And it may be added that the foreigner can remember
no occasion when he felt 'smaller,' or more completely shrivelled.
"Whilst it is safe to infer that the motives that underlie the
significant access of activity in military matters in Yuen-nan differ in
no way from those which have led to the feverish increase in armaments
in other parts of the world, such ideas that have yet been formed on
actual preparations for possible war are most crude. On paper the
appointments in the army and the accuracy of the figures of the
complement of rank and file admit of no question, but the practical
utility of their labors is quite another matter, and a matter which does
not appear to produce among the army officials any great mental
disturbance in their delusion that they are progressing. Yuen-nan is in
need of military reform, reform which will embrace a start from the very
beginning, and one of the first steps that should be taken is that those
who are to be in the position of administering training should find out
something about western military affairs, and so be in a position of
knowing what they are doing."
The above was my conscientious opinion in the middle of last year.
Now--in June of 1910--I have to write of enormous improvements and
revolutions in the drilling, in the armaments, in the equipment, in the
general organization of the troops and the conduct of them.
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