Trumbull White

“ Once more on the land the Japanese army stormed Port Arthur, the strongest naval fort, known as the Gibraltar of China.
All these facts are viewed with amazement by the eyes of the world. For all that the people know about Japan and the Japanese is that the people of Japan are very artistic, as the producers of beautiful porcelain, embroidery, lacquer work and all sorts of artistic fancy goods, and they wonder how it is possible that such an artistic people as the Japanese could fight against sober, calm Chinamen. ”

“ While thus she was enjoying tranquility and cultivating the arts and learning in a secluded corner of the earth, in the western nations, endless struggles and everlasting contests completely revolutionized the old phases of the earth. The peace and culture of two centuries and a half, which Japan has enjoyed, exalted her to the certain state of civilization. But her isolated condition and tranquility lacked the systematic development of army and navy and the arts of international negotiation, which are the weapons vitally important in order to stand on the field of struggle for existence. ”

“ She has never infringed the ethics of international law, nor the comity of nations. It was China that provoked the eastern war, now raging in the Orient, but not Japan; the true idea of Japan, in the war, is, by conquest, to put the blame on China for refusing to adhere faithfully to the spirit of her treaties and for trying to keep Corea in barbarism, and for endeavoring to stop the progress of civilization in Eastern Asia. Her mission in the east is to crush the insolent and ignorant self-conceit of the Peking government and to reform the barbarous abuses of the Corean administration. ”

“ The palace of the sovereign has, however, a certain character of its own. It is a perfect labyrinth of courts and streets formed by the many separate houses, pavilions, and corridors or simple wooden partitions. The roofs are supported by horizontal beams varnished white, or gilded at the extremities, and decorated with small pieces of sculpture, many of which are very beautiful works of art. The ancient palace of the Tycoons is remarkable for boldness and richness of outline. Everything breathes a spirit of the times when the power and prosperity of the shogunate was at its height. ”

“ Whether this new born energy for affairs was to have staying power sufficient to launch the government on the unknown sea of foreign science, and save the empire from disruption was problematical, but the war still raged on, and out of its immediate issues, it was predicted by many, was to arise a state of thing which would mock the slow progress of mere evolutionary reform, by a cataclysm which might do in one day what a century of deliberation could not accomplish. ”

“ Coming from war ministries, marine ministries, finance ministries, an executive as elaborate and perfect as the machinery of a gun factory, every individual knowing and doing his duty without hurry and without friction, into China where there were none of these things at all, one would be puzzled to conceive how any war could be carried on between these countries except one of ultimate subjugation. China was in a sense full of troops, mostly disbanded without pay, but in such loose fashion as to enable them even to carry off the honors of war, in the shape of their rifles and accoutrements. ”

“ The whole nation of Japan now roused with sword in hand and marched against its formidable foe. Re-enforcements poured in from all quarters to swell the host of defenders. The fierce Mongolian force could not effect their landing, but were driven into the sea as soon as they reached the shore. Aided by a mighty typhoon, before which the Chinese armada was utterly helpless, the Japanese fiercely attacked the invaders and after a bloody struggle, they succeeded in destroying the enemy’s war ships, and killing all or driving them into the sea to be drowned. ”

“ But while superstition compels even the wise and the learned to pay homage to this faith, there is scarcely an educated man who would not repudiate a suggestion that he is a follower of Buddha; and though the common people throng the temples to buy charms and consult astrologers, they yet despise both the priests and the religion they profess. But Buddhism has after all been a blessing rather than a curse in China. It has to a certain extent lifted the mind of the people from the too exclusive consideration of mundane affairs, to the contemplation of a future state. ”

“ Japan’s treaty with Corea was as one country with another. There is no law for sending large armies to bully a country in this way and to tell it to change its system of government. Various powers are united in condemning the conduct of the Japanese, and can give no reasonable name to the army she now has in Corea. Nor has Japan been amenable to reason, nor will she listen to an exhortation to withdraw her troops and confer amicably upon what should be done in Corea. On the contrary, Japan has shown herself belligerent without regard to appearances, and has been increasing her forces there. ”

“ China is a greater country than Japan, and if the war had been allowed to go on the Japanese would have been whipped out of their boots and China would have annexed Japan as a colony. It is well for Japan that her people have been called off by the emperor, but the time will not be long before the war will be opened again, for it is written in the mystic language of the shrine that China and Japan cannot dwell forever on the same earth. ”

“ When I saw the Japanese march in, firing up the streets and into the houses, chasing and killing every live thing that crossed their path, I looked hard for the cause. I saw practically every shot fired, and I swear positively that not one came from any but Japanese. I saw scores of Chinese hunted out of cover, shot down, and hacked to pieces, and never a man made any attempt to fight. ”

“ With a government drawing for itself lines parallel with those of enlightened western nations, increasing the freedom of its people, the power of the people’s legislators, and the honesty of the people’s courts, Japan has every right to name herself as worthy of a place in full brotherhood with the family of civilized nations. ”

“ The same is true as to the nations of the earth. Those years during which they move onward in their national life and history in peace and quietness, however full of latent strength they may be, are not the ones which command the attention of the eyes of the world. It is the year of supreme test, of struggle, moral or physical, that furnishes crucial testimony what the nation really is. War is always a curse unless it be waged to advance justice and assure more worthy peace. ”

“ They also enjoy a great deal of pleasantry at our expense, finding it almost impossible to regard otherwise than as ludicrous our short cropped hair, tight fitting, ungraceful, and uncomfortable looking clothes, men’s thin soled leather shoes, tall stiff hats, gloves in summer time, the wasp-like appearance of ladies with their small waists, our remarkable ignorance of the general rules of propriety, and the strange custom of a man and his wife walking together in public! ”

“ One was constrained more and more to admire the organization of the Japanese, and the perfect order which everywhere prevailed. In a country so strictly policed, the police need never be called on to quell a disturbance, and the force itself constituted another military reserve, drilled and disciplined for any service. So complete was their network of armed watchmen, that a sparrow could hardly cross the road without its name and destination being recorded in the archives of the prefecture. Everything about every individual, whether foreign or native, was known to this intelligent government. ”

“ The uncared for and uncoffined little body is cast away anywhere; and as it is carried out of the door the house is swept, crackers are fired, and gongs beaten to frighten the spirit so that it may never dare enter the house again. ”

“ It is true that the Chinese know hardly anything of the modern arts and sciences and that there is no word in their language to designate some of them; but how much did our ancestors know two hundred years ago of chemistry, geology, philosophy, anatomy, and other kindred sciences. What did we know fifty years ago of the steamboat, the railroad, and the telegraph? And is our comparative want of knowledge a few years ago and that of our ancestors to be taken as evidence of inferiority of race and intellect? ”

“ One of those cyclones called by the Japanese tai-fu, of appalling velocity and resistless force, such as whirl along the coast of Japan and China during late summer and early fall of every year, burst upon the Chinese fleet. Nothing can withstand these maelstorms of the air. We call them typhoons. Iron steamships of thousands of horse power are almost unmanageable in them. The helpless Chinese junks were crushed together, impaled on the rocks, dashed against the cliffs or tossed on land like corks on the spray. Hundreds of the vessels sank. ”

“ Unfortunately, the rupture of relations with China forced upon us a war which, after a lapse of ten months, is not yet ended. During this period our ministers, in concert with the army, navy and diet, have done all in their power to further our aims in obedience to our instructions. Our ardent desire, with the assistance of our subjects, in loyalty and sincerity, is to restore peace and thereby attain our object—the promotion of national prosperity. Now that peace is negotiated and armistice proclaimed, a permanent cessation of hostilities is near at hand. ”

“ But such an erroneous notion would soon vanish if they came to learn the true nature and character of the Japanese.
More than once the world has seen that an artistic nation could fight. The Greeks demonstrated this long ago, and the French in the latter times have shown a shining example. Japan is reckoned as one of the most artistic people in the world, as the producer of beautiful things, as the lover of fine arts and natural beauties. The Japanese have proved the same as what the ancient Greeks and modern French have shown. ”

“ To a man, ay, to a woman, the whole people were for war to the knife. They scarcely knew, nor did they greatly care, for what, but having been without the luxury of a serious foreign war for two hundred or three hundred years, their military and patriotic spirits were raised over the invasion of Corea and the prospective conflict with China. Never was a stronger antithesis than that between Japanese and Chinese at the beginning of this conflict. ”

“ The 263man for the crisis was Okubo, a leader in the cabinet, the master spirit in crushing the rebellion, and now an ambassador at Peking. The result was that the Chinese paid in solid silver an indemnity of $700,000 and the Japanese disembarked. Japan single-handed, with no foreign sympathy, but with positive opposition, had in the interests of humanity rescued a coast from terror and placed it in a condition of safety. In the face of threatened war a nation having but one-tenth the population, area, or resources of China, had abated not a jot of its just demands nor flinched from battle. ”

“ From the sinking of the Kow-shing transport, up to the present time, Japan has an unbroken series of victories over China. At the battle of Asan she gained the first brilliant victories and swept all the Chinese put of Corea, and at Ping-Yang, by both tactics and superb strategy, crushed the best army of China, which Li Hung Chang brought up to the greatest efficiency, by the aid of many European officers, as if it had been an egg shell. Again, at the mouth of the Yalu River, she gained a brilliant naval victory over China, by completely destroying the Ping-Yang squadron. ”

“ The more enlightened of the Japanese are already beginning to recognize the superiority of the European forms of government. The upper classes are all sedulously imitating Paris and London fashions of dress. In our own country we have seen the prevalence of an offensive Anglomania among certain classes of society in the larger cities, but in Japan a corresponding mania for the forms of western civilization has become almost universal, and is reaching the real bulk of the nation. Such extraordinary capacity for change may mark a versatile but unreliable race ”