620 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Russian diplomats, since the days of Czarina Katherine, have accom- 

 modated themselves to emerging circumstances by crawling or strut- 

 ting, without ever losing sight of the road to Constantinople. 



In the shaggy Ainos of Yesso (probably the original home of our 

 'Shetland' ponies), that perseverance takes the form of mulish stub- 

 bornness. They strenuously object to foreign imports and stick to their 

 sheepskin cloaks like Scotch Highlanders to their kilts, but in stress 

 of famine seem now to take an interest in the harpoon-guns of their 

 Russian neighbors, and now and then sell specimens of their poodle- 

 faced youngsters to the agents of a transpacific museum. 



Japan still produces athletes, as well as unrivaled acrobats, partly, 

 no doubt, on account of bracing climatic influences, but partly, also, 

 of a vice-resisting worship of physical prowess. About sixty years ago 

 the slums of the large seaport towns were expurgated by a national 

 revolt against the spread of the opium habit, and the consequent re- 

 form movement appears to have kept step with the Swedish crusade 

 against the spread of the alcohol curse. 



China may be forced into the arena of regeneration, but thus far 

 seems to view the collapse of her ring-wall only as a blessing in a rather 

 effective disguise. The policy of non-intercourse, indeed, had the 

 sanction of a physical necessity in the opinion of as shrewd a statesman 

 as the vizier of the great Kooblai Khan, who conquered rebels from 

 Mantchooria to Siam, but recognized the hopelessness of ordinary 

 measures for protecting the peaceful toilers of the eastern provinces 

 against the predatory hordes of the northwest. A standard army of 

 home-guards, he argued, would have to be composed either of natives 

 who could not fight, or of foreign auxiliaries who might revolt; so, all 

 things considered, it was deemed best to bar a foe that could not be 

 beaten. Strategically, the plan succeeded, stone walls being then so 

 inexpugnable to spear-armed besiegers that the proprietors of a stone- 

 built robber castle could defy the wrath of the public for a series of 

 generations. The Tartar marauders were kept at bay, but so were trad- 

 ing caravans and traveling philosophers; the disadvantages of all ob- 

 stacles to free competition began to assert themselves. The nation, as 

 it were, sickened in a marasmus of intellectual inbreeding. Protected 

 incompetence propagated its species; monopolies flourished. The sur- 

 vival of the fittest no longer favored the brave; cowards and weaklings 

 could find refuge under the telamonian shield of the big wall. 



Within the last hundred years that process of degeneration has 

 been hastened by two incidental afflictions — spring floods and summer 

 droughts. The rapid increase of population has driven home-seekers into 

 the highlands of the far west, and the destruction of land-protecting 

 forests avenged itself in the usual manner. Every heavy snowfall in 

 the mountains became a menace to the settlers of the lowlands; a sud- 



