high-speed machinery. This arsenal, which will furnish all the South of China in the near future with all its war material, is to be at Ching Yuan, on the North river, which is about one hundred miles north-west of Canton. The location has been very carefully chosen and due regard paid to a number of considerations. The mistake of having an arsenal within easy distance of the coast and consequently subject to surprise by a foreign enemy, is not going to be made again, and in the next Chinese war powerful forts will make it almost impossible to cripple China by seizing all warlike supplies in the area affected by hostilities at the

outset.

The location of the fourth arsenal, the Northern, has not yet been decided on, but certain facts lead me to believe that a spot near Kaifongfu, on the right bank of that most formidable obstacle, the Yellow river, will be finally selected. It is undoubtedly the safest place in North China and possesses a water-power not to be found elsewhere in the dry country. For the time being Yuan Shih-kai is spending all his available funds on the armament of his newly-raised infantry and artillery -a process which he finds most expensive and crippling in the present state of China's finances; and nothing will be done in the matter of an arsenal for a year or two.

Side by side with the wholesale reorganisation of the purely Chinese provincial forces now proceeding, there is another point which must not be

lost sight of. The Manchu or Banner troops are to be likewise entirely reorganised and reformed, and only a lack of funds delays this important measure. But even at the present moment the conversion of the old Peking Field Force, formerly numbering some 20,000 men, has been ordered, whilst the isolated Manchu garrisons scattered throughout the eighteen provinces have been lately receiving new Mauser rifles and some quickfiring artillery. Each of these Manchu garrison posts, under the command of a Tartar general, is in theory composed of five battalions of infantry, four regiments of cavalry and several batteries of artillery; and although of course in many cases these are mere paper forces, it would require but little reform to place all the Banner forces on a modern footing.

Nor need it be supposed that all this bustle is a paper bustle after the old Chinese manner. During a voyage of at least 2,500 miles through a number of provinces I was careful to pay special attention to the military question and to engage every Chinese officer and man time would permit in conversation. I was thus able to convince myself amply of several important things, chief of which is the following: that every Chinese commander and soldier has at last realised that rifles and ammunition must be properly kept, that drill must be constant, that discipline must be very strict, and that the art of war must be studied day and night before troops can dare to face modern

armies. Everywhere I found clean rifles and proper ammunition, suitable uniforms and splendid-looking men housed in good, modern barracks. In his summer straw hat and imitation khaki clothing or in his winter turban of sombre black and tight-fitting tunic and loose trousers, the modern Chinese soldier presents a most business-like and resolute appearance, and when a battalion of such fellows click through their drill, the immense gulf separating them from the former effete creatures who, miserably paid and entirely underfed, masqueraded as serious soldiery, is clearly apparent. And whilst

the ordinary man all over the world still pictures the Chinese soldier as this effete and worthless coolie, the fact is becoming more and more clear to European military agents in China that the Chinaman is not only not effete and worthless but that he is being developed into the most formidable soldier on the continent of Asia. Contemptuous of death, physically far superior to the Japanese, with an immense pride of race and a quickness and an ingenuity which far eclipse that of all other Eastern races, it requires but good leaders and a careful selection from the great masses of men available to evolve regiments, divisions, and army corps which, conscious of their strength, will defy the best troops of Europe. Nor has it escaped notice that the Chinese are natural artillerists, if such an expression is permissible that is to say, that everything which pertains to the laying and firing of guns, to the selection and masking of positions, comes quite

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naturally to them. The splendid eye which every Chinaman of the lower classes has, makes it merely a question of practice for them to become remarkable shots with either the rifle or the gun. for cavalry, on the plains of Mongolia a race of born horsemen exist who, forming part of the Manchu Banners, require only to be organised and drilled to become as good as most irregular cavalry.

In the past it has been the custom to take the yellow-skinned Chinaman of Southern and Central China as an example of the ordinary inhabitant of this great Empire, and not the tall, walnut-coloured man of the Northern provinces. What has been written elsewhere will have shown the erroneousness of this view. It is the North of China which has always in the end dominated the rest of the Empire, and it is the Northern soldier, the man drawn from the provinces North of the Yangtsze, who in the great reorganisation scheme is the dominant factor. Although things in China are in the curious, uneasy, ill-balanced and absurd state I have attempted to describe; although at most there are but eight divisions of the new troops; although the Chinese officer is in a transition stage and the majority of troops commanded by him can be duly classed as raw levies; and, finally, although generals of the old school such as Ma-Yu-Kun are still kept with their troops near the person of the old Empress Dowager, because of the internal conditions I have hinted at although all these things undoubtedly