given to other forms
of intemperance, is afire with new enthusiasm for athletics and for
military training; and he is already so physically adaptable that I
found him as hardy and untiringly energetic beneath an equatorial sun
in Singapore as in the rigorous climate of north-central Manchuria. It
made me wonder if the "meek who are to inherit the earth" in the end
may not prove to be the Chinese!

Perhaps if the United States were a less powerful nation, or if we
realized more fully the keenness of the coming world-struggle for
industrial supremacy, we might find our patriotism a stronger force in
warding off some of the evils that now threaten us. In his address to
the German navy, Emperor William recently urged the importance of
temperance because of the empire's need of strong, clear-headed men,
unweakened by dissipation; and there can be little doubt that some
such patriotic motive has had not a little to do with the anti-opium
movement in awakening China. Certainly the Japanese with their almost
fanatical love of country are easily influenced by such appeals, and
keep such reasons in mind in the training of their young. "For the
sake of the Emperor you must not drink the water from these condemned
wells; for the sake of the Emperor you must observe these sanitary
precautions--lest you start an epidemic and so weaken the {270}
Emperor's fighting forces!" So said the Japanese sanitary officers in
the war with Russia; and when the struggle ended Surgeon-General
Takaki was able to boast in his official report:

"In the Spanish-American War fourteen men died from disease to one
from bullets. We have established a record of four deaths from
disease to one from bullets."

In studying these Eastern peoples one is also led inevitably to such
reflections as Mr. Roosevelt gave utterance to in his Romanes lectures
a few months ago. Not only are the Orientals schooled from their youth
up to endure hardness like good soldiers, but their natural increase
contrasts strikingly with the steadily decreasing birth-rate of our
French and English stocks. In Japan I soon came to remark that it
looked almost as unnatural to see a woman between twenty and forty
without a baby on her back as it would to see a camel without a hump;
and Kipling's saying about the Japanese "four-foot child who walks
with a three-foot child who is holding the hand of a two-foot child
who carries on her back a one-foot child" came promptly to mind. In
vie