NOTE AND COMMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVI, Issue 254, 31 October 1904, Page 2

NOTE AND COMMENT.

There is un obstinate and general sense that JaIS JAPAN A LIT- pan is one of TLE POWER? the "little" Powers of the world. It is very gallant, inventive, and brilliant, but it has no staying powor. Yet this is an- illusion, one of many the world has cherished about Japan. The geography of Japan, as the London Spectator points out, is by no means iietty. " Its total area, without counting Formosa, is by twenty-seven thousand square miles greater than that of the l)iiti.sh Isles, and as large a porportion of it is fertile and thickly populated. That population- again, is forty-four millions, or three millions greater than our own (1901), six millions gi-eater than ■that of Fiance, and almost aqiial to that of Austria-Hungary. II the word '-'little," again, refers to strength for war, that strength is in many respects superior to our own, We could probably destroy the Jaanese Fleet, but the Japanese Fleet has destroyed that of Russia, and Could, if allowance is made for position, a contest wi th that ol France or Germany wllich would pot be absolutely hopeless. As regards »ol<|ieis, Japan has a conscription, I and the conscription obviously works. Within 'the last six months- tho country has sent put six armies, each nearly oijual to either of the forces ttat contended at Wia/tjKrloo. Wo '■ <'»»<•• a gffttt tiling 'When jve sent Mghty" thousand men to India in 1857, and an extraordinary - one when we transported two hundiwl thousand men to South AflTCa in 1900. But Japan transported more than four hundred thousand nien across the sea, mid is now defying the Russians at Li-ao-yang and Port Arthur with armies greater in ttla aggregate than that which Napoleon 111. mobilised for thie\ invasion of Germany.

'We can Iniit attribute the illusion of the Cont/iTIIE SECRET OF ncnt to two THE -ILLUSION, causea - one a

false analogy, ami the other a mistake produced by the history. Ilhe false analogy is that the Russian*!, like the Chinese, have been unabla to believe that an undersized people could be anything but a leehle iioople—an im~ presu.on also prevailed here lor a moment, though a nation that lias so oiU'n admired the fighting qualities of its Ghoorka , soldiers ought to huve ibetm heartily ashamed of it. There is reason to believe thnt the "Roman soldiers who conquered tho world were by means big men. and since the invention of gunpowder all that is demanded of the private is strength to carry weight, a capacity of quick marching, and endurance under adverse conditions as to food and climate. The we.ght of the fighting-line tells very little. Coeur die Lion could not have (lushed through a Japanese square, or have stood unhurt at the door of Front de Boeuf's castle, if the defenders had been using rifles instead of stones and beams. The mistake is the fixed belief, justified in great part by history, that an Asiatic , army can never face a European one of equal numbers in a jytched Held unless tho latter is "deficient either in willingness or in military equipment. The usual exception —the victories of the Janissaries—has little to do with the matter, for the Janissary regiments were lvcruited from the tribute of European children. We confess that upon this subject we share the surprise which helps to delude the Kussaans. There is nothing in the history of Asia, at least within the last two hundred years, which points to the possibility that an Asiatic State might in the course of centuries produce, without employing European' officers, a lighting force of, the kind that the Mikado now controls. It is not a rushing force,such as has from time, to time swept in a whirlwind ovir Asia and Eastern Europe; biit in all- that soldiership requires it is a civilised army, led by able tacticians,' and supplied with (ill the munitions l and commissariat, "•quired witli a completeness that has rarely marked large European armies. So far as we know, it has left no necessity for the device of requisitions with which Napoleop's marshals we*e never <jult«i able to dispense., The causes of the immense mental development—for it must be mental which has produced so astounding: a result, reuiaiji as ypt; tinrevealed : but of the fact the Russians have the fullest proof, and the persistence; of their illusion in the teeth of that proof is one more evidence that certain forms of prejudice survive the refutation even of events."