Incredible as it may seem, up to the year 1901, promotion in the army was often determined by trials of strength with stone weights, dexterity in sword exercises and skill in the use of the bow and arrow. But in that year, an Imperial Decree declared that such tests ``have no relation to strategy and to that military science which is indispensable for military officers,'' commanded that they be abolished and that military academies should be established in the provincial capitals in which the science of modern war should be diligently studied. Not content with this, forty young men were sent to Europe in 1903 for the express purpose of studying the latest military and naval methods of the white man. And now Sir Robert Hart proposes not only a reorganization of China's civil service but the building of a first-class navy of thirty battleships and cruisers, and he thinks that the enormous sum of $200,000,000 a year can be obtained for this purpose by an increase in the land tax. Then, he declares, China will be enabled ``not only to make her voice heard, but to take an effective share in the settlement of questions in the Far East.'' The London Times rather contemptuously asserts that ``the entire project in its present shape is visionary from beginning to end.'' But Sir Robert Hart has spent fifty years in China, having entered the British consular service in 1854 and become Inspector-General of Maritime Customs in 1863. During the greater part of this long period, he has been an adviser of the Chinese Government and the most influential foreigner in the Empire. The recommendation of such a man is not to be lightly dismissed as ``visionary,'' especially when it is made to a people who have been taught by bitter experience that a modern armament is their only hope of defense against the foreigner. As late as the beginning of the year 1904, Russia ridiculed the idea that Japan could do anything against a western power, and all the rest of Europe as well as America, while admiring the pluck of the Japanese, confidently expected them to be crushed by the Slav. Wise men will think twice in the future before they sneer at the yellow race. If Japan in half a century could go from junks and cloisonne to battleships and magazine rifles, and to the handling of them, too, more scientifically and effectively than they were ever handled by a white man, why should it be deemed chimerical that China, with equal ability and greater resources and certainly no less provocation, should in time achieve even vaster results, particularly as Japan is not only willing but eager to teach her? ``We do not lack either men of intellect or brilliant talents, capable of learning and doing anything they please; but their movements have hitherto been hampered by old prejudices,'' said the Emperor Kuang Hsii. Precisely, and the stern, relentless pressure of necessity is now shattering some of those ``old prejudices.'' ``You urge us to move faster,'' said a Chinese