and a patience, sympathy, and good temper, which have endeared him to all ranks of the Japanese Army. If Marshal Oyama tried to make an enemy he would fail in the attempt to do so. Greatness has come to him without either effort or wish on his part. The desire for fame-that last infirmity of noble minds'-is foreign to his nature. Licet sapere sine pompâ, et sine invidiâ.' The younger son of a noble family, he rose to the high office of Commander-in-Chief by sheer force of heart, character, and work. Never mixing himself up with politics, he has all the more for that reason gained the affection and respect of the whole nation. At the age of sixty-four he still retains the energy and freshness of youth. After the war he asked the Emperor's leave to retire to his country house, and devote his time to his favourite pursuit of farming; but he is often called to Tokyo to take his place in the Supreme Council of War, which is the highest advisory body in the State. It was a pleasure to be in the company of this distinguished soldier, listen to his inspiring counsel, and carry away his last words spoken in reply to a question put to him as to the cause of Japan's recent victories: There were two reasons for our military successes-the justice of our cause, and the self-sacrifice of our army.'

1 The Marshal's sound judgment was never better exemplified than when he threw in his lot with the Imperialists in 1877, and took the field at the head of a brigade against his uncle, Saigo, the great Satsuma clansman, who had raised the standard of revolt.

The main strength of the Japanese Army lies in its officers. Clever yet modest, serious but cheerful, hard-working and reliable, the Japanese officer, whether allocated to staff, regimental, or departmental duties, is master of the profession to which he devotes every hour of his life without any thought for outside interests. Each day is a continuous round of toil, which leaves him no leisure for personal indulgence or social amusement. Upon his shoulders, in the absence of long-service noncommissioned officers, falls the whole burden of training the conscripts for war, and the thoroughness with which he performs his duties is recognised both by his superiors and by the men under his lead. The secret of the Japanese officer's power is the disciplined example which he at all times sets his men, and expects them to follow. That power will continue as long as he preserves his present simplicity of life, avoiding the pitfalls of luxury, and seeking always to reach that high standard which has been put before Japanese officers as the goal of their aspirations by one of their most successful and popular generals—the conqueror of Port Arthur. Writing to General Terauchi a few days after Stoessel's surrender, General Nogi improved the occasion by uttering a word of warning for future guidance. I am more than ever convinced,' he wrote, 'of the inevitable injury done to the discipline and homogeneous character of an army by the pernicious habit of extravagant life during peace. Do not think I write too strongly

when I express my absolute conviction that for preserving military spirit simplicity of life is as essential as is the practice of moral precepts. I do not refer to the period of war. My point is that when they have ceased to hear the voice of the cannon our military men must never fall into luxurious habits, which are unmilitary and destroy their fighting spirit.'

CHAPTER XV

THE NAVAL STRENGTH OF JAPAN

THE rapid development of the naval strength of Japan is even more astounding than the growth of her military power. Under the feudal system established by the Shogun Ieyasu at the close of the fifteenth century, each of the Daimyo chieftains was required to maintain an armed force varying in strength according to the size and population of his fief. When the Revolution took place in 1868, these armed forces were utilized by the Mikado's Ministers to furnish recruits for the army which had to be improvised until conscription could be established. There was thus a foundation of trained soldiers upon which to build the military system, which was subsequently developed with such rapid strides. The Imperial navy, on the contrary, had to start de novo. The policy of isolation instituted by Ieyasu, and followed for 250 years by his successors, was prohibitive of all commercial and naval expansion outside Japanese territory, and so thoroughly pursued was this policy that to build an ocean-going vessel was a crime punishable by the

death penalty. Thus it happened that the spirit of mercantile enterprise was crushed out of the Japanese people during the very years when Great Britain was building up her sea power; nor was there any revival of this spirit till the arrival at Yokohama, in 1853, of the naval expedition under Commodore Perry, whose instructions from the American Government were to insist on the opening up of trade, and the abolition of the policy of exclusion. Then the Shogunate Government began, as best it could, to buy ships for self-defence, and the Princes of Satsuma and Tosa also did the same; but beyond these few ships, mostly small, and only seventeen in all, the Imperial Government received no naval inheritance from its feudal predecessors.

Sea power is not the growth of a day, and a navy, as Napoleon discovered, cannot be created with the same ease as an army. Ships are useless without trained seamen to man them, and without dockyards equipped for their repair. At the cost of much labour and learning, the foundations of Japan's future sea power had to be slowly, thoughtfully, gradually laid. For the first twenty years after the Revolution there was not much to show. Officers and men had to be trained in modern naval science, the forgotten art of shipbuilding relearnt, dockyards constructed, plant set up, schools established, and qualified foreign teachers obtained. With the help of English-lent naval officers, the Japanese applied themselves to the task before them with characteristic assiduity, and after twenty