exist, the new army will steadily grow up and become more and more efficient and numerous every year. When the Empress Dowager dies or is forced into retirement, as must shortly happen; when the old generals are bought off, and when the country's finances are in a more healthy condition— then the number of troops ready to take the field will increase with astonishing rapidity. In any case in 1906 there will be 100,000 well-drilled and wellorganised men and another 200,000 partially reorganised standing behind them. By 1908 these figures will have doubled, whilst in the dim background will lurk half-a-million other men, perhaps untrained, but every one of them possessing modern rifles and plenty of good ammunition. This year the Hankow-Peking Railway will be completed and place the middle Yangtsze within a few hours of the North-a revolutionary state of affairs for such a slow-moving country as China. In five years

railways will link up all the outlying parts of the Empire, and make the rapid movement of large bodies of troops possible. At Tientsien there is an astute and ambitious Viceroy who understands what military power means as well as any European expert. Already it is understood that an offer has been made him which may be accepted one daythe supreme command and the absolute control of all the land-forces of China. In Yuan Shih-kai's hands an army far superior to that of Turkey would be evolved in less than five years: in ten or fifteen years Japan's forces would be so outnumbered

that she would not dare to attack her big neighbour.

Whether a supreme commander of the Yuan Shikai type is found or not is, however, of no paramount importance at the present moment. The question of questions is that the wholesale rearmament and re-organisation of the Chinese army has been at last openly decided on and admitted by every high official as the only course which will free China of the dangers which surround her. The initial steps have all been taken or are being taken in three or four years all the arsenals will be ready, a sufficient number of officers properly trained, a sufficient number of weapons bought and sufficient funds collected. Then the refortification scheme will commence, and with railways connecting the coast with inland places, men will be able to be massed in surprising numbers. For the time being no movement will be made which can be construed by anyone into meaning that the day is approaching when a reckoning will have to be made by the debtor Powers; the Chinese thoroughly understanding that nothing can be possibly done for some years to come, and that the one great object is to gain time and strengthen the country as quickly as the finances will allow.

Fifteen months ago people might have laughed at all this; after what Manchuria has shown, no one will laugh, for the Far East has ceased to be merely amusing.

And one last word: China and her swarming

millions, who now number nearly ten times the population of Japan, is and will be to the Continent of Asia what Russia is and will be to the Continent of Europe. Russia has temporarily failed because her imagination-that immense and wonderful imagination-has been too big for her. China has failed often, too, for other reasons. But, failures or no failures, considered in its broadest aspect, the Chinese are destined to be one of the three great nationalities of the world. Had Napoleon's horizon not been limited in the manner it was, his famous dictum might have been modified.

At the bottom of the ladder, therefore, with his foot still on the last rung, stands the immense Chinese giant, now with rifle slung clumsily across his back. As he looks blinkingly skyward, does it mean that he aspires to makes the stars his tents? Who can say ?-for, subject to strange movements of passion, his character is too complex to be analysed.

Meanwhile the Peking diplomats sit contentedly in their Ghetto-like Legation fortress, knowing nothing of what goes on around them. Fortress, forthsooth! In twelve hours the massed fire of Chinese guns would level everything to the ground, and, twenty minutes after, resolute battalions would butcher every living soul if they wished.

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHINA, HER RELIGIONS AND THE MISSIONARY

QUESTION

It is one of the curious phases of the Far Eastern question that side by side with the neverending newer political problems the missionaries and their work in China continue to be one of the greatest difficulties. Whether, as has been the case in Japan, a more enlightened Government in China will relegate the missionary question to the background, to which it belongs, by the simple process of decreeing in unmistakable terms a broad tolerance, and enforcing such tolerance by drastic measures if necessary, it is too soon to say; for in China there have always been a great number of difficulties which have never existed elsewhere. And it is worth while remembering that in the old days in Japan, when it was felt that missionaries and their converts were becoming a menace to the unity of the country, far more terrible measures were adopted by the Shogunate to stamp out the new sects than any that have been noticed in China. With these few introductory remarks, it is well to pass immediately to an examination of the past and