BARON MAKOTO SAITO, Governor-General of Korea, stated the fundamental principles of the colonial policy of the Japanese Empire in three terse sentences: "The economic development of the country must come first. Education and the raising of the standards of the people will follow. Afterwards political development may be possible." He was discussing the problems of Korea, but his words describe perfectly the course which his country is following in every colony over which floats the banner of the Rising Sun. Prior to 1919 this policy was carried out by the application of naked force. In that year, however, the velvet glove of conciliation and "attraction" was slipped over the iron hand of Japanese control in Formosa and Korea, Japan's greatest colonies. The new methods by which these dependencies have since been ruled are being closely watched by the governments having large interests in the Far East. The United States in particular is interested in this newest phase of Japanese colonial policy not only because it has an important bearing on the general question of peace in the Orient, but because it offers some striking contrasts with the policy which America has followed in the Philippine Islands.
Japan acquired her first large colony, Formosa, in 1895 at the end of her victorious war with China. The island is about the size of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined. It lies ninety miles off the China coast, less than six hundred miles south of Japan and approximately two hundred miles north of the Philippines. The population consists of about 3,500,000 Chinese, 80,000 Malay aborigines and 160,000 Japanese.
The traveler in Formosa is soon impressed with the truth of Baron Saito's statement that under the Japanese system the economic development of the country comes first. He sees splendid harbor works and port facilities, visits substantial and handsome public buildings that are far superior to those of most American states, and rides over a well built, excellently equipped and efficiently operated railroad system. He travels through two hundred miles of agricultural land that is as intensively cultivated as that of Belgium, and inspects enormous and growing industrial plants. Wherever he goes he observes all of the external evidences of prosperity.
