to make the
acquisition of rank his purpose, or to have any regard for money.

THE MILITARY ART

As for tactics, individual prowess was the beginning and the end of
all contests, and strategy consisted mainly of deceptions, surprises,
and ambushes. There were, indeed, certain recognized principles
derived from treatises compiled by Sung and 'Ng,* two Chinese
generals of the third century A.D. These laid down that troops for
offensive operations in the field must be twice as numerous as the
enemy; those for investing a fortress should be to the garrison as
ten to one, and those for escalade as five to one. Outflanking
methods were always to be pursued against an adversary holding high
ground, and the aim should be to sever the communications of an army
having a mountain or a river on its rear. When the enemy selected a
position involving victory or death, he was to be held, not attacked,
and when it was possible to surround a foe, one avenue of escape
should always be left to him, since desperate men fight fiercely. In
crossing a river, much space should separate the van from the rear of
the crossing army, and an enemy crossing was not to be attacked until
his forces had become well engaged in the operation. Birds soaring in
alarm should suggest an ambush, and beasts breaking cover, an
approaching attack. There was much spying. A soldier who could win
the trust of the enemy, sojourn in his midst, and create dissensions
in his camp, was called a hero.

*See Captain Calthrop's The Book of War.

Judged by this code of precepts, the old-time soldier of the East
has been denounced by some critics as representing the lowest
type of military ethics. But such a criticism is romantic. The
secret-intelligence department of a twentieth-century army employs
and creates opportunities just as zealously as did the disciples of
Sung and 'Ng. It is not here that the defects in the bushi's ethics
must be sought. The most prominent of those defects was indifference
to the rights of the individual. Bushido taught a vassal to sacrifice
his own interest and his own life on the altar of loyalty, but it did
not teach a ruler to recognize and respect the rights of the ruled.
It taught a wife to efface herself for her husband's sake, but it did
not teach a husband any corresponding obligation towards a wife. In a
word, it expounded the relation of the whole to its parts, but left
unexpounded the relation of the parts to one another.

A co