It would take many lectures to do anything like justice to the important subject on which I am privileged to address you on this occasion. All that I can hope to do in twenty minutes is to touch briefly only upon a few of the more salient features of the system of government as it now exists in Japan.

Japan has been under a constitutional system since 1890, and in view of the struggles that are now going on for political development along a similar line in countries claiming a more or less close relationship with us in race or religion, in language or history, Japan's experience in parliamentary government assumes added interest and value. Turkey and China, and even Persia with which our connection is only remote and historical, can certainly derive some useful lessons from the history of constitutional struggles in Japan during the past twenty years.