le to attend
because "his uniform had not been finished in time," Really, as all men
knew, he was sitting resentful and protesting within a few score yards of
the spot where his son was crowned.

The second absent figure was the Russian Consul-General, M. de Plancon. It
was announced that M. de Plancon was late, and so could not attend. Seeing
that M. de Plancon lived not ten minutes' walk from the palace, and that
the guests had to wait nearly an hour after the time announced before the
ceremony began, he must have overslept very much indeed on that particular
morning. Oddly enough, M. de Plancon is usually an early riser.

VIII

A JOURNEY TO THE "RIGHTEOUS ARMY"

It was in the autumn of 1906. The Korean Emperor had been deposed and his
army disbanded. The people of Seoul, sullen, resentful, yet powerless,
victims of the apathy and folly of their sires, and of their own indolence,
saw their national existence filched from them, and scarce dared utter a
protest. The triumphant Japanese soldiers stood at the city gates and
within the palace. Princes must obey their slightest wish, even to the
cutting of their hair and the fashioning of their clothes. General
Hasegawa's guns commanded every street, and all men dressed in white need
walk softly.

But it soon became clear that there were men who had not taken the filching
of their national independence lightly. Refugees from distant villages,
creeping after nightfall over the city wall, brought with them marvellous
tales of the happenings in the provinces. District after district, they
said, had risen against the Japanese. A "Righteous Army" had been formed,
and was accomplishing amazing things. Detachments of Japanese had been
annihilated and others driven back. Sometimes the Japanese, it is true,
were victorious, and then they took bitter vengeance, destroying a whole
countryside and slaughtering the people in wholesale fashion. So the
refugees said.

How far were these stories true? I am bound to say that I, for one,
regarded them with much scepticism. Familiar as I was with the offences of
individual Japanese in the country, it seemed impossible that outrages
could be carried on systematically by the Japanese Army under the direction
of its officers. I was with a Japanese army during the war against Russia,
and had marked and admired the restraint and discipline of the men of all
ranks there. They neither stole nor outraged. Still more recently I had
note