Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/39

 been told again and again, is still perpetually told, that her victory over China proved nothing about her competence to stand in the lists of the West. She will complete the proof, or try to complete it. Nothing is more certain, nothing more apparent to all that have watched her closely. Perhaps she has not yet formulated the project to herself in explicit terms. But it has found a lodgment in her heart, and unconsciously she is moulding her actions in obedience to it.

These are the reasons that render Japan such an interesting figure. She rivets our attention, not by what she has done, however remarkable that may seem, but rather by what she must still try to do. She has undertaken to demonstrate that an Eastern nation can act a leading part on the same stage with Western peoples, using the same properties and obeying the same directions. It is the first essay of the kind in history, and it will not be consummated without some stirring episodes.

From a physical point of view the Japanese race seems ill fitted for the competition upon which it has entered and for the grim struggle that lies before it. An army of Japanese is to an army of Europeans in respect of stature what an army of females in the Occident would be to an army of males. But the same might be said of the Sepoys or the Ghoorkas; yet no English general, estimating the results of a colli-