manded by foreign captains of various nationalities. Again, consider the army which has so recently astonished the world by the perfection of its organisation:—that organisation was Franco-German, and was drilled into the Japanese first by French, and then by German officers engaged for the purpose, and retained during a long series of years. The posts, the telegraphs, the railways, the trigonometrical survey, improved mining methods, prison reform, sanitary reform, cotton and paper mills, chemical laboratories, water-works, and harbour works,—all are the creation of the foreign employés of the Japanese Government. By foreigners the first men-of-war were built, the first large public edifices erected, the first lessons given in rational finance. Nor must it be supposed that they have been mere supervisors. It has been a case of off coats, of actual manual work, of example as well as precept. Technical men have shown their Japanese employers how to do technical things, the name of chef de bureau, captain, foreman, or what not, being no doubt generally painted on a Japanese figure-head, but the real power behind each little throne being the foreign adviser or specialist.
It is hard to see how matters could have been otherwise, for it takes longer to get a Japanese educated abroad than to engage a foreigner ready made. Moreover, even when technically educated, the Japanese will, for linguistic and other reasons, have more difficulty in keeping up with the progress of rapidly developing arts and sciences, such as most European arts and sciences are. Similar causes have produced similar results in other parts of the world, though on a smaller scale—in Spanish America, for example. The only curious point is that, while Japanese progress has been so often and so rapturously expatiated upon, the agents of that progress have been almost uniformly overlooked. To mention but one example among many, Mr. Henry Norman, M. P., in his lively letters on Japan,[1] told the story of Japanese education under the fetching title of "A Nation at School"; but
- ↑ Republished in book form as The Real Japan.
