l and Radical parties. There are a hundred things which I ought to
have done, but somehow or other the bugles began to blare through the
chill of the morning, and I heard the tramp of armed men under my
window. The parade-ground was within a stone's throw of the Tokio hotel;
the Imperial troops were going on parade. Would _you_ have bothered your
head about politics or temples? I ran after them.

It is rather difficult to get accurate information about the Japanese
army. It seems to be in perpetual throes of reorganisation. At present,
so far as one can gather, it is about one hundred and seventy thousand
strong. Everybody has to serve for three years, but payment of one
hundred dollars will shorten the term of service by one year at least.
This is what a man who had gone through the mill told me. He capped his
information with this verdict: "English army no use. Only navy any
good. Have seen two hundred English army. No use."

On the parade-ground they had a company of foot and a wing of what, for
the sake of brevity, I will call cavalry under instruction. The former
were being put through some simple evolutions in close order; the latter
were variously and singularly employed. To the former I took off the hat
of respect; at the latter I am ashamed to say I pointed the finger of
derision. But let me try to describe what I saw. The likeness of the Jap
infantryman to the Gurkha grows when you see him in bulk. Thanks to
their wholesale system of conscription the quality of conscripts varies
immensely. I have seen scores of persons with spectacles whom it were
base flattery to call soldiers, and who I hope were in the medical or
commissariat departments. Again I have seen dozens of bull-necked,
deep-chested, flat-backed, thin-flanked little men who were as good as a
colonel commanding could desire. There was a man of the 2d Infantry whom
I met at an up-country railway station. He carried just the proper
amount of insolent swagger that a soldier should, refused to answer any
questions of mine, and parted the crowd round him without ceremony. A
Gurkha of the Prince of Wales' Own could not have been trimmer. In the
crush of a ticket-collecting--we both got out together--I managed to run
my hand over that small man's forearm and chest. They must have a very
complete system of gymnastics in the Japanese army, and I would have
given much to have stripped my friend and seen how he peeled. If the 2d
Infantry are equal to sample, t