To anyone who has seen the Chinese soldiers at home in Western China, it is diverting to observe the credence which is given to Chinese statements of the armed strength of Western China.

How much longer are we to persist in regarding the Chinese, as they now are, as a warlike power?
In numbers, capacity for physical endurance, calm courage when well officered, and powers unequalled by any other race of mankind of doing the greatest amount of labour on the smallest allowance of food, their potential strength is stupendous.

But they are not advancing, they are stationary; they look backwards, not forwards; they live in the past.

Weapons with which their ancestors subdued the greater part of Asia they are loath to believe are unfitted for conducting the warfare of to-day.

Should Japan bring China to terms, she can impose no terms that will not tend towards the advancement of China.