We should note that the Countess Montemolin was enciente. This triple disappearance could not happen without rousing a host of rumours. Suspicion fell immediately upon Don Juan, and perhaps not without some reason.

Unhappily, Don Juan had become impossible to the Carlist party on account of his pronounced Liberal views, not only in politics, but also in religion. In certain newspapers of the party he was spoken of as a madman, and it was said that it would be preferable to turn Republican rather than have him for a king. There was even some question of proclaiming his son as king, with a regency composed of the Archduchess Beatrix, the wife of Don Juan, the Princess of Beira, widow of the former Don Carlos, and Cabrera. But the Archduchess refused to act in opposition to her husband. As for the Princess of Beira, she still endeavoured to bring her son-in-law to better ways of thinking. For some time they kept up an active correspondence.

"Where will you find," she asked him, "among the Democrats of all Europe, an army of 40,000 men, serving as our Volunteers serve, in the midst of privation and of misery; content with wretched uniforms and little food, and, nevertheless, always ready for the fight? And these are the men whom you look upon as mean and disloyal! Do you know what they say of you? that Carlos VI. declared you incapable of reigning, and that the chief and almost the sole motive of his act of retractation was your political conduct, your anarchical and subversive principles, as we may see from his manifesto of December, his retraction, and the letter which he sent at the same time to Isabella. If you had followed Carlos VI. in politics, he would certainly never have thought of retracting, and no Monarchist would have urged him to make it. Under these circumstances, there remains no other way to the Carlists of extricating themselves from this awkward position, save to recognise as their legitimate king your own immediate successor, that is to say, your son Carlos. Renounce, then, your political principles, retract them frankly, sincerely, and publicly, or abdicate.”

(To be concluded.)

I

THE FIGHTING FORCE OF CHINA.

T is of paramount importance to England at the present juncture to carefully investigate the actual fighting capacity of China, for it is recognised that a controversy may at any moment be raised by Russia, which will have for its object the rectification of the RussoChinese frontier line to the north of the Viceroyalty of Manchuria.

Such tactics can best be understood by noting the position which Russia now occupies in the Valley of the Amoor. That river forms the northern boundary of Manchuria for the greater part of its course, but the Russians hold the last hundred miles or so of the stream, and have annexed a comparatively narrow strip of country southwards to the Corean Peninsula. They have founded Vladivostok (a name which signifies "possessor of the East") almost at the southern extremity of this strip, and that port lies in a direct line some 200 miles east of Girin, in Manchuria. Their obvious desire, then, is to round off their East Siberian territory by obtaining possession of the whole of Manchuria, which would give them not only complete control of both banks of the Amoor, but a most valuable addition of territory, access to the shores of the Gulf of Liao-Doon, and would make Corea ready to fall into their lap whenever they may please to take it.

The incentives to Russia's movement in this direction are her complete knowledge of the real value of the Chinese forces and her view of China as a possible ally of England when the fight for mastery in Central and Southern Asia takes place.

The present quarrel, fastened upon China by Japan, has been welltimed, because the forces of the Celestial Empire have been, and still are, in a transition state. The impulse of Chinese military and naval reforms disturbed a condition of affairs that had lasted for centuries. It was Gordon's emphatic advice to the Chinese-summed up in the word "gunboats"—which caused the reorganisation of the Chinese fleet to begin. We use this term "begin" advisedly, because everyone now knows that, although China possesses, or did possess, in her navy some powerful vessels of European construction furnished with

European armament, yet the capacity, as distinguished from the personal bravery, of the men who work them is more than doubtful. After the initiation only of naval reforms, the re-arming and re-organisation of their land forces occupied for a a time the attention of the Celestial Government; but that process dragged on slowly, as everything does in China, and is still far from complete. Nor is this at all to be wondered at when we come to consider the system of administration, which seems to leave the whole initiative in everything concerning the efficiency and welfare of the Chinese troops with the provincial governors, who have to provide the funds for the maintenance of those troops in their respective commands, and who have, therefore, the practical control of the condition of the army in their hands, while the Central Government does not pretend to do much more than interfere in questions of patronage and call for returns.

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This fact must obviously make it extremely difficult for any 'foreign devil” to judge accurately of the effective condition of the forces of the Chinese Empire, for every provincial governor will differ in the importance he is disposed to assign to military affairs, and the condition of the troops in the various provinces will be constantly fluctuating as the governors change. Again, the Chinese army exists largely on paper, and its returns evidently include men of every degree of efficiency, and of hopeless inefficiency as well.

The exact population of the Chinese conglomeration of provinces is not known to us, but even though there be countless millions to draw upon for war purposes, it should be borne in mind that mere hordes of men have never counted for much even in Eastern warfare, much less are they to be taken into account now when placed before well-equipped, well-armed, and properly commanded troops.

That Russian military critics are too well-informed to be led astray on this point we shall see further on, when we perceive how largely they discount from the paper strength of the troops of the Celestial Empire.

Nor are the published accounts of the few Englishmen who have visited the interior of China likely to give us a wrong impression as to the real value to be put upon a Chinese alliance.

As a writer in the Standard* aptly reminds us, Colonel Mark Bell,

* Issue of Friday, October 5th. Letter headed "The War in the East," signed by "S. E. W."

V.C., R.E. (an officer who has had unusually good opportunities for forming a calm and impartial opinion on the Chinese Empire generally), has characterised "the Empire of the Manchurs as little else than a gigantic sham, certain to collapse whenever a moderately strong Power should undertake to prick the bubble"; and only four years ago the same officer declared his opinion" that if ever the Chinese went to war with their neighbours they would be defeated with the utmost ease."

The substance, too, of a careful analysis on the part of Russian officers is that the paper thousands of the Chinese army resolve themselves, under examination, to about 13,000 men capable of taking the field on a serious call-armed, that is to say, with modern weapons and drilled with some approach to efficiency-and to about 400,000 more troops of sorts who might have the making of an army if placed unreservedly in the hands of European instructors.

In the face, then, of such an agreement between the deliberate opinion of both Russian and English officers (for Captain F. G. Younghusband agrees in the main with Colonel Bell), it behoves the bureaucratic advocates of a Chinese alliance to remember that all we should have to count upon in such an ally for the checking or diverting the strength of Russia along the course of the Amoor, to say nothing of her naval strength in Corean waters, would be one small division a force which has already manifested itself insufficient to check the advance of a Japanese army on the sacred city of Mukden.

HIGHER MILITARY ADMINISTRATION.

In entering upon a review of the present condition of the Chinese army, we must dwell first of all upon the constitution of the higher military administration.

This side of Chinese military organisation has remained unchanged, and, as formerly, it may be described as thoroughly unsatisfactory. Although the Chinese War Ministry is the central organ of the military administration of the country, it occupies no real position in the midst of the other departments of the State. On the one hand, though it constitutes a close bond of union between the military and the civil administration of the country, it assumes sometimes the phase of entering into complete subservience to the civil departments.*

* An exact counterpart to this state of things is to be found in the British War Office.

On the other hand again, though the highest powers as to the settlement of military questions of State are handed over to an Imperial Council, yet all considerations affecting military economy and the right of allotting sums required for military needs are relegated to one of the sections of the Ministry of Finance. At the head of the War Ministry of China there are two Presidents and four Vice-Presidents. The same Ministry, too, is divided and subdivided into four departments and three sections.

In addition, too, to all these offices of circumlocution, the military affairs of the Empire are placed in close connection with the offices of the Public Works Minister and of the Imperial Censor. And yet, in spite of all this superabundance of the highest Government offices, all of which are interested in the guidance of the military affairs of the Empire, in practice the entire military organisation of the State is centred in the personal qualities of direct officials, such as the Governors-General and the Governors of Provinces (Tszian-Tszuns), Tatar - Generals, and other subordinate officials. These are the personages, then, who usually initiate questions concerning changes amongst the troops within their respective jurisdictions, who propose all items of expenditure, who search out the sources whence such sums can be provided, who adopt each a system of their own for the training and instruction of the provincial troops, who appoint their own officers, who mount and equip and feed their own cavalry and other soldiers, who inspect their own forces, and who finally send in their own reports direct to the Central Government at Pekin. The Central offices, in fact, confine themselves to the patronage, as regards the appointments of the highest military officials, to the perusal of such reports as reach them (which they either themselves deal with or send on for the personal inspection of the Emperor), to the compilation of long and elaborate returns regarding the military expenditure of the State, and to supervising the military personnel and all supply departments.

The constitution of each local military administration is in direct dependence on the subdivision of the Chinese Empire in a militarypolitical signification. Thus each of the five characteristic groups correspond with its own military administration. These groups are as follows:

(1) Nineteen provinces of China proper, including Eastern, or Chinese, Turkistan, and the islands of Hai-Nan and Formosa; (2) VOL. XI.-No. 66.

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