f the two new
armored cruisers _Ikoma_ and _Tsukuba_. Then there were the two enormous
battleships which were not included in the Japanese Navy List at all,
and the two huge cruisers _Yokohama_ and _Shimonoseki_ which, according
to Japanese reports, were still building, while in reality they had been
finished and added to the fleet long ago.

The circumstances connected with these two battleships were rather
peculiar. The report was spread in 1906 that China was going to build a
new fleet and that she had ordered two big battleships from the docks at
Yokosuka. This rumor was contradicted both at Pekin and at Tokio. The
Americans and everybody in Europe wondered who was going to pay for the
ships. The trouble is, we ask altogether too many questions, instead of
investigating for ourselves. As a matter of fact, the ships were laid
down in 1908, though everybody outside the walls of the Japanese
shipyard was made to believe that only gunboats were being built. We
have probably forgotten how, at the time, a German newspaper called our
attention to the fact that not only these two battleships--of the
English _Dreadnought_ type--but also the two armored cruisers building
at Kure ostensibly for China, would probably never sail under the yellow
dragon banner, but in case of war, would either be added directly to
Japan's fleet or be bought back from China.

And so it turned out. Just before the outbreak of the war, the Sun
Banner was hoisted quietly on the two battleships and they were given
the names of _Nippon_ and _Hokkaido_, respectively; but they were
omitted from the official Japanese Navy List and left out of our
calculations. How Pekin and Tokio came to terms with regard to these two
ships remains one of the many secrets of east Asiatic politics. The
generally accepted political belief that China was not financially
strong enough to build a new fleet and that Japan, supposedly on the
very verge of bankruptcy, could not possibly carry out her _postbellum_
programme, was found to have rested on empty phrases employed by the
press on both sides of the ocean merely for the sake of running a story.
There has never yet been a time in the history of the world when war was
prevented by a lack of funds. How could Prussia, absolutely devoid of
resources, have carried on the war it did against Napoleon a hundred
years ago, unless this were so?

In the redistribution of our war vessels in the Atlantic and the Pacific
after the re