. Discovery. Science. DISCOVERY 229 the service of man that the best characteristics of the Japanese people have been developed—their boundless patience and perseverance, their intelligence, ingenuity, and self-control, their tough constitutions and tem- perate habits. Some of the finest fighting men in the army are drawn from the peasant classes—hardy, stolid and entirely unafflicted with nerves. Most of them come from the hill country, and their surround- ings have left their impress on their character and habits. It was remarked by British officers during the Russo- Japanese War that, in di
. Discovery. Science. DISCOVERY 229 the service of man that the best characteristics of the Japanese people have been developed—their boundless patience and perseverance, their intelligence, ingenuity, and self-control, their tough constitutions and tem- perate habits. Some of the finest fighting men in the army are drawn from the peasant classes—hardy, stolid and entirely unafflicted with nerves. Most of them come from the hill country, and their surround- ings have left their impress on their character and habits. It was remarked by British officers during the Russo- Japanese War that, in districts where long marches had to be made over routes chiefly leading along goat- tracks or across pathless gullies and crags, each man having to find his own way and to meet his companj- again on the other side, it was the native mountaineer- ing habitudes of the lower ranks that led them to take the least inaccessible line of country. In mountain warfare the hill-men among the Japanese infantry displaj'ed—as compared with other infantry—some of the attributes and mobility of cavalry. Moreover, there is something in the open and communistic char- acter of the daily life of the country people (for to them privacy is an unknown condition) that renders them natural and considerate, and promotes a resource- fulness and readiness to help each other that must be experienced to be understood. It is among such as these that one finds human nature most unsophisti- cated and unspoilt, nor has all that is artificial and materialistic in our vaunted twentieth-century civilisa- tion yet laid a paralysing hand upon that inborn simplicity and courteous bearing which in days gone by did so much to justify the title by which the Japanese delighted that their land should be known—Kiinshi no Koku—" the Country of ; One of the most striking features of the country-side, to one who wanders out from the crowded life of the great towns, is the extraordinary and minute
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