admittance at the monastery yesterday by the order of the Imperial
Highness whom we met the other day. However, he relaxed it in our favor.
Dean Prior started to go up on the city wall to-day to sketch, and was
stopped by a sentry, who put a naked bayonet within two feet of his
breast. He came back raging, and wrote a scathing letter which I don't
think he will send.
* * * * *
This morning _Wong_ came.
At ten o'clock the Irishman appeared at the entrance of the compound,
leading by the hand a little Chinese boy some eight or ten years old. He
was the dirtiest little wretch I ever saw, but he smiled--and never saw
I such teeth or such a winsome smile. The Irishman said simply and
gravely:
"This is Wong," and no more. He led the boy behind the paling that
enclosed our bathing-quarters, plucking, as he walked, a sponge and a
cake of soap, which happened to be mine. Then I heard:
"Take it off!" And again: "Take it off, I say!"
Apparently he was obeyed. Then:
"Take that off, too; yes, that, too!" Evidently the boy had but two
garments on, for considerable splashing took the place of peremptory
commands. By and by they came out together and, still hand in hand,
passed out of the compound. In half an hour the Irishman came back.
"I've just taken Wong down to Poole's," he said, still gravely, "to get
him a new suit of clothes."
"The trousers were too long, and Wong objected. Poole told him that
trousers were worn long this season, and Wong compromised by rolling
them up. He'll be here by and by."
By and by Wong came back resplendent in new blouse, new trousers, new
shoes and socks. On his breast was sewed a big white piece of cotton in
the shape of a shamrock, and on the shamrock was printed this:
WONG
_Cup-bearer and Page in Waiting_
to
---- ----, _Esquire_.
Straightway was Wong an habitué of the compound and straightway his
education began. Wong was quick to learn.
"Attention, Wong!" the Irishman would say, and Wong would spring to his
feet and dash for a bottle of--Tansan.
"Make ready!" Wong would poise the bottle. "Aim--fire!" Wong would fire,
and then would come the command, "When!" which meant "cease firing!" and
Wong, perfect little soldier that he was, would cease, though his genial
hospitality and genuine concern for the happiness of everybody made
ceasing very hard. If his master ordered a bottle of wine at the table,
Wong would pass it to every man. He was equally hospitable in the matter
of cigarettes--anybody's; for he could never see that what belonged to
one man did not belong to all. Essentially, in that crowd, he was right.
But it was rather expensive for the Irishman, until one day he told Wong
always to take the chits to "that fat man"--who was not Reggie--and
thereafter the fat man got them.
Wong had caught the military salute from the Japanese soldiers, and
every morning, when he came in, he would go around to each of us in
turn, clicking his heels, hand at his forehead, and always with that
radiant smile flashing from his gentle eyes and his beautiful teeth. The
Irishman always slept late. One morning he was awakened by an insistent
little voice outside his mosquito-net, saying, over and over:
"Hello, George; wake up! Hello, George; wake up!" Somebody had taught
him that; but he saw straightway that it was not respectful, and we
could never get him to do it again.
After his second bath he went around pulling his shirt open to show how
clean his yellow little body was. Indeed, he got such a passion for
cleanliness that one morning he näively held out his exquisite hands to
Lewis to be manicured--Lewis did it. Again, when Tansan spouted into his
face, he reached out, pulled a silk handkerchief from a man's pocket and
mopped his face. All of us got to love that boy, and when we went away
there was a consultation. We would make up a fund and educate him. His
father was called in and an interpreter explained our design. Wong burst
into tears and wept bitterly. There were answering drops in the
Irishman's eyes.
"I tell you, all the blood shed in this miserable war is not worth those
few precious tears. Greatest people on earth! Why should he want to
leave them?"
Lovable little Wong! The first word the Irishman said when he came back
through that town on our way home was spoken to a group of boys on the
street.
"Wong!" he said simply, and they raised a shout of comprehension and
dashed away, the Irishman after them. Half an hour later he joined me in
a restaurant. Wong was not in town, he said gravely; he had bought a
place outside of town with the money we had given him, and had taken his
family into the country for the hot season. Anyhow, we saw Wong the
gentle, Wong the winning, no more.
* * * * *
A major came this morning to give us a lecture on the battle of
Tehlitzu--to while away the tedium, said one of the Guardsmen. The Major
is smooth-shaven and very broad between the cheek-bones. His hair is
clipped short, his eyes are large, and his face is strong. He must have
been a professor in a war-college, for he stood up and drew mountains,
hills, valleys, positions, trenches, trees, and made figures--all with
wonderful rapidity and skill--backward. That is, he made them for us
standing in front of him to look at. A certain division, he said, of a
certain regiment, at a certain time had done a certain thing. It was a
perfect lecture except that all the really essential facts were
skilfully suppressed.
The Major had been present only as an observer--a student--but at one
hot place on which he put his finger, he had "lost many friends there,"
he said impassively.
At that place a young Russian officer led a charge, and his men refused
to follow him. The officer drew a dagger and smilingly killed himself.
"We all speak much of that man," said the Major.
At another place the ammunition gave out on both sides, and Japanese and
Russians fought with stones--men on both sides being severely wounded.
While this was going on some Russian officers advanced, sword in hand,
from another point, but they had no followers. One of them started
forward and gave challenge. A Japanese officer sprang to meet him, and a
duel was fought while soldiers of both armies looked on. "The Japanese
was fortunate enough to despatch the Russian," said the Major modestly
and dispassionately, "and we buried him with much ceremony and put a
barrier over him. It was an interesting study--this battle--as to
whether it is better to fight a defensive or an offensive enemy."
"Well, I'd rather have seen that rock-fight," said a correspondent, "and
that duel than the whole battle."
The Major looked puzzled and shocked, and went on to tell how they had
captured a fat Russian colonel--whose horse was wounded and whose coat
was gone.
"He said our artillery fire was--" the Major paused, used a Russian
word, and turned to the interpreter helplessly--and the interpreter
said:
"Ungodly."
"Yes," said the Major, and he smiled. "The first thing the Russian asked
for was a bottle of soda-water, which made us laugh. We do not carry
such things in the fields. I gave him ten cigarettes."
"How many men did the Japanese have in that fight?" asked a
correspondent.
"Just as many as they have now," was the illuminating answer.
I wonder if anybody but the Japanese knows how many men they have really
had in any fight, and whether in consequence their victories have been
due to astonishing skill or overwhelming numbers. There is rumor of one
lost Japanese division, the whereabouts of which nobody--but the
Japanese--knows. It could have been in every fight thus far and
nobody--but the Japanese--could know.
We are getting mighty tired now. Several of us concluded up at the
monastery to-day that we would go home pretty soon unless there was a
change. There we took pictures of temples, monoliths, stone-turtles. The
Irishman appeared suddenly--coming down the long steps above us, leading
a Chinese child by the hand and carrying a younger one in his arms. How
or where he gathers in children the way he does, is a mystery to all of
us. Then we took more pictures and four officers came in. We
communicated in a Babel of French, German, English, Chinese, and
Japanese. They got tea for us from the priest, and were very polite.
Later two more came in. Davis and I were writing, and they stood around
and looked at us for a while. One approached.
"What are you doing there?"
"Writing," I said.
"Drawing?" he asked suspiciously.
"Yes, drawing," said Davis. "Why do you want to know what we are doing?"
I don't think the officer understood--but he understood that something
was wrong, and he stood a moment in some awkwardness.
"Good-a-by!" he said.
"Sayonara," we answered.
"I don't think it is anything but curiosity," I said.
"A good deal of it is--because they don't know that they oughtn't to
show it. He put us at once in the attitude of being spies. I can't
imagine what he thought we were drawing."
"We didn't have our badges on. He might have arrested us."
"That would have been some diversion."
The day has been warm, brilliant--the sky crystalline, deep, and flecked
with streamers of wool. At sunset now the rain is sweeping the west like
a giant broom, the rush of wind and river is indistinguishable, the
silent magpies are flying about, but there is still a mighty peace
within these walls. Back now to mud, flies, and fleas.
It's 1 A.M. The fleas won't sleep, and for that reason I can't. Even the
drone of school-children chanting Chinese classics--as our little
mountaineers chant the alphabet in a "blab-school"--and the barking of
dogs have ceased. Somewhere out in the darkness picket-fires are shining
where the Sun-children and the White Cubs are soon to lock in a fierce
embrace. I like this Manchurian land and I like the Chinaman. Both are
human and the country is homelike--with its cornfields, horses, mules,
cattle, and sheep and dogs. The striking difference is here, you see no
women except very old ones or little girls. Here is the absence of that
insistent plague--human manure--that disgusts the sensitive nose in
Japan. The "fragrant summer-time" would have been a satire if it had
been written in Japan. But there is no charm here as there is everywhere
in Nature and Man in Japan. Besides the Chinese, here at least, are
filthy in person and in their homes--the smell of the Chinaman is
positively acrid--while the Japanese are beyond doubt the very
cleanliest people in the world. I wish I could see for myself what they
really are in battle. As far as I can make out at long distance, the
Japanese army and the individual Japanese soldier seem the best in the
world: the soldier for the reason that he cares no more for death than
the average Occidental for an afternoon nap--the army for the reason
that the Buschido spirit--feudal fealty--having been transferred from
Daimio and Samurai to Colonel and General--gives it a discipline that
seems perfect. Imagine an army without stragglers or camp-followers, in
which one man is as good as another and all boast of but one thing--a
willingness to die. It looks as though for the first time in history the
fanatical spirit of the Mussulman who believed that he would step, at
death, from the battle-field into Paradise, was directed by an acute and
world-trained intelligence. As to the soldier, the pivotal point of
effectiveness seems to be this: an Occidental and a Japanese quarrel,
and they step outside to settle matters. The Occidental thinks not only
of killing the Japanese, but of getting out alive. His energies are
divided, his concentration of purpose suffers. The Japanese has no such
division--he is concerned only with killing his opponent, and he doesn't
seem to care whether or not he comes out alive or dead. I'm wondering,
though, whether he would fight this way for England--whether he will
ever fight again this way for himself.
It has been cold the last two days. The flies have almost disappeared
and the fleas are less active--in numbers, anyhow. Two officers came to
see us last night and it's the first time we have been honored in this
way. One had a long sword 400 years old--the other a short one 500 years
old, and both were wonderful blades. Now, the sword of a Samurai was his
soul, and the man who even stepped over it did it at the peril of his
life. I was rather surprised that they let us handle them so freely.
"We are to leave here very soon," they said.
To-morrow we do leave--toward Liao-Yang.
VII
THE BACKWARD TRAIL OF THE SAXON
Out at the gate of the compound, last night, a barytone voice lifted a
pæan of praise to the very stars. We were to leave that wretched
enclosure next day, the Three Guardsmen said, and that night the White
Slaves listened to the barking of dogs, the droning chorus of
school-children chanting Chinese classics and the medley of small noises
in streets and compound, and sank to sleep for the last time in
Haicheng. As usual, the raucous cries of Dean Prior and Burleigh ushered
in the dawn, and the usual awakening and bustle of servants and masters
followed. For the last time Little Wong, Cup-bearer and Page-in-Waiting,
with his hand at his forehead, clicked his heels before each of us in
turn, stirred his master, the Irishman, from slumber deep, and, with a
radiant smile and flashing teeth, fired volleys of Tansan right and
left. Within half an hour we were gathered under Yokoyama's tent for our
last breakfast. For the last time Big Reggie, the Frenchman, marched
past us, and for the last time we made him keep step to a ringing
Marseillaise. Half an hour later, the compound was full of squealing
horses, and soon carts, coolies, the White Slaves of Haicheng, and the
Three Guardsmen wound out of the gate, through the narrow streets and
under the city wall--on the way to see a battle at last. Two hours we
marched, climbed then a little hill, left our horses on the hither side,
crawled over the top to where that battle was raging--some ten miles
away. Up in the mountains somebody was evidently letting loose giant
puffs of cigarette-smoke high in the air. No sound was perceptible, but
they were shells, a Guardsman said.
"Whose shells?"
"I don't know," said the Guardsman. As a matter of fact, those shells
were so far away that we could not tell whether they were Russian or
Japanese, whether they were coming toward us or going away. But we could
count them, and, of course, that was great profit and fun. So, while
that battle raged, we fearlessly strolled around the hill-side or sat in
groups and told stories, and one daredevil of a correspondent, made
reckless by the perils we had passed, deliberately turned his back to
the fight and calmly read a newspaper.
The Three Guardsmen were justly pained by such a neglect of such an
opportunity to study strategy and tactics in a great war, and they did
not look happy. Thus for two hours did we not see the battle of
Anshantien.
Toward noon the shell-smoke waned and we moved on to another compound,
where we were to spend the night. At dusk a Guardsman came in radiant
and filled our hearts with fatuous cheer. We were to see another fierce
engagement next morning. But we must rise early and travel fast or we
should be too late, as the attack would be made before dawn. The Three
Guardsmen would come themselves to awaken us at three o'clock so that
there could be no mistake. He was so earnest and so sure that we went to
bed greatly excited, and nobody slept except the Irishman, who lifted
his head from sound slumber, however, when one vagrant beer-bottle was
popped to decide a wager, at midnight.
"Don't you think I don't hear you," he said.
"I win the bet," said Brill.
Three hours later, the Guardsmen found us awake. We arose and stumbled
in the mud and darkness for a cup of coffee, and started single file
through raining blackness toward that ever-vanishing front. Nobody said
a word, and the silence and mystery of the march was oppressive as we
waded streams and ploughed through mud between walls of dripping corn.
Every now and then the Authority on International Law, who led us, would
halt the column and get off his horse to look for the trail that had
been left for us the day before. At least he did the looking, but it was
always Captain James, the Englishman, who found the trail; a more
stealing, mysterious, conspirator-like expedition I have never known. It
was hard to believe that we were not creeping up to make an attack on
something ourselves, or that the Russians might not burst from the corn
on either side at any minute.
On we went until another hill loomed before us, and at the foot of this
hill we waited for the dawn. By and by another cavalcade approached, the
military attachés, equally impressive, equally mysterious, equally
solemn and expectant. And on that little hill we waited, in the cold
wind and drifting sleet and rain, the correspondents huddled on top, the
cloaked attachés stalking along on a little terrace some thirty feet
below, everybody straining his eyes through the darkness to see the
first flash of a gun. Morning came and we were still straining--big
Reggie nibbling a hard-boiled egg on the very summit of the hill, a
Lieutenant-General of the English Army patrolling the terrace like some
"knight-at-arms alone and palely loitering," because no shells sang, and
the rest of us dotting the muddy mound with miserable, shivering shapes,
while wind, rain, and cold made merry over the plight of all. The Three
Guardsmen moved restlessly about, speaking words of good cheer; but
something was happening to that battle and we got tired of straining and
began to walk recklessly around that hill and borrow chocolate and
tobacco and bread from one another for breakfast. Even the Guardsmen got
uneasy--hopeless--and once I found myself on the other side of the hill,
where one of them lay huddled in his army coat. For a little while we
talked inter-continental differences.
"We do not understand, we Occidentals, why the Japanese prefers to
commit hara-kiri rather than be captured, and we argue this way: If I
allow myself to be captured, I may be exchanged or escape, and thus have
a chance to fight another day; if not, my enemy has to take care of me
and feed me, so that I reduce his force and resources just that much. If
I kill myself I make a gap in my own ranks that I can't fill again. If I
accept capture, I am worrying and exhausting you all the time. The only
good I can see in hara-kiri is the effect that it might have on the
fighting capacity of the men who are left. Is there any economic
consideration of that sort under the Japanese idea?"
The Guardsman shook his head. "No," he said, "it is instinct with us;
but," he added presently, "I think we are coming around to your point of
view, and I think we will come around to it more and more. You see, we
have transferred the Buschido spirit of feudalism into the army. The
loyalty of Samurai to Daimio has been transferred to soldier and
officer, and this instinct for hara-kiri is so great an element in the
Buschido spirit that I think our officers are a little fearful about
trying to change it too rapidly." But a Japanese will not talk long
about such matters with a foreigner.
The Guardsman pulled a little brass check covered with Chinese
characters from his pocket.
"This is how we identify our dead," he said. "Every soldier carries one
of these, and every officer."
"That's a good idea," I said, but I couldn't help thinking how little
use he could ever have for that check as long as he was guarding us. It
is said that just about this time the wife of a correspondent back in
Tokio went trembling to the War-Office. "I have heard nothing from my
husband," she said. "Tell me if he has been killed." The official was
startled.
"Impossible!" he said.
I climbed the hill again to see how that battle was going on. The first
line of "The Burial of Sir John Moore" will do for that battle. It
wasn't going on, so one of the Guardsmen galloped ahead to learn what
the trouble was with the Schedule, and for two long, chilly hours we
huddled on that windy mole-hill, with no flash of gun in the distance,
no puff of smoke high in the air. The Guardsman came back then.
Kuropatkin had quietly sneaked away while we were sneaking for that
hill, and the Japanese were after him. Thus passed the second day of the
battle of Anshantien.
At noon we were hitting the muddy trail again for another Chinese
compound. Evidently we were getting nearer the front; the flies and
fleas were thicker here, a dead pig protruded from a puddle of water in
the centre of the compound, and there were odors about of man and horse,
that suggested a recent occupation by troops. We policed the filthy
enclosure that afternoon, and quite late the thunder of big guns began
far away, while a yellow flame darted from the unseen sun, spread two
mighty saffron wings through the heavens, fitted them together from
earth and sky, and left them poised motionless, while from them stole
slowly out the rich green-and-gold radiance that comes only after
rain--drenching wet earth and still trees and quiet seas of corn. By and
by crickets chirped, quiet stars shone out above the yellow, and the
dusk came with a great calm--but it was the calm that presaged the storm
of Liao-Yang.
We had a serious consultation that night. The artists couldn't very well
draw what they couldn't see. Some of us, not being military experts, and
therefore dependent on mental pictures and incident for material, were
equally helpless. Thus far the spoils of war had been battle-fields,
empty trenches, a few wounded Japanese soldiers, and one Russian
prisoner in a red shirt. So, hearing that General Oku feared for our
safety, we sent him a round-robin relieving him of any responsibility on
our account, and praying that we should be allowed to go closer to the
fighting, or our occupation would be gone. Then we went to sleep.
The straw that broke the camel's back was added to the burden of the
beast next morning. The final word came from General Oku, through a
Guardsman, that the Russians were in flight, that there would probably
be no decisive battle for some time and that if there should be, we were
to be allowed no closer than four miles from the firing-line. Well, you
cannot see, that far away, how men behave when they fight, are wounded,
and die--and as all battles look alike at a long distance, there was
nothing for some of us to do but go home. So, on a bright sunny morning,
Richard Harding Davis, Melton Prior, the wild Irishman, and I sat alone
in the last dirty compound, with the opening guns of Liao-Yang booming
in the distance. I had sold Fuji to Guy Scull, and I wondered at the
nerve of the man, for the price, though small, was big for Fuji. I
pulled that vicious stallion's wayward forelock with malicious affection
several times, and watched Scull curvet out on him to a more dangerous
fate than any danger that war could hang over him. Away we went, then,
Davis, Prior, and the Irishman on horseback--what became of his bicycle,
I don't know to this day--on the backward trail of the war-dragon--for
home. We went back through Haicheng, and spent a few hours in the same
deserted compound that we had left only a few days before. Its silence
was eloquent of the clash and clatter and storm of our ten days'
imprisonment there. There we went to see General Fukushima, who with
great alacrity gave us a pass back to Japan. He could not understand why
all of us would have preferred to be at Port Arthur. It mystified him a
good deal.
"General," said Dean Prior, "you promised me that I should go to Port
Arthur." The General laughed.
"I tried to get you to stay for the third column," he said, and Prior
was silent, whether from conviction or disgust, I don't know.