Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/252

RV 224 modern creations. There was nothing in the history of Japan to suggest her competence for managing such machines. Yet the excellence of her military organisation was fully demonstrated in her campaign against China, in 1894—1895, and again in the Peking expedition of 1900. In the former she had to undertake the most difficult task that falls to the lot of a belligerent, the task of sending over-sea two corps d'armée (aggregating a hundred and twenty thousand men), and maintaining them for several months in widely separated fields,—one in eastern and central Manchuria; the other in the Liaotung peninsula and, subsequently, in Shantung province. The effort did not appear to embarrass her. There was no sign of confusion or perplexity; no break-down of the commissariat or transport arrangements; no failure of the ambulance or hospital service. Everything worked smoothly, and the public were compelled to recognise that Japan had not only elaborated a very efficient piece of military mechanism, but had also acquired ability to employ it to the best advantage. The same inference was suggested by her navy. Although during two and a half centuries her people had been debarred by arbitrary legislation from navigating the high seas, the twenty-fifth year after the repeal of these crippling laws saw the State in possession of a squadron of thirty-three serviceable ships-of-war, officered and manned solely by Japanese, constantly manoeu-