shing Feudalism in 1870 was the signal to toll the knell of
Bushido. The edict, issued two years later, prohibiting the wearing of
swords, rang out the old, "the unbought grace of life, the cheap defence
of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise," it rang
in the new age of "sophisters, economists, and calculators."

It has been said that Japan won her late war with China by means of
Murata guns and Krupp cannon; it has been said the victory was the work
of a modern school system; but these are less than half-truths. Does
ever a piano, be it of the choicest workmanship of Ehrbar or Steinway,
burst forth into the Rhapsodies of Liszt or the Sonatas of Beethoven,
without a master's hand? Or, if guns win battles, why did not Louis
Napoleon beat the Prussians with his _Mitrailleuse_, or the Spaniards
with their Mausers the Filipinos, whose arms were no better than the
old-fashioned Remingtons? Needless to repeat what has grown a trite
saying that it is the spirit that quickeneth, without which the best of
implements profiteth but little. The most improved guns and cannon do
not shoot of their own accord; the most modern educational system does
not make a coward a hero. No! What won the battles on the Yalu, in Corea
and Manchuria, was the ghosts of our fathers, guiding our hands and
beating in our hearts. They are not dead, those ghosts, the spirits of
our warlike ancestors. To those who have eyes to see, they are clearly
visible. Scratch a Japanese of the most advanced ideas, and he will show
a samurai. The great inheritance of honor, of valor and of all martial
virtues is, as Professor Cramb very fitly expresses it, "but ours on
trust, the fief inalienable of the dead and of the generation to come,"
and the summons of the present is to guard this heritage, nor to bate
one jot of the ancient spirit; the summons of the future will be so to
widen its scope as to apply it in all walks and relations of life.

It has been predicted--and predictions have been corroborated by the
events of the last half century--that the moral system of Feudal Japan,
like its castles and its armories, will crumble into dust, and new
ethics rise phoenix-like to lead New Japan in her path of progress.
Desirable and probable as the fulfilment of such a prophecy is, we must
not forget that a phoenix rises only from its own ashes, and that it is
not a bird of passage, neither does it fly on pinions borrowed from
other birds. "The Kin