changing the essential character of the nation, they have set
in motion vast movements which have already convulsed great
sections of the Empire and which are destined to affect stupendous
transformations. The first of these forces is foreign
commerce.

To understand the operation of this force, we must consider
that its impact has been enormously increased by the extension
of facilities for intercommunication. The extent to which these
have revolutionized the world is one of the most extraordinary
features of our extraordinary age. It is startlingly significant
of the change that has taken place that Russia and Japan, nations
7,000 miles apart by land and a still greater distance by
water, are able in the opening years of the twentieth century
to wage war in a region which one army can reach in four
weeks and the other in four days, and that all the rest of the
world can receive daily information as to the progress of the
conflict. A half century ago, Russia could no more have sent
a large army to Manchuria than to the moon, while down to
the opening of her ports by Commodore Perry in 1854, the few
wooden vessels that made the long journey to Japan found an
unprogressive and bitterly anti-foreign heathen nation with an
edict issued in 1638 still on its statute books declaring--``So
long as the sun shall continue to warm the earth, let no Christian
be so bold as to come to Japan; and let all know that the
King of Spain himself, or the Christian's God, or the great God
of all, if He dare violate this command, shall pay for it with
his head.''

Nor were other far-eastern peoples any more hospitable.