first, which took place in 1894-5, was waged against China to settle a long-standing dispute between the two empires about Korea. In it Japan demonstrated (what Europe should have discovered long ago) that the supposed political might of the Chinese empire was but a bubble waiting to be pricked. Within a year of the declaration of hostilities, China was forced to cede to Japan the peninsula of Liao-tung, besides paying a heavy indemnity. But European respect could not be gained all at once. Russia, which was then counted as irresistibly strong, wanted Liao-tung for herself; so she issued a summons to her humble follower France, and also to the Court of Berlin which was bound to that of St. Petersburg by ties of hereditary friendship. The three together forbade the cession of any territory on the Chinese mainland; and Japan, unprepared to face such a coalition, had to content herself with the island of Formosa. Her mortification was great, rejoicings over the victory gained were abandoned; particularly bitter was the disillusionment caused by Germany's having joined this unholy alliance,—Germany, whom official Japan had ever admired and striven to imitate, and whose hostile interference came as a bolt from the blue.[1]
The second military expedition of the present reign took place in 1900. When the world looked on aghast at the spectacle of a handful of foreigners in Peking defending themselves against overwhelming odds, the Japanese contingent of the allied army was the first to bring rescue.
One incidental result of such close contact with European diplomacy and with European soldiers was to diminish the respect of the Japanese for Europe. They discovered that their revered Western instructor in science and the practical arts was no better morally than themselves,—less good, indeed; that his unctuous phrases and laboured circumlocutions were a mere veil for vulgar greed. At the same time it began to be suspected that as soldiers,
- ↑ The "true inwardness" of Germany's interference on behalf of the inviolability of Chinese territory was revealed two years later (1897) by her seizure of the neighbouring district of Kiao-chonf.
