Among the sources of moral strength that failed to attract our attention in Japan were the following: The training of her citizens had long been patriotic and warlike in tendency; her educational system had inculcated an ardent love of country; and even in her primary schools children were prepared, from their earliest years, to be soldiers. The people regarded the army with profound respect and trust, and young men served in it with pride. All these things we failed to see, and we overlooked also the iron discipline enforced in the army and the rôle played in it by the samurai officers. We wholly failed to appreciate, moreover, the vital importance of the Korean question to Japan, and the strength of the hostile feeling that was raised against us when the Japanese were deprived of the fruits of their victory after their war with China. The party of Young Japan had long insisted upon war with Russia and had been restrained only by a prudent Government. When the war began, we recovered our powers of perception, but it was then too late. And at that time, when the war was not only unpopular in Russia but incomprehensible to the Russian people, the Japanese, with a great outburst of enthusiastic patriotism, were responding, like a single man, to the call to arms. In some cases Japanese mothers even killed themselves, when their sons, on account of weakness or ill health, were denied admission to the army. Hundreds of men volunteered to undertake the most desperate enterprises, in the face of certain death; and many officers and soldiers, before going to the front, had funeral ceremonies performed over their bodies, in order to show that they intended to die for their native land. The youth of the Empire crowded into the army, and the heads of the most distinguished families sought to serve their country by enlisting themselves, by sending their sons to the front, or by helping to pay the expenses of the war. Some Japanese regiments, in attacking our positions, threw themselves with the cry of "Banzai!" upon our obstructions, struggled over or through them, filled our ditches with the bodies of their dead, and then, rushing across upon the corpses of their comrades, forced their way into our entrenchments. The army and the whole people appreciated the importance of the war, understood the significance of the events that were taking place, and were ready to make sacrifices in order to achieve success. [Illustration: _Copyrighted by Underwood & Underwood_ GENERAL KODAMA CHIEF STAFF OFFICER OF THE JAPANESE ARMY IN MANCHURIA] _Military Training of Japanese Children_