e colors the Japanese system provided for
an indefinite increase in the number of battalions for each regiment.

The Japanese navy had weathered a storm which at one time threatened
to interfere seriously with its steady growth, and the year 1914 found
it at a formidable climax of strength and efficiency. The war with
Russia had left the nation on the verge of bankruptcy and the annual
budgets from 1907 to 1910 contained no appropriations for naval
increases. The lull in naval construction, however, was of short
duration. The wisest statesmen realized, from the time when Japan
first emerged from her Oriental seclusion and eagerly set out to learn
the lessons of western civilization, that their country's insular
situation made a strong navy the first requisite of national
independence. It was the warships of the western world that forced the
Japanese to open their door to the foreigner. Fifteen years after the
Japanese had seen the foreign men-of-war riding dominant in their
harbors, their antiquated collection of war junks had been replaced by
an up-to-date navy, manned and officered by sea fighters trained upon
the best western models. In 1910 the Japanese began to compare their
naval equipment with that of Germany, and from that time their
shipbuilding program was designed to make them secure against the
chance of German aggression, ever present since the leasing of
Kiao-chau.

At the outbreak of the Great War the Japanese navy had nearly doubled
its strength since the close of the war with Russia. It included two
battleships of the dreadnought class, the _Kawachi_ and the _Settsu_,
both over 21,000 tons, with a speed of twenty knots, two dreadnought
battle cruisers of 27,500 tons each and a speed of twenty-seven knots,
the _Kongo_ and the _Hiyei_; two semi-dreadnought battleships, the
_Aki_ and _Satsuma_, between 19,000 and 20,000 tons each and a speed
of twenty and eighteen and a quarter knots, respectively; four
first-class battle cruisers with speeds ranging from twenty to
twenty-three knots and averaging 14,000 tons; six battleships of
slightly heavier displacement and slightly less speed; six first-class
coast defense ships, averaging 13,000 tons and seventeen and a half
knots; nine first-class cruisers ranging from 7,300 to 9,800 tons and
twenty to twenty-one knots; thirteen second-class cruisers, some of
which had a speed of twenty-six knots; seven second-class coast
defense ships; nine gunboats, two first-c