The Japanese have in their favour the tonic effect of success;
and the innate gentleness of their character stands them in good stead.
But the Japanese grand army has yet another advantage in this
nerve-destroying contest, which for endless, arduous toil of killing
surpasses all the wars of history. It has a base for its operations; a
base of a nature beyond the concern of the many books written upon the so-
called art of war, which, considered by itself, purely as an exercise of
human ingenuity, is at best only a thing of well-worn, simple artifices.
The Japanese army has for its base a reasoned conviction; it has behind
it the profound belief in the right of a logical necessity to be appeased
at the cost of so much blood and treasure. And in that belief, whether
well or ill founded, that army stands on the high ground of conscious
assent, shouldering deliberately the burden of a long-tried faithfulness.
The other people (since each people is an army nowadays), torn out from a
miserable quietude resembling death itself, hurled across space, amazed,
without starting-point of its own or knowledge of the aim, can feel
nothing but a horror-stricken consciousness of having mysteriously become
the plaything of a black and merciless fate.
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