The general effect of the provisions for service was to equip Japan down to the end of 1904 with an army on a peace footing of 8000 officers and 152,000 men, which was capable of being raised on a war footing to 14,000 officers and 630,000 men, but that was before the law increasing the term of service in the Territorial Army to ten years, promulgated in September 1904, came into operation. The term had previously been five years only. The lengthening of the term will have had the result of vastly adding to the possibilities of the army in numbers on a war footing. The budget appropriation for this large army was for the fiscal year ending with March 1906 as nearly as possible £4,000,000. It may be useful to insert here for the sake of comparison the cost of some other armies to their respective countries:— Russia £38,330,000 Germany 31,674,000 Great Britain 28,600,000 France 27,000,000 Austro-Hungary 13,150,000 Italy 11,160,000 In Japan the service is universal and compulsory, with exemption only for physical disability. At a rough estimate 410,000 youths reach the prescribed age annually, but less than one-third of this number are selected for the maintenance of the standing army, as men of superior physique, a term which palpably is elastic enough to admit of the choice of precisely the number required from the vast assemblage of youths presenting themselves every year for enrolment. To judge of Japan’s strength, then, by her standing army would be a huge mistake, or even to wholly estimate it from the figures given as that of her army on a war footing, as was proved by the last campaign, for there were vast numbers of men who had completed their twelve (now 17) years and four months’ service in the active army, the first reserve, and territorial army, who were still liable until they became full forty. Moreover, the territorial army and its reserves are composed of men who are as a rule in good marching condition, for they are in the majority of cases engaged in normal times in agriculture or other industries, and physically equal to any tasks they may be called on to undertake. Conscription has made of Japan the great military power that she may, with strict justice, claim to be, but owing to the light in which military service is there regarded it is never a burden on the population. On the contrary, the system is really a voluntary one, since it is every youth’s hope and ambition to be among those first chosen to enter the ranks of the active army and a source of grief to him when he is drafted into the depot corps.