America in the East - 1899 Author:William Elliot Griffis Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE WAR A REVELATION DIFFICULT as the problem is, the imaginary obstacles conjured up by some of our editors, politicians, and nervous people, ... more »who do not seem to know what Americans in the Pacific have done and can do, remind one of the canvas-dragons in a Chinese procession, or the majority report of Joshua's spies in Canaan. They ought to scare no true Anglo-Saxon who reads his ancestral history, nor any man who takes Christianity seriously, nor any statesman who knows the American people outside of academies and sanctums. Personally, I find myself unable to see the reality of the so-called impossibilities, or to feel the dreadfulness of the risks involved. To say nothing of what British and Dutch have accomplished, see what even Russians and Asiatics can achieve: Three centuriesago the Russians crossed the Ural Mountains on their march to the Sea of Japan. Muscovites are able to civilize, in their way, the nomads of Central Asia and to make of Siberia a second Russia. They did this within the period between Raleigh and Mc- Kinley. The Chinese have been able in less time to absorb the Manchus, " the wild and horsey Tartars" of the North, and show to the world that the men whom European monks thought came up directly out of Tartarus are " the most improvable race in Asia." The Japanese have illustrated the self-regenerative power of even a hermit nation. If we, the descendants in ideas, law, traditions, and largely in blood, of the British, cannot do what they have done, then I confess to surprise and confusion. But what they have done we can do. Once, after a snow-storm in the mountains of inland Japan, I wished to push on through a path which my servant and companions said could not be traversed, for it was covered with snow too deep for either sandals or s...« less