The charges against the Japanese of violence and fraud in Korea may be divided into four classes: those which are important and true; those which are trivial and only partly true; those which are exaggerated; and those which are wholly false. Of the first kind there are a few only; of the second there are many; of the third there are even a greater number; and of the fourth there are not a few. In judging the conduct of the Japanese Government and its officials of all ranks and classes, as distinguished from the conduct of adventurous and unscrupulous individual Japanese, the material and social condition of affairs in the peninsula during and immediately after the Russo-Japanese war cannot fairly be left out of the account. One complaint brought by its most unsympathetic critics against the Government is that it did not foresee the influx of undesirable characters into Korea during the war and make sufficient provision for their control. But precisely the opposite of this complaint is true. The military and other coolies and camp-followers had given much trouble and embarrassment to the Japanese officials in the war with China. Accordingly, the military authorities determined at the beginning of the war with Russia to avoid such complications by composing the military train wholly of enlisted men. Thus many recruits—students, professional men, and tradesmen—who did not come up to the standard set for the soldier, or who were not ready for service in the ranks, served as cart-pullers, burden-bearers, and in other laborious and humble ways. The conduct of the army, and of the enlisted men generally, in Korea and Manchuria, was so admirable as to call out the quite unexampled approval of all candid observers. Looting was almost absolutely prevented; the extremely rare cases of rape were punished with death as soon as the offence was proved; violence or insult toward all non-combatants was of rare occurrence; and the treatment of the Russian prisoners of war evoked the gratitude of the prisoners themselves. In all these respects, the difference between the Japanese and the Chinese and Russians was indeed remarkable.