Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 37, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 May 1905 — JAPAN’S BEST. [ARTICLE]

JAPAN’S BEST.

w* Can Put Half a Million of Them In the Field. In all the world. I have never se«t finer fellows than some of Japan * troops. The Tokio Guards were superb, and the general body of the infantry very fine indeed. The best the nation ie now at the front For five long years Japan was selecting these men, picking them, choosing them, trying them, getting them ready tor that fateful February day when hell was to be let loose upon *he peaceful earth. The Russian effleers In Japan eaw i\e preparations and sneered. Today tney are reaping the reward* es those eheap sneers, just as we harvested the frnlts es disaster which Tory folly, Tery Insolence and want of common sense prepared for us during the first six months, when we were so nebly taking the Transvaal and Free State from the fine Burgher breed to give them to the Park lane Chinaman and the German cheap trader. I made it my business to look beyond the army corps the Japanese w«re rushing to the front while I was in Japan. I went Into the Interior of th» country as far as I could get in company with a fellow journalist of great experience. I looked at the mtn from whom the Mikado will have te draw his fighting forces a year hence, when the grand fellows he has la action are killed or worn out with weunds and marching, longeontiaued struggle, shattered the frightful horrors of a winter campaign. That they will die Ilka heroes at the command of their rule: all the world knows, and when they are dead, or when they are stale and sore, they will have te be replaced. a»s I de not think that when she Is tried te the uttermost Japan can. from first to last, put more thee 506,•Ofi really high-class men into the field. There is a tremendous drop In the calibre of the class the fighters ere coming from. Many jeneratlons es semi-slavery, of ill-breeding, of low diet, of wretched p*y and ceaseless work have thinned the ooelie blood, and there is even a greater difference between coolies and the class I have refered to than there is between the coolies of India and the Sikhs and the Gourkas. —A. G. Hales In London Daily News.