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Show THE VOICE OF THE RISING SUN The chorus of praise drawn from our allies by the gallantry gallant-ry of American troops in France sounds almost like the concerted finale at an opera. Among the paeans of appreciation apprecia-tion we hear a full-throated tribute tri-bute from a vocalist whose tones are a little different from the rest. It is the voice of our old friend, the Mikado. He has a style of his own, has Yoshi. Many of the most eminent em-inent in European strategy and statecraft have handed it to us on a plate. We get it in a ladle from the Euphuist of the Isles. The tributes of statesmen and generals French, English and Italian have often been triumphs of literary grace. But for polished verbiage give us the Mikado, or some other cultivated Nipponese. At throwing verbal confetti they are the fair-haired boys. Even more engaging is the note of sincerity that we observe ob-serve in the royal message. The foreign policy of Japan has often of-ten seemed something of a problem, pro-blem, and the attitude of the Island Empire toward its allies has not always been easy to define, but in his latest utterances utter-ances the Mikado has unreservedly unreser-vedly committed himself. It is well that the military weight of America is being rightly estimated in Tokyo. The praise of Japanese warlords war-lords is the praise of experts. It is better to have them with us than against us, and their exact striking power is always an unknown quantity. How Japan stands on submarines, on aeroplanes, on tanks, on mach-' ine guns, is a baffling riddle and we can depend on her to keep the riddle unread. It is not long since Nippon was regarded as America's greatest danger, and the time that we have taken in raising an army proves that we were ajny thing but secure. Japan now realizes the value of our friendship when she sees that our fighting strength is more than a mere potentiality. If the proof of it in national nation-al preparedness had been shown to Germany two years ago, we would probably have never been obliged to go to war at all. |