THE JAPANESE VICTORY. 571 that the Yalu fight enabled them to push forward vigorously and resolutely their operations by land. Its moral effect had gone far beyond its actual material results. Coming on the morrowof the success won by Nodzu at Pingyang, the Yalu battle inspired the Japanese with the feeling that they wereinvincible both by land and sea.

guard the approaches to the capital. The Nankin, Canton and Foochow squadrons consisted almost entirely of small or obsolete vessels. Even it they had been more efficient the Chinese system would hardly have allowed them to be diverted to the northern theatre of war. They were held back by the immemorial custom that made the Provincial Viceroys almost independent of the central government, and led them to keep any fighting forces they could control for the local defence of their own districts. For most of them the war withJapan was not a struggle in which the whole Chinese Empire was involved. It was a war waged by the people at Pekin and the Viceroys of the North against the Japanese, and the Southern Viceroys looked on its spreading to their districts as a remote possibility.

A curious feature of the situation was that as yet only one of the four fleets that China possessed had been in action. Nevertheless,as soon as it was disposed of, the Japanese paid no attention whatever to the other three, and, in fact, acted as if they did not exist. In this line of conduct they were amply justified by the course of events. All the best ships belonging to China had been attached to the Pei-yang or Northern Squadron, in order to AN INCIDENT OF THK FIGHT (From a Japanese drawing.)