Dark clouded the Yellow Sea. Long swaying fingers pointed skyward—masts. Aboard the Japanese flagship Mikasa the captains of the fleet faced their admiral across a lacquer tray containing the instruments used in committing harakiri.
Heihachiro Togo, Admiral of the Fleet, spoke with low purring earnestness. When he fell silent his captains filed past the lacquer tray one by one. Their eyes met firmly the piercing glance of Togo.
None would allow himself to survive the disgrace of defeat in the coming action. . . . When battle came, the Admiral stood for a whole day unscathed on the bridge of his flagship, while half the officers who stood with him were hit by fragments of shells. . . . Forced to display a valor equally prodigious, his captains did not fail him. . . . Port Arthur fell.* Colossal Russia reeled. Minute Japan took rank among the mighty. From that day began in earnest the struggle for sea power which placed Japan at the Washington Conference (1921) on a 3 5-5† basis ± with the U. S. and Britain (see p. 11). Last week the Japanese Minister of Marine, Admiral Takeshi Takarabe, launched a campaign to secure, an additional expenditure next year of $60,000,000 on the Japanese fleet.
The Minister of Marine, speaking before 1,000 notables gathered to watch the launching of the cruiser Kinugasa last week at Kobe, spoke with feeling of great Admiral Togo, now 78, who lay at that moment ill—and perhaps dying— in the modest house which he occupies in a suburb of Tokyo. The fleet has been built up by men like Admiral Togo, samurai ("military nobles") who went to England in their youth, drank at the authentic font of naval lore, and came home to instruct and inspire their countrymen. Japan requires a navy now as never before. The European nations, emerging from their mutual war preoccupation, will soon begin again to interpenetrate the Orient in earnest. Beside the problems of defense, Japan is faced with the eventual necessity of seeking new outlets for her population. Even if these be won by military conquest, on the adjacent continent the Occidental powers must be prevented from interfering by the warboats of Japan.
Reflections such as these moved the Minister of Marine to say last week: "Our budget for the year balances at 4,077,960,000 yen ($1,999,000,000). Of this only 469,200,000 yen ($230,000,000) is appropriated to naval replacements. . . . Remember that Germany's defeat was due to an economic blockade! . . . We ask only 122,400,000 more yen ($60,000,000), this year, to replace auxiliary craft now ready to be scrapped. . . . Surely Japan is not so poor that she cannot pay this sum to maintain her present fighting strength! . . . The dawn of our modern naval history has been glorious. The high noon of Japanese sea power must be worthy of our naval heroes who walk with Count Togo through the twilight of life. . . ."
Togo. Though he lay abed last week, it is not long since Admiral Count Heihachiro Togo, short even for a Japanese, shy even for a hero, sat often in his garden of a morning, puffing his little silver pipe in the solitude which he loves.