The Japanese nation at the same moment presented a rare spectacle. To a man, ay, to a woman, the whole people were for war to the knife. They scarcely knew, nor did they greatly care, for what, but having been without the luxury of a serious foreign war for two hundred or three hundred years, their military and patriotic spirits were raised over the invasion of Corea and the prospective conflict with China. Never was a stronger antithesis than that between Japanese and Chinese at the beginning of this conflict. It was the perfection of order and of precision against slovenliness and carelessness; the pitting of a trained athlete against a corpulent brewer who hated fighting. China has in her history had good soldiers, but her system does not produce nor encourage them. Despised by the literary class, which has been in absolute control of everything, the soldier, having little chance of fame, and feeling himself as belonging to a degraded class, has taken naturally to pillage. If he has hoped to succeed to honors, it has been as likely to be by corrupt interest as by meritorious service, for the Chinese have had no appreciation of military excellence. Of course an army, however numerous, composed of such unkindly material, is but a mob, and if the Chinese had the spirit of soldiers they lacked the arms, for in a service built up on corruption it was natural to expect that the funds allotted for equipment would find other destinations.
After the war broke out, immense efforts were made by Japan in mobilizing troops and transporting them across the straits to Corea. The reserve was called out, and from every house and every shop some one was drafted to serve with the colors. So perfect, however, was the machine, that all this was accomplished without the least visible disturbance to the internal business of the country, and with such secrecy that it was only through reports of trains full of troops passing at night, and occasional train loads of war material, that any inkling was obtained of what was going on. The embarkation was kept equally secret, even when whole fleets of transports were engaged.
One was constrained more and more to admire the organization of the Japanese, and the perfect order which everywhere prevailed. In a country so strictly policed, the police need never be called on to quell a disturbance, and the force itself constituted another military reserve, drilled and disciplined for any service. So complete was their network of armed watchmen, that a sparrow could hardly cross the road without its name and destination being recorded in the archives of the prefecture. Everything about every individual, whether foreign or native, was known to this intelligent government. Every foreigner’s house was frequented by spies, in the guise of peddlers or servants, who reported minutely to their official employers. It was the same abroad. Japanese spies had examined every Chinese ship and fort, had measured the fighting power of every Chinese regiment. Japan knew the rottenness of Chinese naval and military administration better perhaps than the Chinese themselves. Japan was, in short, one great intelligence department, and it began to prove in a most unexpected way that “knowledge is power.”
Coming fresh from Japan to Tien-tsin, the port of Peking, whence the direction of the war was to be carried on, one would be astounded at the aspect of China. The Celestial Empire in war times contrasted so completely with its hostile neighbor that one might imagine oneself in another planet. The silent, stolid action of the one country and the confused bustle of the other were the strongly evident contrasts. Coming from war ministries, marine ministries, finance ministries, an executive as elaborate and perfect as the machinery of a gun factory, every individual knowing and doing his duty without hurry and without friction, into China where there were none of these things at all, one would be puzzled to conceive how any war could be carried on between these countries except one of ultimate subjugation. China was in a sense full of troops, mostly disbanded without pay, but in such loose fashion as to enable them even to carry off the honors of war, in the shape of their rifles and accoutrements. Some of these had sought and found an honest living, but many had gone to swell the ranks of brigandage. The troops in active service belonged to the great system of sham in which China revelled. The levies on paper and on pay rolls bore no direct correspondence with either the men or the arms. Neither the army nor the navy was a fighting service, but a means of living; and while generals, colonels and captains practically absorbed the naval and military expenditure, the custom of the country permitted the ranks to be robbed and starved, while those officials grew rich.
Vast as were the numbers of the fighting men of China on paper, they were but a very small proportion to the huge population of that empire. The old Chinese army in its three divisions of Manchoo, Mongol, and native Chinese did not exceed the nominal strength of one million, and all the efforts of military reformers have been devoted to increasing the efficiency and not the size of that force. The Green Flag, or Luh-ying corps, still represented the bulk of the army, furnishing on paper a total of six hundred and fifty thousand men scattered through the nineteen provinces, excluding the new province of Manchooria. It has been controlled by the local viceroys and governors who may in some instances have attempted to improve its efficiency, but as a general rule the force has had little or no military value.
When the Tai-Ping rebellion was finally crushed, the Ever Victorious army was disbanded, and the Viceroy Li Hung Chang, took into his pay a considerable number of these disciplined and experienced soldiers who had taken their part in a succession of remarkable achievements. When he was transferred to Pechili he took with him these men as a sort of personal bodyguard, and with the avowed intention of organizing an army that would bear comparison with European troops. He was engaged on this task for nearly twenty-five years. At the commencement this force numbered about eighteen thousand men. In 1872 the viceroy took into his service several German officers, who devoted themselves with untiring energy to the conversion of what was not unpromising material into a regular army of the highest standard. The training of this force was carried on with the greatest possible secrecy, and no European officers except those serving with it had any opportunity of forming an opinion. But it was known at the beginning of the war that the Black Flag army, as it was called, numbered about fifty thousand men.
After Li Hung Chang’s army, and scarcely inferior to it in strength and importance, came the two branches of the old Tartar army, both of which were recently subjected to some military training, and more or less equipped with modern weapons. These were the old Banner army, and the army of Manchooria, the total strength of the former being some three hundred thousand. Up to a comparatively recent time nothing had been done to make this force efficient. Many of the troops were armed with nothing but bows and arrows, and a kind of iron flail. In the last fifteen years, however, part of the Banner army, called the Peking Field force, was organized by the late Prince Chun, father of the reigning emperor and raised to a fair degree of efficiency. The second Tartar force, the army of Manchooria, contained some eighty thousand men who had received training and approximately modern weapons. Out of these, thirty thousand men, all armed with rifles, have made their headquarters at Mukden, the old capital of the Manchoos.
The Japanese reproached the Chinese with having no commissariat. Neither had they telegraphs, ambulance, or hospital services. Their habit was to live on the country in which they happened to be, and make it a desert. The Corean campaign was expected to form no exception to this rule, and the plains in the northwest, in the region first occupied by the Chinese after the abandonment of Asan, were early deserted by their inhabitants. Yet there were exceptions to this method of procedure. The force that was sent under General Yeh to Asan to quell the insurrection there, treated the natives with kindness and were consequently much liked. The general had funds entrusted to him, to distribute among the poor people who were suffering from want, and miraculous to say he did not steal the money, but spent all, and even, it is said, some of his own, in benevolence to the Coreans.
At the opening of the war the functions of a war ministry, marine ministry, finance ministry, with their staff of experts, were in China discharged by one old man, without any staff, who had stood for thirty years between the living and the dead. The emperor issued edicts without providing the means of carrying them out; all the rest, whether in gross or in detail, devolved on Li Hung Chang, who like another Atlas was bearing the whole rotten fabric of Chinese administration on his shoulders.
The supreme command of the Corean expeditions was first offered to Liu Ming-Chuan, who defended Formosa in 1884, but that astute old soldier declined on the ostensible ground of age and defective sight, but really because, as he said, peace would be made before he could reach Tien-tsin[Tien-tsin]. The command was next offered to Liu Kin-tang, the real conqueror of Kashgar, for which the Governor-General Tso obtained the credit. He also declined, but was overruled by the emperor, and started from his home in the interior. His journey in the height of the summer heat was too much to endure, and he died in his boat before reaching the coast. The command was then entrusted to a civilian, Wu Ta-cheng, who distinguished himself in closing a great breach on the Yellow River some years ago, and who has lately been governor of Hu-nan. This promising official was therefore chosen to go to Corea as imperial commissioner to command the generals, no one of whom had been in authority over another.