of foreigners in the East. Undoubtedly the Japs are becoming 100 cheeky. During the war the authorities had great trouble with the tower classes in Japan, who were anxious to wipe out all vestiges of tne loreigner within thd»r shores. So far as 1 could see there is precious little disinterested love of England n japan. In ilong Kong i conversed Hi with many people who were simply ts furiou' at the thought of the alliance." "And the Chinese?" "Are ruspectable by comparison. It is a fact thai Germans and, for that matter, men of pretty well all civilised nations having dealings in the Fan apeak in praise of the honesty and tair dealing of the Chinese, no mat.er what their indignation and contempt in respect of tne Japanese. In all the banks, even in Japan, the subordinates only are Japanese; the men who handle ihe cash are Chinamen. "" Just the same in the notels Responsible officials are men from China. There is no law for a foreigner—and an Englishman in Japan is as much a foreigner as any other European—and, consequently, foreigners who make bad bargains with the natives put up with it. They cannot hope tor justice. There are practically only three classes in Japan : the gentiAty (a small class), the agricultural and the merchant. The merchant class is the lowest class. Japan is a very thickly-populated country conI taining 40,000,000 souls, and every • available inch of laud appeared to be under cultivation. I left Japan with ihe feeling that it was certainly not ivhat it is cracked up to be."