And so the old year died—the terrible Im-jin year which witnessed the indescribable horrors of the ruthless invasion which swept it from end to end; which saw, too, the gradual awakening of the dormant military spirit of the people, until at its close the wave of invasion had not only broken and spent itself but had left the remnant of the invaders cut off from their home land by one of the greatest naval geniuses of his own or any other age, surrounded on all sides and hemmed in by forces which though perhaps unable to cope with them in the open field in a pitched battle could yet harrass and cut them off on every side. It must be clearly borne in mind that the Chinese did not raise a hand to help Korea until the invasion virtually collapsed. The Koreans without the aid of China could probably have starved the Japanese out of P‘yŭng-yang and driven them southward, cutting them off on the left and right till they would have been glad to take ship for home. In a sense the Chinese counter-invasion was an extremely unfortunate thing for Korea, for the dormant energies of the people were just rousing themselves to action. Armies were being levied, every day saw the Japanese forces melting away and there was a magnificent opportunity for Korea to turn upon her devastators and drive them headlong into the sea. It would have given a tremendous impulse to patriotism and national self-respect, and it might have been a stepping-stone to a strong national life; but the coming of the Chinese soldiery immediately threw everything into Chinese hands and they reaped all the benefits of the situation. Even the Koreans themselves did not realize how they were playing into the hands of China. The Japanese in P‘yŭng-yang were weary and sick, and at heart glad of any excuse for retreating if it could be done without too great a loss of dignity. It was at just this moment that the Koreans put the game, already won, into the hands of China to reap all the credit and all the prizes of success. The Koreans leaned back upon China and relapsed into their old self-complacent “fool’s paradise.”