tea-houses, the miniature bridges, the paper walls and umbrellas, their
works of art modelled in lead--everything suggesting the dainty and the
exquisite (and therefore, in his opinion, the flimsy); and he tells you
that the people over there are all dear little Noah's Ark folk living in
tissue-paper houses, very charming as dolls, but useless as men. "These
people," he says, "have no physique; they would be incapable of building
battleships, for example." For this critic one can entertain only the
faintest possible feeling of tender pity. Is he not aware that these
Noah's Ark folk are actually building battleships, that they have
already a fine army superbly equipped with the finest of swords and
guns, and that they have the power to handle these weapons far better
than we can handle ours? Every soldier in the Japanese army understands
the mechanism of his rifle, and can at any moment pull it to pieces and
put it together again, even substituting a missing portion if necessary.
Could the same be said of our beloved Tommy? The Japanese officers are
no less capable than the privates, and I would guarantee that if by some
mischance the sword of a Japanese officer, being badly tempered, should
become bent, that officer would be capable of retempering his blade--one
of the most difficult and delicate tasks imaginable.

[Illustration: THE TEA-HOUSE OF THE SLENDER TREE]

But how a certain class of equally ignorant and inconsistent Westerners
cried out when it was known to the world that Japan had actually begun
to use our rifles and to build battleships! They will lose individuality
and degenerate, they are adopting Western methods, and it will kill
their art, they complained. How foolish this is! The Japanese have
merely changed their tools--exchanged the bow and arrow for the
sword; they are just as artistic and just as intelligent as in the
bow-and-arrow days; and they have proved themselves to be equal to, if
not better than, any other soldiers in the world.

Japan is not being Westernised in the smallest degree: she is merely
picking our brains. And how quickly the Japs will adopt a Western idea,
and improve upon it! The making of matches, and the underselling us in
all our common printed cotton and woollen Manchester goods, have not
spoilt their faculty for executing that exquisite Eugene dyeing for
which the Japanese are famous all the world over; the making of bolts
and bars and battleships has not prevented the me