ficulty, and she has
constantly at command any quantity of the most approved war material, so
long as there are foreigners to sell and she has the money to buy; to
say nothing of what she can now to a certain extent manufacture for
herself. But of strategy and the general science of war her officers are
entirely ignorant, and beyond the capability of hurling huge masses of
men at the enemy, irrespective of all consequences, she is in no way
formidable as a military Power in the European sense of the term, nor
could her troops permanently hope to hold their own against those of any
Western State. Even the Japanese, in the little affair with China which
threatened the peaceful relations of the two countries not long ago,
showed themselves quite equal to the occasion, and their sailors and
soldiers pined to exhibit their prowess, and prove the value of their
recent acquirements in the art of war, as against the conservative and
unpractical Chinese. If the rules of civilized warfare are to the
Chinese a sealed book, still less can they be said to appreciate its
humane side. Their officers fail to value the necessity, and indeed do
not seem to possess the power, of protecting their own countrymen from
the general license which marks the march of soldiery through, or the
military occupation of, any peaceable district; and in the wholesale
barbarities which invariably distinguish their triumphs over a conquered
foe, they are scarcely to be surpassed by savages of the lowest type.
Little more can be said in favour of the Chinese in respect of their
relations with England and other Western nations. They have treaties of
peace and commerce with the leading Powers, it is true, and they do not
fail to act up to the strict letter of these engagements as construed by
themselves. But the whole history of their foreign intercourse since
1842 has shown that the Chinese Government has borne with ill grace the
restrictions thus imposed upon it, and has embraced every opportunity to
evade them in spirit, whilst professing to carry them out in the
letter. Trade has been everywhere hampered by vexatious imposts
cunningly introduced on all kinds of pretexts, and as pertinaciously
persisted in, in spite of pointed remonstrances on the part of foreign
representatives. Outrages of a glaring kind have been passed over
without redress, or perhaps with a show of redress so ingeniously
conceded as to evince distinct sympathy with the perpetrators of t