Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/98

he shares their hardships; sets them an example of heroic bravery and is always at their head in moments of peril. The Chinese officer, on the contrary, seems to have no pride of "cloth." He regards his post mainly as a source of plunder, and himself as the possessor of an opportunity to get rich. Intelligent enough to know that defeat inevitable for troops such as he commands, he prepares for the contingency by holding himself always in readiness to run away. Such, at least, is the modern appreciation of his morale and his methods, and if it be a correct appreciation, the conclusion is plain that no army could fight stoutly under such leadership. But, on the other hand, it will be at once objected that these defects also—absence of medical organization and want of good officers—are not of modern development: they existed always in doubtless much the same degree as they exist now, yet they did not formerly prevent displays of conspicuous bravery. Altered methods of warfare resulting from the use of arms of precision and long range the loose formation, the necessity for highly intelligent recourse to cover, the futility of direct frontal attack and need of flanking movements are all calculated to accentuate the consequences of bad training and defective leadership. But all these analyses expose nothing that is radical, nothing that is irremediable, and though it would appear that, other things being equal, the Chinaman, being deficient in the fighting instinct, is never