So, under the idea that peace was to last forever, and the morning calm never to know an evening storm, the nation relaxed all vigilance. Expecting no danger from the east, the military resources were neglected, the army was disorganized, and the castles were allowed to dilapidate into ruin. The moats filled and became shallow ditches, choked with vegetation, the walls and ramparts crumbled piecemeal, and the barracks stood roofless. As peace wore sweeter charms, and as war seemed less and less probable, so did all soldierly duties become more and more irksome. The militia system was changed for the worse. The enrolled men, instead of being called out for muster at assigned camps, and trained to field duty and the actual evolutions of war, were allowed to assemble at local meetings to perform only holiday movements. The muster rolls were full of thousands of names, but off paper the army of Corea was a phantom. The people, dismissing all thought of possibility of war, gave themselves no concern, leaving the matter to the army officials, who drew pay as though in actual war. They, in turn, devoted themselves to dissipation, carousing, and sensual indulgence. It was while the country was in such a condition that the summons of Japan’s greatest conqueror came to them and the Coreans learned, for the first time, of the fall of Ashikaga, and the temper of their new master. CHAPTER XII. EVENTS LEADING TO THE JAPANESE INVASION. China and Japan are to each other as England and the United States. The staid Chinaman looks at the lively Japanese with feelings similar to those of John Bull to his American “cousin.” Though as radically different in blood, language, and temperament as are the Germans and French, they are enough alike to find food for mutual jealousy. They discover ground for irritation in causes, which, between nations more distant from each other, would stir up no feeling whatever. China considers Japan a young, vain, and boasting stripling, whose attitude ought ever to be that of the pupil to the teacher, or the child to the father. Japan, on the contrary, considering China as an old fogy, far behind the age, decayed in constitution and fortune alike, and more than ready for the grave, resents all dictation or assumption of superiority. Even before their adoption of the forces of occidental civilization in this nineteenth century, something of this haughty contempt for China influenced the Japanese mind. Japan ever refused to become vassal or tributary to China, and the memory of one of her military usurpers, who accepted the honorary title of Nihon-O, or King of Japan, from the Chinese Emperor, is to this day loaded with increasing execration. It has ever been the practice of the Japanese court and people cheerfully to heap upon their mikado all the honors, titles, poetical and divine appellations which belong also to the Chinese emperor.