Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/35

 edly not the conquest of Korea but the conquest of China. Korea was simply the stepping-stone, and had Korea consented to be put to such a use she need never have suffered as she did. The Koreans of the sixteenth century were, however, loyal to their Chinese commitments, and just as Belgium of the twentieth century refused to be made a passageway for the German armies into France, so did Korea refuse to allow Hideyoshi a free hand, and desperately resisted. Her castles and her armies were destroyed one after another, the Japanese advance finally reaching Pingyang [sic], although never going beyond.

It was Korean sea-power which finally saved the nation. The Chinese, to ward off the Japanese piratical raids on the Yangtsze coasts, had designed a heavily-timbered ship completely shut in—a sort of floating tank—which made it impossible for the dread Japanese swordsmen of those days to board and get to grips with their enemy. The Koreans, whose junk intercourse with China, notably with Shantung and the Liaotung, was constant, had improved on this model and sheathed it with iron scales, making it look like a turtle. To Korea, curiously enough, belongs the honour of using the first ironclads in history; for with a navy composed