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"Previous to the Restoration," to quote further from Count Okuma, "with the exception of the posts sent by the Daimios from their residences at the capital to their territories, there was no regularly established post for the general public and private convenience. Letters had to be sent by any opportunity that occurred, and a single letter cost over 25 sen for a distance of 150 ri.

But the Okuma Cabinet, assuming that the Chinese were to blame, pounced upon the incident and made it the base of fresh demands to China, two of which were manifestly excessive. That China would be better off than she is or is otherwise likely to become under Japanese guidance is in the highest degree probable.

"They are domestic consumption duties," was his phrase; and Count Okuma, one of the empire's ablest men, once Minister of Agriculture, has also pointed out how injuriously the new law will affect the masses of the people. "Some would argue," he said in a speech at Osaka, "that the duties are paid by the country from which the goods are imported.

Christianity may supply the moral standard in the Western world, as Count Okuma asserts, but if he has studied recent politics in a particular part of the Western world, he must have seen that Christianity in that part is by no means in accord as to the teaching of religion in its schools, or what moral code, if any, should be substituted for dogmatic instruction.

Count Okuma, ex-prime minister of the empire, whom I visited last Sunday, adopted his son-in-law as his legal son.

Count Okuma, speaking in the Kobe Chamber of Commerce, said: "There are three hundred million natives in India looking to us to rescue them from the thraldom of Great Britain." While in the Far East, I inquired of innumerable Englishmen what advantage our Government could suppose that we derived from the Japanese Alliance.

Count Okuma, in referring to this matter, has pointed out that the great difficulty of the difference between the written and spoken languages is a very serious tax upon the pupils in all the schools, necessitating, as it does, the duplicating of their work.

It never occurs to a Japanese, even in his wildest dreams, to think of a Chinaman as an equal. And although he wants the white man to regard himself as an equal, he himself regards Japan as immeasurably superior to any white country. His real desire is to be above the whites, not merely equal with them. Count Okuma put the matter very simply in an address given in 1913:

An interesting light is thrown upon the Japanese character in the sequel of this crime. During many subsequent years the tomb of Nishino received the homage of men and women who "worshipped achievement without regard to the nature of the thing achieved." There was a similar furore of enthusiasm over the would-be assassin of Okuma.

In 1887, the Progressist leader, Okuma, rejoined the Cabinet for a time as minister of Foreign Affairs, but after a few months of office his leg was shattered by a bomb and he retired into private life and founded the Waseda University in Tokyo.