As an interested spectator, I sat on a few sleepers and watched where the shells dropped from both sets of guns. It was a casual pastime, and no one seemed to mind my being there. The gunners would, with highest glee, explain how the four-inchers were worked, would point away towards Hanyang Hill and tell you they were trying to pot the temple overlooking the Yangtze, and when a shell from the enemy dropped anywhere near there was a shout of enthusiastic mirth. They would look at one astutely, smile, inquire into one's family associations in characteristic Chinese style, and {75} were highly delighted if relevantly one could carry on conversation with them in Chinese. The average military observer would probably have declared the Imperial Army to be a peculiar military force. Into the daily routine the extravagant Chinese etiquette was worked in conjunction with a discipline quite strange to Chinese, and on the face of things it would not seem, viewed from camp life, that China's army was in any way a modern army. But that this Model Army of China is as much of a myth as some would have us believe, I, now in it all, could not for a moment endorse. The foreigner has always looked upon the Chinese as a man who would not fight him with the weapons of war; his main attack would be the weapons of commerce, of boycott, or of trust. But the Chinese Army to-day is certainly no myth. It is strong enough to preserve peace with other countries, if not to enter into any external strife with the idea of winning. That the Revolutionists had the numbers I would have been the first to admit, but the trained fighter is the man who wins in battle. Not one-fifth of their troops were trained soldiers; they have been seen to come out into the fighting line, wearing the uniform of the military it is true, to put the butts of their pieces upon their hips and let fly, until they saw their own men falling dead in front of them, shot from behind. But with the Northern Army it needed only a stroll round their camp to convince the most casual of observers that the Revolutionary's enemy was an army, doing things as an army should. The army defending the Throne was the product of twelve years of strenuous work by a great genius. The Northern Army was founded upon principles set down by Yuan Shih K'ai, the genius of things military in China, and that genius, using his brains but seeing nothing of the fight, was just then directing the operations as they proceeded.