But the deepest impression made on the Chinese was by the victory of the Eastern over the Western. The Japanese demonstrated that there was no essential inferiority of the East to the West, and that when an Eastern race adopted Western military methods it proved itself superior to the most powerful of the Western races. This was the lesson the battle of Mukden taught the Chinese, and which convinced the anti-foreign party in China, that however much they might hate the foreigner, they must adopt Western methods if they would retain their independence. The result was that the progressive and {13} anti-foreign parties found themselves at one. Both agreed that Western ideas were necessary. The first, because they believed in Western progress; the second, because they felt that the only way to preserve China from the hated foreigner was to learn the secret of his military power. The first thing to be done was to study Western education, and then they could hope to hold their own against the Western races, as Japan had more than held her own against the Russians. I believe the battle of Mukden will prove one of the turning points in the history of the world. Few of us have any conception of the bitterness of the humiliation of China. People speak of Russia as having been humiliated, but my experience is that the Russians looked at the whole question as a colonial war in which a bungling Government embroiled their country--a war which, if it demonstrated the incapacity of their officers, proved the courage of their soldiers. But the humiliation of China was intense. When one remembers the position that the Emperor occupies in China; when one also remembers the reverential feeling that exists towards ancestors, one realises what it must have meant to the Chinaman that the site of the tombs of their Emperors should have been the scene of that titanic struggle between the East and the West. But the result of that humiliation was to burn in the lesson that Japan had taken the right course, and that, however hateful were {14} Western ways, they were a necessity, and that every lover of China must do his best to introduce them into the Empire.