JAPAN
had been sixty-six thousand, and the number on the side of the rebels forty thousand, out of which total the killed and wounded aggregated thirty-five thousand, or thirty-three per cent of the whole. Had the Government's troops been finally defeated, there can be no doubt that the samurai's exclusive title to man and direct the army and navy would have been reestablished, and that Japan would have found herself permanently saddled with a military class, heavily burdening her finances, seriously impeding her progress towards constitutional government, and perpetuating all the abuses incidental to a polity in which the power of the sword rests entirely in the hands of one section of the people. The nation scarcely appreciated the great issues that were at stake. It found more interest in the struggle as furnishing a conclusive test of the efficiency of the new military system compared with the old. The army sent to quell the insurrection consisted of recruits drawn indiscriminately from every class of the people. Viewed by the light of history, it was an army of commoners, deficient in the fighting instinct and traditionally demoralised for all purposes of resistance to the military class. The Satsuma insurgents, on the contrary, represented the flower of the samurai, long trained for this very struggle and led by men whom the nation regarded as its bravest captains. The result dispelled all doubts about the fighting quality of the people at large. Such doubts
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