Japan offers a case-study of intensified imperialism in the modern world. Legal, moral, and ethical considerations have not sufficed to restrain leaden faced with pressing problems, the solutions to which seem to demand aggressive action. The internal disturbances during the month of February 1936 must add to the importance of any study of the forces which underlie Japan’s expansionist policies; for if these forces are based on factors more fundamental than the militarist ambitions of cliques in the army and navy, even a swing to liberalism will not necessarily induce any vital or substantial change in the objectives of foreign policy. If the essentials of that policy are dictated by deep and widespread domestic conditions, the only apparent remedy for which is some kind of outlet in Asia and intensified industrialization a mere change in the tone of government does not promise anything approaching a reversal of policy. Dr. Hindmarsh’s study attempts to discover these fundamental motivations and realistically to portray their determining influence on the acts and attitude of the nation's leaders.

Recent events in the Far East have made it apparent that the international community is not yet in a position to confide the efficacy of its standards to the moral force of public opinion and that the use of force short of war—such as bombardment, occupation of territory, blockade, and intervention—has remained legally untouched by post-War treaties and agreements to minimize or outlaw war. The necessity for limiting the use of armed force raises the question of providing sanctions for international law. Dr Hindmarsh’s study considers this whole question. He traces the evolution of coercive sanctions short of war from individual self-help to state self-help and finally to current attempts to bring to the aid of world peace the organized physical as well as moral force of the international community.