38.Korea, Mongolia

LET us begin with a short and elementary lesson in practical economics.

The Japanese, cooped up on their little island, and as prolific as Italians, need more land. All the pretty words in the world and all the treaties in the world and all the well-meant speeches of all the well-meaning old ladies and gentlemen in the world won't change this fact.For it is really a law of Nature which states that when I am strong but hungry and find myself on a raft somewhere in mid-ocean in the company of somebody else who is weak but who has a pocket full of ham sandwiches, I will in the end get my share of those ham sandwiches, or I shall have died in the attempt.Being a decent sort of a person, carefully brought up by God-fearing parents, I may resist the temptation for one day or for two days or even three days.But the hour will come when I will say,“Give me some of those sandwiches or I will throw you overboard—and be quick about it!”

My early training may assert itself sufficiently to let me treat the owner of the sandwiches more or less generously and allow him to keep part of the supplies, but I am going to still that terrible gnawing feeling in my entrails if I have to commit murder to do so. Multiply the case of the man on the raft by a million-fold or ten million-fold and you will begin to appreciate the problem that faces the Japanese people.

They live in a country that is smaller than California(155,652 square miles for California and 148,756 square miles for Japan)and of these only 16,000,000 acres can be used for agriculture, which is less than 2% of all the arable land of America. If you want the comparison to come a little nearer home, it is a trifle less than the improved farmlands of New York State alone.Even with the help of one of the best staffs of scientific agricultural experts to be found anywhere in the world, you will see at a glance what sort of problem it is that faces these poor island folk.Living so near the sea-shore they would of course fish;but although they have now reached the point where they are raising certain sorts of fish in the muddy water of their rice fields, the difficulty remains unsolved and unsolvable in view of the fact that the population increases by more than 650,000 people a year.

It was inevitable therefore that Japan should look for more territory;and it was only natural that first of all she should think of the badly administered and sadly neglected lands that lay just across the China Sea. America would have suited her better, but it was too far away and besides is much too strong.Australia was also too far away, and nine-tenths of that continent are a desert and of no possible use to anybody.But Manchuria was within easy reach, and the road to Manchuria was indicated by the land bridge of the Korean peninsula from which the mainland of Japan was separated by the narrow Strait of Korea.This strait is only 102 miles wide and is conveniently divided into halves by the Tsushima islands, those islands near which the Japanese fleet destroyed the Russian squadron in the year 1905,and killed Russia as a possible rival in eastern Asia.

As for the Korean peninsula, which is situated in the same latitude as southern Italy and Sicily, although it has a much colder climate, it was in no position to defend itself. The Koreans who called their country Ch'ao Hsien or“the chosen land of the morning quiet”,were descendants of Chinese immigrants who had occupied the country in the twelfth century before the birth of Christ.They had easily conquered the natives, a very primitive race who had lived in caves and subterranean holes in the mountains of the interior.These immigrants from the west had then established a kingdom of their own, which however was never able to gain complete independence from the mother country of China and which was forever being harassed by Japanese pirates.

In the year 1592 Japan made her first attempt to get hold of Korea. Japan never would have dared to start upon so ambitious a campaign unless she had been fully prepared.The preparations consisted of several hundred blunderbusses which Portugal had sold them.Relying upon her superior armament, Japan sent 300,000 men around the Strait of Korea, engaged in a war which lasted five years, and was then defeated only by the superior numbers of the Chinese who came to the assistance of the Koreans.

But it was this invasion, during which Seoul, the capital of Korea, was destroyed, and during which all sorts of horrible atrocities were committed, which accounts for the hereditary hatred of the Korean people for everything Japanese. But what will you?The Koreans were weak and the Japanese were strong;and when, during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the Koreans were forced to grant all sorts of economic and political concessions to the Russians, the Japanese had an excellent excuse for a fresh campaign.

The immediate causes for a war are rarely interesting. It is the real underlying motives that count.In this case, as in the case of the expedition of 1592,they were to be found directly and absolutely in the necessity of the Japanese government to provide its rapidly increasing population with food.

As soon as Japan had defeated Russia and had driven the Muscovite troops back from the Yalu River, the river that separates Korea from Manchuria, Korea became a Japanese protectorate. In 1910 it became a part of the Japanese Empire quite as much as Formosa, which the Japanese had taken from the Chinese in 1895,or the southern half of the island of Sakhalin, which they had taken from the Russians in the year 1905 in lieu of a war indemnity.Today already half a million Japanese have moved in among the twenty million Koreans.The rest will follow in due course of time.

For Mongolia is a very big country, almost 1,400,000 square miles, or eleven times as large as the British Isles and it has a population of less than 2,000,000 people. The southern regions are uninhabitable because they form part of the Gobi Desert but the rest consists of grass-lands, eminently suited for purposes of cattle-breeding.Otherwise the Mongolians, who depended for their success upon their cavalry, would never have been able to raise those tough ponies which carried them triumphantly from the Pacific to the Atlantic.

Many people seem to experience a profound indignation at what they are inclined to denounce as a brutal expression of“Japanese ambition”. I would rather call them“Japanese necessities”.In matters of international policy, a certain healthy egoism is rather a desirable quality.Japan has got to find an outlet for the extra people at home.It is finding such an outlet in northern Asia, in a part of the world that is very lightly populated, and that has been accustomed to such outrageous forms of government that the inhabitants cannot possibly be worse off now than they were ever before.

If this northern Asiatic safety-valve did not exist, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Australia, New Zealand and the western coast of America would be forever exposed to a Japanese invasion and we would be obliged to station a battle-ship in front of every Polynesian island lest it be towed away over night by a Japanese cruiser.

On the whole, the present arrangement seems much more practical. Those who feel inclined to shed tears at these callous and selfish utterances, are politely requested to weep on the shoulders of our own Indians.