A Secret Service agent, although making no friends or acquaintances,
always makes it his business to converse with and study his fellow
travelers. Following my usual habit, I went out of my way to
cultivate the acquaintance of the Japanese, particularly Huraki. A
scholar of no mean attainments was the Baron.

Quietly, without being didactic, he upheld his end in most discussions
on applied sciences or philosophic arguments, putting forth his deep
knowledge in an unobtrusive way. I found this trait to be an
invariable rule with most of the Japanese with whom I came in contact.
Once or twice during our lengthy and pleasant chats I tried to veer
the subject round to the all-engrossing Eastern question, only to be
met with the maddening bland smile of the East. I was rather
inexperienced in the fathomless, undefinable ways of the Orient, but
on the _Bayern_ I learned rapidly the truths that Western methods and
strategy are absolutely useless against the impenetrable stoicism of
an Asiatic and that only personal regard and obligation on their part
will produce results. In striking contrast to the Japanese, small and
sinewy, any two of them weighing no more than one Russian, quiet,
taciturn, genial and abstemious, were the children of the "Little
White Father." The Russians were an aggressive, big, well set up,
heavy type of men, by no means teetotalers, talkative, with
overbearing swagger, always posing, talking contemptuously about the
possible struggle in the East, invariably referring to the Japanese as
"little monkey men." Fortunate for me was it that the _Bayern_ was
carrying both Russians and Japanese; the knowledge I acquired from
Baron Huraki of the Asiatics was invaluable in Singapore; what I
learned of Russians, I needed at Port Arthur. But I am anticipating
my narrative.