The foregoing are but examples which might be multiplied indefinitely, of the antitheses of Chinese and Japanese character and mode of action. If to all this is added the fact that the Japanese are a people who delight in war, while the Chinese abominate it, no further search is needed for explanation of the actual result. It is simply ignorance overcome by science, indifference by energy.
The Chinese have conducted the campaign in the manner those best acquainted with them would have predicted, doing on most occasions the utterly wrong thing, or stumbling on the right thing at the wrong time in the wrong way. But the most pessimistic prophet could hardly have predicted the utter inaptitude of the Chinese military movements. It is not only that they have failed to learn the modern art of war, but that they have forgotten the old methods. It was thought that Chinese troops, though deficient in enterprise, might at least make a respectable defense. They were advised never to risk a pitched battle, but to retreat slowly, giving trouble to the enemy by night attacks on his baggage, and compelling him to use up an army corps to keep open his line of communication. They failed in every point, and allowed themselves to be chased and caught like sheep, losing stores, guns, and munitions. When all else failed, it was said that winter would come to their assistance, as the Japanese could never stand the cold, while the Chinese and Manchoos were inured to it. But when the cold came it was found that it was not the Japanese but the Chinese who suffered, having abandoned their warm clothing in precipitate flight. Their heart was never in the business, and nothing therefore could go right with the Chinese conduct of the war.
While the war was incubating, China had to make up her mind how she was to meet the aggression of the Japanese in Corea. Candid friends, who knew well that her inchoate forces could never be a match for any organized army whatsoever, commended strictly defensive strategy. She was caught in the false position—in a military sense, though it was politically correct—of having a small force isolated in southern Corea, while the Japanese were occupying the capital in strength. The fighting value of the respective fleets was as yet an unknown quantity, but on the Japanese side there was confidence in their own superiority, and on the part of the Chinese a tacit acquiescence in that estimate. Under such circumstances an over-sea campaign was an absurdity for China, and the commonest prudence dictated that the small garrison at Asan be withdrawn before the outbreak of war.
SINKING OF THE KOW-SHING. (Drawn by a Chinese Artist.)
This crisis in affairs was met, as crises usually are in China, by divided counsels; moral cowardice on the part of those who knew, blind rage on the part of those who did not know, and the submission of the judgment of the informed to the arbitrary decrees and even the insidious advice of the uninformed. To speak plainly, Li Hang Chang, on whom the burden of the war would in all cases rest, and who knew something, though very little, of the power of discipline and organization, and who from the first was strongly opposed to the intervention in Corea, which was forced on him by pressure applied from Peking, was for withdrawing the garrison from Asan. In answer to his memorials to the throne, he had obtained the imperial authority and had hired transports to bring the troops over into Chinese territory. But other counsels supervened, and Li Hung Chang refrained from giving effect to his own views. As the Japanese were by imperial fiat to be driven out of Corea, it followed that the garrison at Asan must be strengthened, and China committed herself to the conditions of war dictated by the enemy, an offensive war oversea, which was entirely beyond China’s capacity.
NAVAL SKIRMISH, JULY 25TH. (Drawn by a Chinese Artist.)
There were still discussions and hesitations up to the moment of dispatching troops by sea to Corea. When the expedition of troops was seen to be inevitable, the Chinese were advised to take at least the precaution of having the transports escorted by a strong naval squadron. This was decided to be done, and the ill-fated Kow-shing left Taku on the clear understanding that an escort of warships would join her outside Wei-hai-wei, which was two hundred and twenty miles distant, and roughly half way to Asan. But before the transport had got so far on her voyage, the official weathercock had set in another direction. The diplomatic Yuan-si-Kai, former resident in Corea, where he had done so much to irritate the Japanese, now advised that the appearance of warships with the transports might give umbrage to the Japanese, and in deference to this opinion, before the pendulum had time to swing back, the Kow-shing with twelve hundred men on board, was sent unprotected to the Bay of Asan. The Japanese consular establishment, with its wonderfully organized intelligence department, was still in Tien-tsin, perfectly informed of everything that was being said and done in the most secret places, and making free use of the telegraph wires.
