Trollope sniffed ponderously, and was about to comment when the little man of the Word resumed:
“Also, I am permitted to say—and this with a great and sweet joy—that our dean, war’s own favorite, Jerry Cardinegh, came up with me from Shanghai on the Empress, and that he will be here to-night with his daughter, Miss Noreen.”
The announcement was acclaimed.
“I heard he was coming,” said Feeney, “but how am I to meet the old champion—me, holding down his old chair-of-war on the Witness.”
“He’ll never think of it,” said Finacune. “Old Jerry is nearly out of sight—over the bay. He didn’t leave his state-room coming up—only let me see him once. His daughter is with him day and night. The old man thought he’d like to get into the zone of war once more—before he goes out on the last campaign, where we all ride alone.”
It is to be observed that the little Word man did not tell all he saw on the Bund at Shanghai.
The men repaired to the buffet to break the strain. Those were heavy days—those early February days in Tokyo. War was inevitable, but not declared. Tokyo was sort of pleased at her own forbearance. The vaccine of European civilization had worked with fullness and dispatch. Here was proof: the Russian minister had been allowed to clear, double-eyed and teeth still straight. The mobs in the street did not profess to understand the value of allowing the enemy to depart personally intact—but it was being civilized. The world was watching the young yellow nation’s first venture in humane war; after which, if she conducted herself prettily, the world would be pleased to admit her into the first flight of the powers, where all things having to do with economy, polity, expansion, revenue, and survival are done in a finished fashion. England was watching—and stood behind her. Japan must conduct herself in such a way as not to drag England into the conflict.
Japanese infants played soldiers; Japanese policemen played soldiers; rickshaw coolies, beneath the contempt of a soldier, dreamed of future incarnations when they should evolve into soldiers; Japanese merchants snuffled, rubbed their damp hands together, and wept internally because the Great Wheel of Fate had not skited them off into the military class, instead of among the low-brows of the shops. And the soldiers themselves—how they strutted and performed in the streets, critically mirroring each other and bowing profoundly, blind to all glory and sorrow not of the soldier, and important as a grist of young doctors just turned loose with their diplomas among the ills of the world.... Aye, funny and pitiful, the young Power looked in its Western pants and guns.
What did England think—smiling back at the peace of her Indian borders—of these wee, wet-nosed, scabby-headed Islanders (with their queer little cruet-stands buckled between their kidneys), in full cry with “Banzai Niphon” from cape to cape? What England thought was not what England said, as she reserved the front pages of her daily press for Japanese victories—whether or no. Not exactly an ally in spirit was wise old England, but an ally in letterpress—the veriest Titan of a press-agent.... Funny and pitiable indeed was the ranting, tramping Japanese infantry in the streets of Tokyo—funnier than stage infantry—quite like string-pulled marionettes of papier maché; but let the truth be told, the truth that rises clear from the final adjustment of objects in the perspective: The oil of all the chlorates, nitrates, and fulminates filled those queer little kidney-cruets; and these same little Japanese infantrymen proved packages—papier maché packages, if you like—of lyddite, bellite, cordite, romite, hellite, and other boiled-down cyclones.