ed with it shared this defeat, and the party desiring to adopt
the methods of foreign lands was triumphant. There was a
reorganization of the government, with the Mikado as its single and
supreme head. The entire feudal structure, with its Daimios and
Samurai, was swept away. A representative body was created holding a
relation to the Mikado similar to that of the Houses of Parliament to
the King of England. The rights of the people were safeguarded. In
other words, at a bound, an Oriental feudal and military despotism had
become a modern democratic free state. From this moment dates an
ascent from obscurity to an advanced type of civilization, accomplished
with a swiftness without a parallel in the history of nations.

Japanese youths, silent, intent, studious, were in European and
American universities, colleges, technical schools, learning the arts
of war and of peace. When war was declared between China and Japan
(1894), the world discovered that they had not studied in vain.

In order to understand the Chino-Japanese war, one must know something
of Korea, that, little peninsula jutting out between these two
countries, washed by the Yellow Sea on the west and by the Sea of Japan
on the east.

In the Koreans we seem to behold the wraith of a something which
existed long ago. There are traditions of ancient greatness, the line
of their present King stretching proudly back to 1390, and beyond that
an indefinite background of splendor and vista of heroic deeds which,
we are told, made China and Japan and all the East tremble! But to-day
we see a feeble and rather gentle race, eccentric in customs and dress
and ideals, with odd rites and ceremonials chiefly intended to placate
demoniacal beings to whom they ascribe supreme control over human
events. Nothing may be done by the King or his humblest subject
without consulting the sorcerers and exorcists, who alone know the
propitious moment and place for every important act. With no
recognition of a Supreme Being, no sacred books; without temples, or
art, or literature, or industries, excepting one or two of a very
simple nature, it is extremely difficult for the Western mind to
understand what life must mean to this people. That it is a degenerate
form of national life which must be either absorbed or effaced seems
obvious. And if the life of Korean nationality is prolonged in the
future, it will be simply because, like Turkey, it harmlessly holds a
strateg