Excerpt from Democracy and the Eastern Question: The Problem of the Far East as Demonstrated by the Great War, and Its Relation to the United States of America This work is not presented as a non-partizan or an impartial discussion of the subject. It could not be that, for it embodies the deep convictions formed and accumulated in the course of years of dose contact with the matters at issue, and the opinions which, I hope, shine through the presentation of the material were born in the process of "living with" the problem. Few foreigners that is, few Westerners could live in the far East during the last twenty years and still be impartial on the questions included in the position of China and her contacts with Japan. Some of the facts and much of the criticism presented in the following pages were suppressed or repressed during the Great War for reasons at times connected with the war politics of nations, and at times because of legal restraints upon their publication. That time of restricted publicity has passed with the need, or the fancied need for it, and foreign residents of China and Japan now feel that the truth, and nothing less than the whole truth, about these matters should be known to Western peoples. The design of this work, therefore, is to present the ease as it appears to an overwhelming majority of foreign residents of the East. I have not encumbered the hook by giving much of the contrary side of events and of the contrary arguments. As in the case of Germany and the responsibility of the German military party for the Great War, the evidence is decisively preponderating, although in this case Japan, like Germany, can put in a more or less plausible defense. I leave that defense to the extensive Japanese propaganda in America and elsewhere. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.