but cumbersome trappings of the old Japanese knight. The Japanese soldier's baptism of fire was in the suppression of the Satsuma rebellion in 1877. He won his spurs brilliantly in the China war of 1894-5, compelling the astonished admiration of all foreign experts. Specially thorough and satisfactory was the organisation of the commissariat department, which, in so rigorous a climate and so poor a country, bore the brunt of the under-taking. As the ill-led, unfed, and constitutionally unwarlike Chinamen mostly ran away, Japanese pluck scarcely met with full opportunity for showing itself. Nevertheless, the battle of Pingyang on the 15th September, 1894, the subsequent march through Manchuria, and the taking of Port Arthur in November of the same year, were notable exploits. More recently, in 1900, the Japanese contingent, by common consent, bore away the palm from the allied forces which relieved Peking:—they marched fastest, they fought best, they were most amenable to discipline, they behaved most humanely towards the conquered. While these pages pass through the press in the summer of 1904, the civilised warriors of Japan are again busy inscribing glorious deeds on the page of history, fighting for the first time against a European foe. It were probably no exaggeration to assert that Japan now disposes of the best army in the world, for its size. This fact—assuming it to be a fact is the more remarkable, because the Japanese army is (if we may use the phrase) anonymous. No world-famed specialist—no Frederick, no Napoleon—constructed the splendid machine. It has been built up by men little heard of beyond a narrow circle,—a few French employes, afterwards supplemented by a few Germans and one or two Italians, and by natives possessed, so far as we know, of neither genius nor wide experience. Nevertheless, some good fairy has presided over all their acts. Of course it must be allowed that the material they have had to work upon is good, a fair physique and a morale beyond all praise, the men, though small and nowise handsome, being sturdy and intelligently devoted, while the officers obey Milton's precept
