in the outcome;
and there is also a characteristic difference in point of religious
convictions, which may go some way in the same direction. The followers
of Islam appear on the whole to take the tenets of their faith at their
face value--servile, intolerant and fanatic--whereas the Russian
official class may perhaps without undue reproach be considered to have
on the whole outlived the superstitious conceits to which they yield an
expedient _pro forma_ observance. So that when worse comes to worst, and
the Turk finds himself at length with his back against the last
consolations of the faith that makes all things straight, he has the
assured knowledge that he is in the right as against the unbelievers;
whereas the Russian bureaucrat in a like case only knows that he is in
the wrong. The last extremity is a less conclusive argument to the man
in whose apprehension it is not the last extremity. Again, there is some
shadow of doubt falls on the question as to which of these is more
nearly in the German Imperial spirit.

On the whole, the case of China is more to the point. By and large, the
people of China, more particularly the people of the coastal-plains
region, have for long habitually lived under a regime of peace by
non-resistance. The peace has been broken transiently from time to time,
and local disturbances have not been infrequent; but, taken by and
large, the situation has habitually been of the peaceful order, on a
ground of non-resisting submission. But this submission has not commonly
been of a whole-hearted kind, and it has also commonly been associated
with a degree of persistent sabotage; which has clogged and retarded the
administration of governmental law and order, and has also been
conducive to a large measure of irresponsible official corruption. The
habitual scheme of things Chinese in this bearing may fairly be
described as a peace of non-resistance tempered with sabotage and
assassination. Such was the late Manchu regime, and there is no reason
in China for expecting a substantially different outcome from the
Japanese invasion that is now under way. The nature of this Japanese
incursion should be sufficiently plain. It is an enterprise in
statecraft after the order of Macchiavelli, Metternich, and Bismarck. Of
course, the conciliatory fables given out by the diplomatic service, and
by the other apologists, are to be taken at the normal discount of
one-hundred percent. The relatively large current