barbarous and degrading, fellows in fact whom it would be desecration to place near the person of the heaven-descended monarch. True, the Daimyōs and Samurai, with the Shōgun at their head, were, or had been, fighting men:—that was an element of contradiction in the structure of Japanese society, which did not exist in China. But though the Daimyōs and Samurai stood high in their own estimation and practically lorded it over the land, they never rose to social equality with the meanest hanger-on of the Mikado's Court; and if any of them obtained office there, it was in a civil capacity. How times have changed, and how swiftly!
To return from this digression, the men of the Japanese army, as already incidentally remarked, are raised by conscription. When the system was first introduced, numerous exceptions were allowed; but now the application of the law is stringent, no excuse other than physical unfitness being entertained. The limit of height is 5 Japanese ft., that is, about 4 ft. 11½ in. English; the age for entering is twenty. Every male between the ages of seventeen and forty belongs ipso facto to the "national army" (Landsturn), and is liable to be called out in case of emergency. This "national army" therefore includes, in addition to the untrained mass, that large body of men who have passed out of the Second Reserve fully trained.
The new-comer may smile to behold two or three Japanese soldiers strolling along hand in hand, as if they were Dresden shepherdesses. What would he say during a campaign to see private soldiers on the march, or even during a pause in actual battle, take fans out of their gaiters and fan themselves? But after all, why not? There is no effeminacy here, only common sense,—and coolness in both meanings of the term.
It is extraordinary into what minutiæ the Government has gone in its determination to foster the military spirit and raise the army to the highest point of perfection. Even books of war-songs have been officially composed and included in the course of instruction. The result, it must be confessed, has not been the production of
