THE SURPRISE OF THE CONTINENT. defeat by " the Black
Flags " in 1883 is forgotten, and Indo-China seems to the world to have been acquired without any serious fighting. Lastly, the " Boxer " uprising in China was put down without one great battle, a composite army of very moderate strength driving the mighty Manchu dynasty into flight, and occupying Pekin without a siege, and without what would in Europe be considered serious resistance. It is not un- natural, therefore, that Continentals, who have not our knowledge of what Ghoorkas and Sikhs and half-caste Arabs are really like in battle, should imagine that the Asiatic peoples had all "gone soft," and were no longer competent to contend on equal terms with European armies. They are aware, no doubt, that Turks are among the bravest of mankind ; that Malays are the most dangerous, because the bravest, of pirates; that English common soldiers hold the little Ghoorkas to be at least their equals ; and that American troops march on Filipino rebels with no abso- lute certainty of victory. Still, the great wobbling, jelly- like Asiatic Empires have for a century or so shown little capacity for strenuous battle, and Continental critics only generalised a little too widely when they included,Japan within the accepted theory. Their amazement is, there- fore, natural, more especially as the Japanese display a quality and kind of courage of which there are but few instances in history. Contempt of death like theirs has hardly been recorded, and they combine with it the rushing daring which makes a charge so overwhelming to any but the picked troops of the world. That offer of twenty thousand volunteers to assist in sinking the steamers in the entrance to the harbour of Port Arthur, which in- volved to each man almost the certainty of death by bullet or by drowning, was an incident which, if Japan has any sacer vates, will live for ever in her future history. When an army is composed of the men who fill up forlorn hopes that army will go far. Even the British, though they understood much more of the facts, scarcely expected such splendid purposeful valour as the Japanese have exhibited in their recent engagements ; and it is natural that Continentals, who are secretly penetrated thropgh and through with dread of Russian might, should be bewildered by a phenomenon for which they have no precedent.
It is not, however, their daring which is the really wonderful quality displayed by the Japanese in their recent actions, by land as well as by sea. Two other qualities, each manifested in an extraordinary degree, differentiate them from all other Asiatics. One is the apparent motive which, so far as the outside world can perceive, supplies strength to their soldiery and seamen. They are patriots in a degree rare even in Europe, and, so far as we are aware, unknown in Asia, except among the men who defended Jerusalem against Titus. Patriotism, acute observers have declared, does not exist in Asia, and until this year the vast generalisation appeared to be at least superficially true. Asiatics from time to time have fought magnificently for a creed, for a Sovereign, for a favourite leader, but of love for their land in the broad sen se, as distinguished from every other land, it is difficult to find clear traces. The Chinaman, it is true, boasts of the" Flowery Land "; the Arab goes back to his secluded peninsula of oasis and desert with a feeling not easily distinguishable from that of the Scotsman ; and the writer has heard great Indians speak of their fertile and varied peninsula, with its original cities and its ancient civilisation, with proprietary pride. None of these races, however, will die for their country only, or feel its repute and its beauty as possessions surpassing in intimate value any other. The men who offered to sink the steamers in order to seal up what strategy required should he sealed offered to die for their country as readily as any British or German or French leader of a forlorn hope. The dominance of this feeling gives the Japanese a coherence and a perseverance which of themselves make them among the most effective of peoples. We speak of them as a little people, but they have more millions than France ; and when the grandeur or the interests of Japan are con- cerned they act and feel as one man. That is a source of strength which, when they are once in motion, it is impossible to exaggerate.
The second quality is a great, we should not hesitate to say an unequalled, power of foresight. They prepare everything for their enterprises with an exact and scientific prevision which rivals that of the German Staff in its best years. They waited through ten years of steady pre- paration to regain the prizes of their war with China of which they had been unfairly deprived. They learnt the difficult secret of transporting masses of soldiers by sea and landing them without serious loss ; and as they move forward over the vast regions they have entered, their supplies, their munitions, their maps are as perfect as if their regiments were composed of sappers assisting at a geographical survey. Just compare for one instant their readiness with that of Napoleon III. when he declared war on Prussia, of ourselves when we received the ulti- matum from President Kruger, or, to take a more recent instance still, of the great military Monarchy of Russia when the first shell fell in Port Arthur. To us, we confess, this is the feature of their recent history which most decisively separates them from all Asiatic peoples, who as a rule have moved forward, even in successful wars, without commissariat, with insufficient reserves of weapons, and dropping the wounded and exhausted by thousands as they marched on.
And this leads us to the final thought which we have to putiorward to-day, the doubt whether in calling Japanese Asiatics we are not concealing the truth with words. That they are Asiatics by origin is certain ; but they have stood apart in their islands for centuries, during which time they have developed, and have grown up under the pressure of, a civilisation of their own. They have imbibed, like all other islanders, something from all the forces with which they came in contact. They have passed, like Europeans, through a lengthened feudal period, and feudalism breeds at least courage and the habit of obedience to accepted leaders. They have developed an art of their own, a folk-lore of their own, a habit of political thinking widely distinct in kind from that of any other Asiatic people. What they exactly are is still in many respects a mystery to European observers ; but it is quite possible that the broad generalisations by which WE describe continents do not fully apply to them,—that they have become in the process of the centuries during which they have remained in a seclusion without a parallel a distinctly separate people, deriving their strength and their weakness from original sources, and no more Asiatic than they are European.
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