Somewhere in the background of the stage are the people of the land - of
whom a very limited proportion enjoy the privileges of representative
government.
Whether in the past few years they have learned what the
thing means, or, learning, have the least intention of making any use of
it, is not clear. Meantime, the game of government goes forward as
merrily as a game of puss-in-the-corner, with the additional joy that
not more than half-a-dozen men know who is controlling it or what in
the wide world it intends to do. In Tokio live the steadily-diminishing
staff of Europeans employed by the Emperor as engineers, railway
experts, professors in the colleges and so forth. Before many years they
will all be dispensed with, and the country will set forth among the
nations alone and on its own responsibility.
In fifty years then, from the time that the intrusive American first
broke her peace, Japan will experience her new birth and, reorganised
from sandal to top-knot, play the samisen in the march of modern
progress. This is the great advantage of being born into the New Era,
when individual and community alike can get something for nothing - pay
without work, education without effort, religion' without thought, and
free government without slow and bitter toil.
The Overseas Club, as has been said, is behind the spirit of the age. It
has to work for what it gets, and it does not always get what it works
for.
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