d political. No branch of modern art and science was
neglected, the best to be had from every nation being intelligently
studied by the inquisitive and quick-witted island youth.

The war with China first revealed to the world the marvellous progress
of Japan in the military art. Her armies were armed and disciplined in
accordance with the best system of the West, and her warlike operations
conducted on the most approved methods, though only native officers were
employed. The rapidity with which troops, amounting to eighty thousand
in all, and the necessary supplies were carried across the sea, and the
skilful evolution, under native officers, of a fleet of vessels of a
type not dreamed of in Japan thirty years before, was a new revelation
to the observing world. And in another direction it was made evident
that Japan had learned a valuable lesson from the nations of
Christendom. Instead of the massacres of their earlier wars, they now
displayed the most humanitarian moderation. There was no ill treatment
of the peaceful inhabitants, while ambulances and field hospitals were
put at the disposal of the wounded of both sides, with a humane kindness
greatly to be commended.

But the lessons taught in this war were of minor interest and importance
in comparison with those of a much greater war ten years later. In those
ten years the progress of Japan had been proceeding with accelerated
rapidity. There was little of leading value in the arts and industries
of the West which had not been introduced into this island empire, the
equipment of her army vied with that of the most advanced powers, her
navy possessed a number of the most powerful type of steel-clad
battle-ships, she had been admitted into the family of the great nations
by a compact on equal terms with Great Britain, and she had become
adapted to cope with powers vastly more capable in the arts of war than
China, to deal, indeed, with one of the greatest and much the most
populous of European nations.

This was soon to be shown. The Boxer outbreak of 1900 in China ended
with Manchuria practically possessed by Russia, a possession which that
nation seemed disposed to maintain in defiance of treaty obligations to
China and of the energetic protest of Japan. As a result, to the
surprise, almost to the consternation of the world, Japan boldly engaged
in war with the huge colossus which bestrode Asia and half of Europe,
and to the amazement of the nations showed a mil