The oasis., 1894-09-13
ooDDLINe A DANGEROUS POWER.

toms of the countries involved. and
 the newspapers of the United States
 now teem with accounts, by special
 correspondence, describing the people,
 laws and customs of China, Japan and
 Corea.
 The accounts of the battles which
 have taken place have conveyed in some instances information that wounded prisoners captured in battle have been brutally mutilated and be- headed on both sides, and that parti- cularly by the Chinese are old and bar harous methods of warfare still prac- ticed. In addition to that are the ter rible and far reaching punishments, visited upon their own officers and soldiers for failure to compass the ends required of them, revolting in the extreme. Civilized warfare recognizes that such offenses as treason and treachery in the face of enemy are crimes worthy of death, and the off cer or soldierlwho betrays the cause of his country is visited with swift pun ishment and condign; but the punish ment is quickly over and the offender as swiftly as possible subjected to the extinction due his crime. In the Chi nese army not only are such crimes punished with horrible severity; but failure to achieve success where every effort has been put forth are made crimes punishable with death, preced. ed by most excruciating torture. For treason itself the punishment is not only meted upon the traitor but upon all his family and dependents. His father, brothers, sons, grandsons, cous- ins and nephews are all tortured and decapitated, and his female relatives and connections of whatever degree are given over to the soldiery for con- cubinage.
 And for civil offenses the same dire punishments and horrible tortures are inflicted. It makes the blood run cold to read of the punishments tor tures) inflicted for offenses that in the civilized nations of Christendom would rank only as misdemeanors, punish able with slight imprisonment. The entire military, civil and criminal code of China and Corea are colossal monu- ments of the most frightful barbar- ism.
 When it is recalled to mind that three of the four greatest military conquerors of the world, Attila (''the curse of God"), Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, were Chinese warriors, that the tremendous armies of two of them rayaged Europe, while the third turned back from the western slopes of the Ural mountains because "the land was not worth conquest,' and that they drew from the territory within the present limits of China their all conquering hosts, there at OuCt dl ioco plCJulC VI pOcoiUlilblCc for Europe and the Western civiliza- tion that are positively appalling One of the safeguards of the west from Chinese irruption in a thousand years has been that all the improved meth ods and machines of warfare have been in the hands of the western nations. With their great nayies and small but | active armies they have hedged in China and on several occasions have | taught her the uselessness of any ef- fort at coping with western arms. But she has taken leaf from the les sons taught her. She has commenced to arm and drill her armies in the European fashion, and she is creating q great navy with modern fighting ships. Great arsenals, gun factories