“Any spot,” that is, if they knew where the spot was. To locate

the spot had been the difficulty. “203” gave the line of vision,

but it was so wedged in among commanding batteries that its value

depended upon an instrument new to warfare--the hyposcope. This

is merely a telescope cut in half--the front half elevated above

the other, like the head of an ostrich above the body, and the two

connected by a further length of scope. In the joints thus formed

mirrors are placed. Thus a view of the interior of Port Arthur was

brought over the topmost trench of “203” to the eyes and brain of

the Japanese lookout, protected there by the rocks. Through the

hyposcope a lookout could observe the effect of every shot from his

own batteries, located not on “203” or anywhere near “203,” but

distant, most of them, two or three miles. While he operated the

hyposcope with his left hand, with his right he held to his ear

the receiver of a telephone connected directly with each of these

firing batteries. These batteries were emplaced, not on mountain

peaks, not on the front of the mountain range from which their

operations were being directed, but entirely behind this range,

which was parallel to the coast range, forming the permanent

line of Russian defense. From these points, scattered in the rear

of the Japanese position, distant from the Russians, the nearest

half a mile, the farthest three miles, the work of the bombardment

went on. The firing was what the military man calls “high angle” or

“plunging”; that is, the shell traveled in the line of a parabola

over two mountain ranges, which separated the Japanese batteries

from the Russian ships. The gunners never had a sight of what they

were firing at, the officers in command of the batteries never had

a sight of what they were firing at. Only the lookout on “203”

knew where the shells went, and he got his knowledge through a

mirror. This knowledge was used by the artillery officer, who found

the range by means of a quadrant. The hyposcope, the telephone,

the quadrant--these were the scientific ganglia that wiped the

mountains from the map of the Liaotung Peninsula, and brought the

operations, in the mind’s eye, to the level of a billiard table.

“203” was the cushion needed for successful caroming. It would be

useless to lug heavy guns up there; the hyposcope was carried up,

but not artillery.

Dispatches have said that the capture of “203” gave the besiegers

command of the town. Such dispatches concerning other captured

positions were published repeatedly. Their effect was to keep

the world continuously expecting the fall of Port Arthur. Let it

once be comprehended that none of the positions captured up to

December 15th was permanent, that none was a part of the grand

scheme of defense perfected by the Russians through the past seven

years; that there still remained seventeen primary and twenty-five

secondary positions on the land side in addition to the finest

forts which are on the sea side, and it will be apparent that this

expectation was not, until General Stoessel decided that further

resistance was useless, justified by the actual conditions.

Commanding the town meant little. The Japanese navy put shells into

the town on the 8th of February, and had been able to put them in

ever since; the army put them in on the 11th of August, and had

been qualified for destruction ever since. They wanted to save the

town. They looked upon it as their property. Why smash up what they

would have to rebuild? The fleet had been their chief objective.

Though inert for four months, it was a menace until sunk; that

out of the way, they need not worry. Of course their shells had

searched about for arsenals and storehouses; if the town got in the

way of the search--well, so much the worse for the town, but the

Japanese effort had been to save their own. It was not Port Arthur,

but Stoessel and his forts, that Nogi was after, just as it was not

Richmond, but Lee and his army, that Grant was after.

As for the strategic position, no one can say that any one fort

at Port Arthur is the key. Nature assisted expert engineers in

devising those forts. All are so arranged that each is commanded

by two or three, and, in some cases, by a dozen others; thus when

one was taken it drew Russian fire from its fellows until it became

untenable. Such was the situation at “203-Meter Hill.” The Japanese

had driven the Russians out, but they were unable to mount guns of

large caliber there, or do aught but locate a farther station from

which to direct final assaults. Ten years ago, when the Japanese

took Port Arthur from the Chinese in a day, one fort, Etzeshan,

taken, the others fell. That was the key. To-day no single fort is

so important. “203” is dominated by the Table fort, the Table fort

by the Chair fort, the Chair fort by Golden Hill, and Golden Hill

by the Lion’s Mane. And after all this was taken, there would still

remain the east forts. Yet, the capture of “203” was decisive. On

September 19th, the Japanese lost two thousand men in trying to

take it. The attempt failed. The division with the job in hand sat

down, waited, and worked. Two months and a half of sapping, and one

day of assault, on December 4th, turned the trick. Though it did

not mean the fall of Port Arthur, it meant the beginning of the

end. This for the reason that every contraction in the Russian line

meant a gain in Japanese strength. The smaller the circumference

the less the capacity for resistance. And, after all, the physical

fact of the fall was simply a question of mathematics. The loss

of life appalls, the spectacle attracts, the glory inthralls, but

the intellect, backed by whatever impulse it is that gives man

resolution for the supreme sacrifice, commands. A chessboard and

two master minds--such was Port Arthur, Nogi, and Stoessel. The

checking move was made as long ago as May 26th, when the battle of

Nanshan was fought. The fate of Port Arthur was sealed then just as

it was sealed again when “203” was taken.

Let us look at that September assault on “203,” of which the one in

December was but a repetition, and glimpse what it meant to storm

Port Arthur. Could all the bloody story of the siege be told, “203”

would be forgotten, a detail lost in vista, swamped in gigantic

operations, veiled in the mist of vast sacrifices. Yet the mind,

puny as it is, must grasp an incident and cling tight, as a poet to

the fringe of metaphor, for comprehension even distant.

Passing from the rear of the army to the front, you might realize

something of the tricky skill used to move those pawns over that

vast chessboard. To the eye of an eagle all would have been

invisible. The sum of his sight would have been a tongue of land

making faces at the sea, ridged with deep blotches from whose

recesses thin pricks of smoke slipped to the crack and roar of

great guns.

Yet lively work was seen. Close to the right rear was the first

battery, a six-gun emplacement of field four point sevens. At one

o’clock in the afternoon the telephone rang, the lieutenant in

command called, and instantly the redoubt swarmed with figures

that sprang like ants from the earth. Busy as ants, they answered

the order from brigade headquarters for the signal shot to open

the grand bombardment. They had come from their bomb-proofs, into

which they would dodge again as soon as the shot was fired. There

was much pride in the chief gunner as he took a cartridge from its

bomb-proof shell chest, ran to his gun, threw open the cordite

chamber, pulled out the breech block, rammed in the shell, snapped

the block, and stepped back to signal the lanyard man; more pride

than is usual in the Japanese gunner, a timid, simple being,

dexterously handling his delicate instrument with as little vanity

as he would handle a potato hoe.

Hurrying on the road to escape the shock, and looking back, the

battery was invisible. The bewilderment of the eagle, if told that

danger lurked there, would be overwhelming. A shell spat out,

revealing the battery behind a mass of earth forming a natural

redoubt. This was in a narrow valley with only a small range of

foothills between it and the sea, a place later called “The Valley

of the Shadow of Death.” Behind every mountain shoulder, and up

every gorge, firing high angle over the eminence in front, was

a battery nestled in its redoubt, with bomb-proofs for the men

and bomb-proofs for the ammunition. It was hardly a valley, but

a ravine, barren of grass, a torrential place through which, in

spring, huge rains tore. Soon other rain--red rain, powdery and

leaden--was to pour there.

Directly in front, out of the west, loomed “203,” flanked by its

gigantic brothers, granite-tossed, the Chair and the Table and the

Lion’s Mane. Bone of the world’s vertebræ, Russia had capped them

with science and determination. Their cordoned batteries, cunning

and intricate, spoke not a word in reply to the Japanese taunts

hurled in upon them, savage and vain. Why reply? They knew their

strength. Before “203” lay a height down on the map, like the

disputed key itself, under figures to denote in meters its reach

skyward; “176” they call it, lacking more intimate speech, but the

soldiers quickly dubbed the hill “Namicoyama,” for they saw its

resemblance to a flying fish abundant in these waters, called by

us the trepang, by Japanese the namico. The mongers of Kamikura,

after disemboweling, inflate this fish for hanging lamps. There

it lay--the namico--its slopes spread finwise, its two peaks,

furze-capped, rising above the mists of the valley as incandescents

struggle through the fog of the night. Ringed with barbed wire was

each peak and close about the top were lines of loopholed rock.

As the following step of a stair, “203” rose beyond, fortified

likewise. From the nearer peak the tardy glint of the sun caught

the brass muzzles of two cannon. From the farther, down the slope,

ran a trench continued to the sea.

The battle was on. Before the Russian outlook knew it the Japanese

advance was at the base of Namicoyama. Each man was stripped to

his khaki uniform, his cartridge belt and his rifle. Four hundred

rounds of ammunition were in the four leather boxes at his belt,

and in his hip pocket was a ration, dubbed with a soldier laugh,

“iron”--three hard biscuits with a piece of salt fish the size of

his palm.

Up they went cautiously, a squad of twenty at a time, slinking

along the ravines, their rifle-butts dragging the ground; one file

of twenty, then another and another, until the slopes were dotted

with figures colored like the earth--silent, nimble, tiny.

Now the artillery was at it heavily. Beginning with the battery we

had seen go into action, the pieces spoke up, one by one, until

near a hundred guns were spitting fire from the nooks behind;

astonishing to an eagle, but the Russians seemed not to mind.

The shots increased, the din augmented. A shell appeals to the

imagination--snarls like a wild beast, flings fierce shrieks into

unwilling ears, rends tooth and claw at fear. The place might have

been a nest of demons with the old devil hen hatching them out.

The Japanese kept those two ridges so hot with shrapnel that not

a man dared show himself. For twenty yards below the parapet the

slope bubbled as does a pot boiling above the kettle’s brim. Not a

sound from the nearer Russians. From Anzushan, from Etzeshan, from

“203,” and even from far-off Liaotishan the replies spoke distant

and absurd, but Namicoyama, slated for assault, was silent, silent

as though no brass cannon were mounted in the sight of all men, as

though no twenty companies of sharpshooters were lying low with

Maxims and repeating rifles waiting to receive the final charge.

Were there cowardly Japanese it was a secret shared by no man with

his neighbor. Sound to the core or not, they went on with the

precision of a clock. As the infantry advanced, occasionally a

huddled figure, inert, was grouped here and there with others who

moaned piteously. At times a squad, sinking, would lose itself in

a hollow, only to climb presently up the opposite slope, there to

sink on one knee, rifles at fixed bayonets, while the lieutenant

in command reconnoitered to right or left, searching for the line

of best deploy. Then on, skurrying another few rods, to another

halt, until they came to the precipitous rocks up which it seemed

a goat would have skinned his shins in climbing. Here, hugging the

mountain proper, having lost but few, considering the advance made,

they waited for night.

Meanwhile, aloft, hell reigned. Shells constantly bursting

apparently shattered guns and killed gunners, but when the dust

cleared all was instantly life again, the gnomish figures

busy--busy as ants with eggs. For a minute thus, then all would

drop back into the earth simultaneously with the reply, and at the

very moment that another Russian shell was in upon them.

Was it the same beyond in Namicoyama and in “203”? Doubtless the

Russians were as safe, though with them the shells must have

been multiplied by twenties, because the space of a few rods,

lying exposed to every range, received the constant fire of every

Japanese gun. The Russians had a wider target, a range of hills

from which occasionally they could see smoke curling upward. It was

far more difficult to hit than the Japanese target, for nothing

was plain, all was guesswork. The Russians could not see a thing

they were aiming at. A range of hills, seared with autumn, bare

of husbandmen, innocent of apparent defense, alive with hissing

venom, confronted them. They lashed it desperately as they could,

frantically as a boy beset with nightmare. The little men had a

plain target, parapets outlined against the sky, trenches clear and

distinct. Yet the Japanese were often covered with dust from bursts

on the slope beyond, and through the Valley of the Shadow the

diabolic screeches mounted with the dying of day. Night came with

the wild clamor on in full fury, the little brown squads still at

the base of Namicoyama, the reserves creeping around toward “203.”

Could they climb it--that six hundred feet of almost perpendicular

rock, where, in daytime, with sticks and hobnailed boots, the

best of mountain climbers would have found an adventure? And

they must go up dragging rifles, shrapnel dropping among them,

shells bursting overhead, bullets mowing them down, not to rest at

the top, but, once there, to plunge against troops well rested,

superbly intrenched.

The reserves threw up shelter tents and staked down the flaps with

heavy rocks, but the wind, howling across from the inlet, flung

them to the laugh of the rising equinoctial. Some sought rest on

bean straw, under blankets, the September moon streaming in, but

there was no rest.

A flash in the eyes and the mountain is thrown into a silhouette of

fire, then plunged into blackness. From the extreme Russian left

the searchlights are wheeling into position, one by one, until the

whole seven are out, playing day over the battlefield, throwing

suspicious investigation into the little squads of brown. Science

has intensified war. Formerly men could get their fill of fighting

by day, but now they needs must flare the candle at both ends. Like

Joshua, these generals are deciding their empires’ fates under

light of their own ordering.

The second searchlight comes out of the right. In between,

the others dance, now a minuet, now a tarantella. Then a red

line streaks the air, parabola-like, and its end breaks into

molten balls, illumining the Valley of the Shadow of Death as

by candelabra of stars. Its path is crossed by another. Still a

third leaps into life till the night is frightful with fireworks.

Processions peaceful and gay have danced through the cities to such

salvoes fostered by Pain. You have seen them on Coney Island, you

have watched for them on Manhattan Beach, you have romped through

merry summer nights canopied by their dazzle; you have seen them

split into golden bursts and rain diamonds of child joy; but do not

wish to see them bred by the Russians, grisly and deadly, laying

bare every joint of action and throwing into ghastly relief every

hope of surprise.

A growl among the mountains rolls into power, and a naval shell

from our left has burst in “203.” The forts respond, the mountains

reply. The small arms open up, the machine guns rattle, the pompoms

clatter in. Pitch, fuzz, dingle and pop are drowned. Crash, roar,

hurtle and boom are out. The devil is loose.

A clatter on the stones below comes nearer, steadily, rhythmically.

Listen! The tread of soldiers marching! Soon an indistinct line

wavers into sight. A low whistle and it turns square across the

Valley of the Shadow toward that terrible din. Another whistle and

it twists up from single to double file. Each man has his full

kit on his back, an extra pair of hobnailed boots, the pick, the

shovel, the rifle. The steel is hooded with brass caps, a challenge

to the dew. Officers’ swords, sheathed in dull cloth, defy the

glitter of sunlight and of searchlight. It is the reserve regiment

advancing to reinforce at dawn. Company by company it passes, and

at the end marches the gray-haired colonel, stumbling in the dark,

peering off at the searchlights, blinking at their bravado. The

troops enfile into the farther ravine and deploy by battalions. The

din lessens not. So another grist is fed into the mill of war.

The reserves’ echo dies to the incoming of crunches on the stones

as of a wagon lumbering--a heavy wagon. Then out of the mists

a caisson rolls behind six horses, the mounts walking, calmly,

slowly. Another caisson and another, then the guns--one, two,

three, four, five, six in all--while overhead whistles the shot and

beyond gleams the searchlight. The rear battery is going forward,

past the front battery, almost to the base of Namicoyama, where,

at a sixty-degree angle, it can reinforce the infantry as the sun

comes up.

Sleep is fitful when blaze is flirting with blackness and sentries

with death. Long before light the trench guards on the front ridge

are waiting for the big guns to salute the morn. The fire has

slackened. There is fair quiet. When one has heard the wild gabble

of a thousand guns he is _blasé_ before the chatter of a dozen.

Down the Valley of the Shadow a shell sometimes wings a nasty way

and the searchlights hold vigil, but the infantry sleeps.

Then a little light fades the immense shadows, and soon over

the rim of the world peers a new day. Peace, beauty, tingling

health--this for another moment--when off to the right a shell

wheezes. The snap is touched. The army wakes. Again it is on--the

fearful din, the unendurable bombardment. So it has been for two

months; so it will be until the end. Again and again.

But what is that under the crest of Namicoyama where it rises,

furze covered, its incandescent struggle fighting fog? A patch of

brown, then a patch of blue, then a flag--yes, a flag--a white

flag, with a red sun in the center, the most legible flag in the

Volapük of bunting, the Rising Sun of Japan!

In the night they have done it because they have slipped the thongs

of civilization and risen triumphant to the hold of rice paddy and

sacred mountain. What they did was simple--they changed shoes;

rather, they threw away shoes. If one asks how the Japanese took

“203” the answer is in terms of feet.

Such heights had been attacked before with scant success. Boots,

though the nails be hobbed, help no man trained as the chamois

to nature’s aid. Yet boots were all they had. The government in

flirting with the ways of white men recognized nothing but leather

and thread as proper footgear for Mikado worshipers. But that

was before “203.” Here, at last, the soldiers knew more than the

officials of state. They knew enough to toss aside a weapon made

for pavement fighting when they went against precipice and moss.

Reduced to essentials, fighting for life, they forgot the ambitious

new ways. Instead of boots they tied on their feet waraji, the

Japanese straw sandal. Having none of proper make, they improvised

from the rough rice sacking brought by the commissary. Since then

the government has been compelled to officially supply waraji.

Barefooted, but for the tight cling of the straw, hid from the

searchlights by the shadows of Namicoyama and “203,” in the night

they had climbed the heights and are now waiting the introduction

of Mr. Bombshell before they reel audaciously across the parapet.

The brown is khaki-covered men, the blue those with overcoats. Far

down at the lower left is a gray-haired figure standing apart--the

colonel. He makes no effort to shield himself. The artillery of two

armies have concentrated their fire above his head. That is their

business, no concern of his, so he hazily observes the unfurling of

day beyond the Tiger’s Tail as he would dwell upon the empurpling

of a convolvulus. At Nanshan he led the victorious charge. Three

bullets went through his coat and two through his hat. He wears

Shinto emblems and believes he was not born to be killed in battle.

He has been in forty-seven engagements without a wound. His name is

Tereda, and he commands the first regiment of the first division;

in rank but a lieutenant-colonel, his colonel slain May 26th.

Shrapnel begins bursting above. The Russians are far from sleep,

farther from death. It being high time for business, the white

flag with the red sun in the center waves once to the left, once

to the right, and twice to the front. It is the artillery signal.

Again the ridge falls under the terrific fire of the day before.

But this time the infantry is 150 yards nearer, and this 150 yards

is in a direction similar to that pursued by a telephone lineman

when he follows his calling. The men crouch low, their own shells

bursting less than fifty yards above them.

The introduction is long. The Russians are saucy hosts. They parley

and talk back with their big guns, and that bluster of the day

before is repeated. All day long Tereda and his men emulate the

furze, for when they take the fort they want night handy to help

them intrench, to give them a bit of cover despite the searchlights

and star bombs. Besides, one climb of that sort is enough for

twenty-four hours. They must have the cumulation of another

twenty-four for the final charge. Yet it is costly recuperation.

Blood spurts frequently. Wounded wilt under the sun, the dead lie

untouched.

At half-past four in the afternoon Tereda orders the final charge.

Three cheers go up--Banzai! Banzai! Banzai! With bayonets fixed the

squads deploying as before, the khaki-covered spots begin to move.

In advance the men crawl hand over hand, helped by blessed waraji.

Twenty feet from the parapet they pause and fling something that

leaps through the air like balls from catcher to second base.

These hand grenades of gun-cotton explode on and in the parapet,

introduction more intimate. The brilliant bursts play off the fast

settling evening as the khaki-covered ones go in, Tereda pausing

and peering with his glass. The entire battalion tumbles over the

parapet. Then the reserves begin climbing from the base.

Silence. All is over. What has happened? Five, ten minutes pass,

then the firing recommences, but now the object is changed; all the

Japanese shrapnel is playing over the road leading to the Chair

fort and all the Russian fire is directed against Namicoyama. The

Russians are retreating, throwing their rifles as they run. Over

Namicoyama floats the white flag with the red sun in the center.

Two hours later a fat old man with a heavy beard and baggy

trousers is brought in--a prisoner. An officer, originally in

the commissary, he had been called into the line, business being

dull in his department. He commanded six companies on Namicoyama.

Wounded in the arm and sullen, he has no greeting for us.

“The pigs,” he cried; “I stood at the end of the trench with my

pistol ready to shoot every bolter, but it was no use. The beasts!

Ah, my poor Russia.”

He had a son in a Siberian regiment shot four days previously

before his eyes. For a year he had had no word from his wife and

two younger children in the Trans-Baikal, but he was well fed.

Bearded, tanned, deep-eyed, he loomed with dignity and might above

his captors. There was no consoling him.

“The beasts,” he cried, “papa disowns them. Why didn’t I use the

pistol?”

There was plenty of flour and small-arm ammunition over there, he

said. The troops were in good morale, but needed bucking up by the

officers. What could be done for him?

“Nothing,” he replied. “My boy is dead, my wife, my children, where

are they? And Russia, ah, Russia, where is she!”

To him Port Arthur had fallen.

Chapter Seven

A SON OF THE SOIL

Headquarters Third Imperial Army, Before Port Arthur, Oct. 9th:

Often we dine with the Army’s leaders. To-day all the temporary

occupants of the headquarters village, which include the human

impedimenta of an army, such as the expert on international law,

the official photographer and the correspondents, were called to

the General’s house. My invitation read:

“Sir: I am desired by General Baron Nogi to write to you, and

tell you, with his compliments, that he will be happy if you will

favor him with your company at tiffin on Sunday, the 9th inst.,

at one o’clock. He wishes to become well acquainted with you by

having chit-chats. I have the honor to be, sir,

“Your Obedient Servant,

“Y. YOSHIOKA, Major Aide-de-Camp:

“By Order.”

We went. There were some long tables peppered with aluminum ware,

fruit and wine under the pear trees of a Manchurian back yard.

We stood up to the cold luncheon, partly foreign, partly native,

charmingly served by soldiers. There was a crowd of dignitaries

distinguished by uniforms. They were of all ranks, from the three

stars and three stripes of the General of the forces to the single

star and stripe of the sub-lieutenant, who is commissary adjutant.

But it was not an affair of dress, so out of the crowd rose two

personalities who burned themselves into my consciousness, where

they hang yet, resplendent in energy. There was about them a

native dignity, a primal force, that indefinable something that

distinguishes great men.

One wore a pair of yellow boots and might have stepped from an

American fashion plate. There was American vitality and freshness

in him, too. He dispensed with ceremony, spoke keenly, decisively,

almost brusquely, and looked you square in the eye with a twinkle

that said he appreciated all the social gayety and yet kept back

his own opinion. He had a square jaw, thick neck, broad shoulders,

massive palms and a head long from chin to crown--all unusual

for a Japanese. This was Major Yamaoka, the _parliamentaire_ who

recently rode into Port Arthur with the Emperor’s offer of safety

to noncombatants. He is one of General Nogi’s most trusted aides,

a popular orator, a man of decision. He walks like a thoroughbred.

Had Cæsar seen Major Yamaoka walk across that Manchurian garden he

would surely have put him on his staff.

The other wore a pair of Pomeranian top boots, elegant and

serviceable as Yamaoka’s were fresh and hardy. They were pulled

snugly over his knees to keep out the bitter Manchurian wind. Above

were a pair of white kersey breeches, spectacular as Napoleon’s.

He was fond of rising on the toes of these boots and writhing

sinuously in them, like an acrobat testing, as he responded to

a toast or applauded the music and fun. Everything about him

indicated the strong man of action--the tensity of his muscles,

the flex of his waist, the sure set of his heels, the poise of his

head, the ease and power of his bearing, his well-knit mouth, his

regular, beautiful teeth, the clarity of his eyes, the sincerity

of his smile, even the straight, tough fiber of his hair. In

physique the opposite of Yamaoka, for he is five feet nine in

height, exceedingly tall for a Japanese, slender, and with delicate

hands, the two yet have the same vivacity and shrewdness, the same

kindliness touched with hauteur. But the second man is chief of the

army, not only in rank, for it was General Nogi, but in worth as

well. His mastery was easily felt to-day. He stands at the pinnacle

of a wonderful career and the world’s eyes center on him. How

handsome he was--and how simple and friendly, how easily pleased,

how innately courteous! Is he not also that ideal philosopher whom

the Roman Emperor Aurelius wrote about as bethinking him always

of his enemy’s comfort? I asked him how he would like to exchange

places with General Stoessel.

“I think often of General Stoessel,” he replied. “To be frank I

think of him every day. When I go to bed at night and when I get

up in the morning, and often between times I wonder about him, how

hard his position must be, and how well he defends it, and if he

is really injured as we have heard. Sometimes I put myself in his

place and imagine what I should do. Then I try to think that some

day I might be in just his position. And so I fight the battles all

over again from his side and from mine.”

“Does it teach you much?”

The General laughed heartily. “We have learned much from the

Russians. I am always pointing them out to my soldiers as model

fighters.” He took from the ground a pick whose handle had been

splintered by a shell, evidently found on the battlefield. Both

nose and heel had been worn half away, rounded with dullness and

rust. It was not like the Japanese picks, which are small and

short-handled.

“I assembled all the battalion commanders a few days ago,” he

continued, “and showed them this pick as an object lesson. It has

turned over many a hundred weight of earth and shows how expert

the Russians are at trench-making. Our soldiers do not like to dig

trenches. Many of them are of gentle blood and think it is coolie

work. Besides, they say: ‘We are going forward in the morning. Why

dig trenches to-night?’ The Russians have taught us tactics, too.”

Here Villiers interrupted. “Men who, like the Russians, build

trenches so they must show themselves on the skyline to shoot can’t

teach tactics,” he said. The talk slid on to the bonzais, mutual

promises to dine together next in Port Arthur, and au revoirs.

But I started to write of the Manchurian. He knows not, neither

does he learn. Yet you can scarcely ask who let down that shaggy

jaw and who sloped that head away, for he has a magnificent,

strong, clean jaw and his head is handsome and high. That he bathes

only once a year and cares not who owns the land so long as he

tills it; and that his wife and daughter sit on the stone fence

of his donkey stable picking the lice from one another’s heads,

doubtless has nothing to do with the question propounded by our

sociological poet.

Nor is the Manchurian uncivilized. He has, indeed, reached quite

a state of development, for he is the abject slave of fashion--at

least his wife and daughter are. They bandage their feet until

where a No. 8 boot should go they wear baby 6’s. This, I dare

say, is a less harmful fashion than that other silly one of

corsets, for surely the organs beneath a shoe lace are not so

vital as those under a waistband, but it looks sillier. To see

women in the harvest fields, by the roadside washing clothing,

cleaning the donkey stable, baking bread, spanking boys, suckling

babies, attending husbands, all the time balancing themselves as

a _première danseuse_ on her toes, is to think of stake and rack!

They say that this is not real Manchuria, that up North, where

the other army is, the women do not bind their feet. The present

Dowager Empress of China, considered by many the most remarkable

living woman, is a native of northern Manchuria. In all this vast

country the women are noted for modesty and virtue. Ten years

ago, during the China-Japan War, many committed suicide to escape

expected ravishment. But it was well learned then that the Japanese

never outrage a woman. An incident of such atrocity by Japanese, in

either war, has yet to be recorded. It is said that the Russians

are different, though it is difficult to see how any Westerner

could look with more than curiosity on a Manchu woman. Certain

it is that they go about their lives here in complete freedom and

security. Not only do the Japanese respect women; they respect

property also. Here is a fertile country with rich crops sustaining

a vast army, yet no farmer has lost a bushel of grain, except when

the chance of battle has substituted shot for scythe.

[Illustration: ORPHANS

Driven from home by shells which killed their father and mother,

these brothers tramped from camp to camp selling eggs.]

A son of the soil is the Manchurian, but not a friend of nature,

with whom he wars valiantly for his daily bread. He fights terrible

suns in summer and ghastly winds in winter. When the winds and

snows drive out the flies that eat him up, the lice come in until

the sun and flies can have another turn. So can you blame him

for being a money grabber? He thinks only of this season’s maize

crop and of next spring’s plowing. Whether the Russians or the

Japanese or the Chinese rule the land is much the same to him. He

will put his tax into the Governor’s coffer and go on with his

toil. Why should he bother? He remembers that Confucius was born

on the Liaotung and that Confucius taught to resist no violence

and remember the fathers. Consequently he fills the country with

tombstones and babes while other men fill it with war and nameless

graves. Over in the valley is a granite monolith erected in the

memory of one who honored his father and mother. A Russian shell

has struck it in the pit of the stomach and Japanese bullets have

shattered its back.

Patriotism? No. But he has his religion and it is this: to remember

the fathers and owe no man.

Recently the master of our house went out with us for a day to

carry supplies. A stray shell passed over us, perhaps twenty feet

above. We all ducked, but as soon as the coolie recovered he ran.

We called him, for we were without other help. He kept running. We

sent a soldier. The coolie came back grudgingly. Finally we gave

him a yen. But he shook the yen impudently in our faces, and fell

back simulating death, crying out: “Coolie dead, yen no good.”

He should be used to danger now. His neighbors are. The shells

and bullets are to them what blowsnakes and mosquitoes are to an

American country district. To-day I saw children playing among

corn stubble while three shells burst within a hundred yards. The

children did not look up. For three months the Russians were in the

land; now for three months the Japanese have been in the land. For

three months the Manchurian nonchalantly carried Russian wounded

into Port Arthur and buried Russian dead by the roadside for fifty

kopeks a day. For three months he has nonchalantly carried Japanese

wounded into Dalny and buried Japanese dead in the fields for fifty

sen a day. What concern is it of his which survivor he gives up sen

and kopek to afterwards?

Chapter Eight

THE BLOODY ANGLE

General Nogi’s Headquarters Before Port Arthur, Oct. 22d: To-day

we went to the Eternal Dragon, and looked in on the bloody angle.

D’Adda was with me--the Marquis Lorenzo D’Adda of Rome, naval

expert, military engineer, designer of the _Niishin_ and _Kasuga_,

which, even now, on clear days, our spyglasses can discern held in

leash, ten miles off, by Togo.

Yesterday, from the Phœnix, D’Adda looked on the fortress--its two

mountain ranges, its stone wall, its chain of twenty forts, its

concrete glaces, its barbed wire morass, its artillery pregnant

with repose, its infantry hideous with secret might--and said:

“Eemposseebl! Eet ees eemposseebl--absolutelee. Zee Japonaise

can nevaire take. Eet ees stronger zan Sevastopol--stronger zan

Gibraltar--absolutelee.”

To-day, from the foot of the Dragon, he looked down into a plain

lost to the husbandman who bears on his arm no red cross, yet

furrowed far deeper with vast and terrible furrows, its creased and

aching joints curled into the glaring sun. Up, he looked under the

muzzles of Russian cannon, useless now that the plain they were

wont to fill with dead is lost to them.

“Extraordinaire--colossal!” he cried. “Port Art--eet will be one

smoke puff zee nex attac.”

We had left the siege parallels and were climbing into the fort,

our backs bent low so that no Russian sharpshooter might give

his government cause to decorate the forgotten names of two

noncombatants. We had wormed our way, zigzag, a mile and a half

through the valley along a trench that a division might foot with

equal safety, four abreast. Lives precious, toil enormous, and

brains cunning and quick had hid their army from the enemy as

prairie dogs hide their spring litters. A clever attaché with the

Boers had shown how they who learned the tricks from the Kafirs,

hid vulnerable turnings with maize stalks. Another, schooled with

D’Adda in the arts that Julius Cæsar taught the legions in Gaul

and which have not been improved on to this day, had outlined the

most economic angles of advance, had shown how to take advantage of

every gully, how to hide behind every terrace tuft, how to cross

sodded planks above at equal distances until the way resembled the

weave of an Indian basket. All of this that we had passed was but a

sixth of the work of one division, of which the army holds three.

And it has been done in less than two months.

The Marquis continued to exclaim that since the invention of

gunpowder there has been no such engineering. “I know zee historee

well,” he said, “veree well. I know Plevna, Sevastopol, Dantzig,

Paris, Vicksburg, Metz, Ladysmith. Zay are no-thing. Port Art--eet

ees zee greatest. Zee world cannot comprehend.”

Halfway back we had passed a Chinese village, shattered by shells,

blackened by smoke, its tumbling walls utilized for the trench.

Earthen wine pots had been filled with shale and placed on the

sandbags to deceive the gunners beyond. Two days before there was

rain and in one part the trench was filled with muddy water. We

had to pick our way on submerged stones and planks. As I hurried

along, looking at my feet, I noticed that the water grew dull red

as though the wine pots above had burst. At that moment I stumbled

and caught the wall for steadiness. My hand struck something

flabby. I drew it back in horror and found sticking to the palm

a white piece of flesh dented with convolutions--a bit of human

brain. A pace away he lay, his feet toward me. A stray shell had

blown him off from brain base to nose bridge. He was still warm and

the officer called back shrilly for a soldier to come with pick and

shovel. Then we took notice of the shells bursting, some five miles

off, some a thousand yards away. This had happened within the hour.

As we came closer to the Dragon a stretcher was borne down by two

red cross men. A bullet had picked a private through a peephole.

Just ahead of us two soldiers were walking, one with his full

kit, rifle and shovel on his back, the other bareheaded and

barebacked. Both wore on their sleeves the two yellow stripes of

the distinguished soldier. The finger of the one who was to go was

held by the hand of the one who was to stay. Neither spoke. They

walked silently and slowly in the full sunlight. He of the full kit

was ordered into the thirty-minute trench to take the place of the

one who had passed out on the stretcher. He, too, is almost sure

to pass, ere long, the same way. As the two comrades walked toward

the place of death I saw how true Dickens is, for it was precisely

thus--finger in palm--that he sent Sydney Carton and the seamstress

to _la guillotine_ in “The Tale of Two Cities”; the one who was to

go clasping the finger of the one who was to stay, the one who was

to stay looking with kind, brave strength calmly into the face of

the one who was to go.

“Ah! Tragique!” cried D’Adda.

The officer said we might one at a time go into the front trench.

I started. It was a short climb over shale and debris of sundered

shells and of a sudden I hobbled into a hollow space, girt with

bags and silent, silent as is the place of execution the morning

of capital punishment. It was the redoubt, thrust into the air

like the maw of a dragon. The sun beat in beautiful and sure. The

rocks, with deadly glare, spat up their challenge. An occasional

bullet sang as a ripsaw tears through a pine knot. Then a machine

gun rattled and the shale beyond pattered. I was carried back to

a boiler factory and an automatic riveter. Of all war sounds that

of the machine gun is least poetic, is the most deadly; it has the

ring of business.

Silence, blankness, death. At first I could see no life, but the

officer spoke a low word--here all words are whispers as they are

beside the couches of those about to leave this world--and four

spots on the wall that had seemed monotonous and brown as the shale

moved. Four simple, peasant faces with the star of Nippon above

looked at me. Then one, attracted by something beyond, suddenly

kneeled, seized the rifle beside him, leveled it through a chink

and pulled the trigger. That deadly rip sawed its knot.

Boldened by the presence of soldiers kneeling as I was, I began

to look around. A groan, first aspirate, then low, as of an

asthmatic man snoring, brought my eyes across the bag-protected

dragon’s mouth and I saw two figures kneeling above a third.

Presently the two lifted the third into a stretcher and filed

past me with it. I saw a face blood-dabbed, the lips piteously

moving. A bandage across the eyes saved me the worst. The officer

beckoned for me to peek through the farther hole. The incident

was but a bit of the day’s work for him. I followed and saw a

shattered field glass under the parapet. It told the story. He

was--had been--a non-commissioned officer in charge of the sentry

squad and was looking across at the Russians when a sharpshooter

spotted the glass. I felt that I was hurt more than he, for I lay

awake thinking of it much of that night, only to remember that

the surgeon-general had told me that a man shot through the brain

is instantly unconscious, though his lips move and he moans for

minutes.

“Each day--how many?” I asked the officer.

“Twenty.”

“And how many days?”

“Fifty-nine.”

“How many to take the fort?”

“Four thousand six hundred and fifty-three.”

“With each night a battle to resist a sortie?”

“Yes. Each night a sortie, each night a battle.”

“Thus--by night--how many to hold this awful place?”

“Since the beginning? Perhaps a regiment, perhaps a few more.”

He motioned me to the corner hole--the hole through which a

minute before the bullet had sped into the officer’s eye. I

emulated neither bullet nor officer, but at a respectful two

feet glimpsed a ridge ghastly and glimmering in the sun like any

other ridge in this hell hole. Quite near enough to reach in a

short dash--200 yards, the officer said--a row of sandbags were

backed business-like toward me. Between us were five heaps of blue

clothes, four in a huddle and one a bit off--Russian dead killed

in the battle of Hatchimakiyama four days ago in the zone where

nothing lives. Grass withers there. Vermin alone germinate.

Behind those sandbags and behind these men crouch and have crouched

every minute for two months hunting game the most lordly and the

most cunning, the most deceitful and the most contemptible, the

boldest and the fiercest, the most inspired and the most depraved

this earth can boast.

The Russians on three sides held us in a vise. The bottom of the

crater was paved with empty cartridge shells and bullets flattened

on the rocks. Constantly more knots were being ripped by the saw

above. Except for that rasp--a rasp that bore in with crescendic

violence on the nerves--the silence was profound. Life was

everywhere--intelligence at the keenest pitch, ingenuity the most

diabolical, agility the most intense, sacrifice heroic, daring,

sublime--but not a sound, not a motion. Everywhere the silence

kept--the unendurable silence of the Eternal Dragon. Its insatiable

maw thrust up there in the ghastly sunlight, drenched in blood, yet

cried for more.

[Illustration: HUMAN BARNACLES

Clinging to the bases of the forts, like barnacles to a ship,

these sturdy Japanese existed in miserable quarters throughout the

summer, fall and half the winter.]

Sick with the thought that through this bloody angle, bought at so

dear a cost, held at so terrible a price, there must yet be fought

the supreme fight that will eventually reduce the citadel I turned

to go. At the top of the downward trench I paused, kneeling, where

three soldiers stood with rifles waiting to relieve the sentry on

duty. Down through the plain swept the ten-mile front of the

two armies--the might of Russia and the might of Japan, locked

in a struggle so desperate there was no sound but the asthmatic

wheeze of the ripsaw buzzing above. It was very close to the

other world--yet the resources of two empires centered there, the

heartthrobs of great people, raging like the wind in from two seas,

swept it all into a typhoon of gore and grief.

I felt my hand clasped by a palm moist and gentle with feeling,

friendly with comradeship. The eyes I looked into were not those

of a beast of prey. They were quite pleasant eyes, even lovable.

The face was touched with soil. I could see it came from the rice

paddies, yet it had sympathy, and pity, and much capacity for

happiness. Was there not also capacity for suffering? The low

word came and he went off, food for powder. Will he be one of the

twenty? The sun was quite as devilish as ever in the Dragon’s maw

as he stepped into it. As I scrambled into safety I saw him propped

against the wall, his rifle against a chink, his cheek to the

breech, “sniping.” It was a salute and an appeal that he pressed

into my hand, a reproach and a challenge. I was a white man, he a

yellow, and he was killing white. What difference was there between

us? Could I not also have found friends two hundred yards farther

on? Still the ripsaw buzzed the knots. Again the machine gun

rattled, without poetry, business-like and deadly.

“Tragique!” whispered D’Adda, as he came back from the same journey

and sat beside me. “Zis ees zee focal point--most eentense, most

sublime. Perhaps here Port Art will be taken--and by surprise. I

know zee historee. I study Plevna, Sevastopol, Metz, Gibraltar,

Vicksburg, Ladysmith. Always by surprise. Zee physical is but

zee one aspect of zee situation. Zere are zee three aspect--zee

physical, zee mental and zee moral. Zee moral aspect will

be--what you call it? zee final decidence. When what you call zee

psychologique mo-ment come--in zee wind, zee rain, zee storm, zee

quick rush--zen zee high spirit go low--phwaat! like zat--zen Port

Art fall. By a surprise. One sergeant he take Dalny, one private

soldier he will take Port Art.”

We loiter along the parallel on our way back. The ripsaw strikes

a knot above our heads and we shy to windward. D’Adda reminds

me that once when Skoboleff, greatest of all Russian soldiers,

thus ducked in giving way to a purely physical reflex action, he

immediately leaped to the parapet, and walked along in full view of

the enemy, until two members of his staff dragged him down as he

sputtered out his disgust with himself.

We stop, winded. Again the ripsaw. Again the shrink. Then, content

with what breath we have, fearful we may have no more, we hurry on,

our knees sprung, our heads drawn in, like turtles slinking through

the mud. We have no troops to encourage, no reputations to sustain.

We are not Skoboleffs.

Chapter Nine

A BATTLE IN A STORM

Ho-o-zan (the Phœnix Mountain), Manchuria, August 28th:--Ninety-six

hours of almost incessant fighting--from sun to moon, from moon

to searchlight and from searchlight to dawn--is more than human

endurance, backed though it be by Japanese pluck, can stand, and

there was nothing to do last night but rest. Only an occasional

sentry pop or the roll off to the right of a wheezy cannon whose

shot traveled on wheels in need of grease, told us that the sublime

panorama of mountains and valleys lying before us hid a hundred

thousand armed and warring men.

Until last night the weather has been all sun and moonlight, with

dawns and sunsets tinted persimmon russet, and the valleys bright

twenty hours out of the twenty-four; fighting conditions ideal for

the defense, whose searchlights and star bombs made the other four

hours bright and left surprise as difficult as to a poker student

playing with his back to a mirror. But mirror or no mirror the

Japanese attacked. Night was day to them and daytime hell, as they

hurled themselves against that iron chain of forts, only to break

as the waves of the sea climb up to shatter upon the rocks. The

rocks disintegrate. Yes. Yet hard on the waves--and slow.

Losses? Officially it was admitted that more than twenty-five

thousand were done for. Not since Grant hurled his inefficient

brigades on Cold Harbor has there been such a slaughter against

a fortress. In the Ninth division, which lay in our immediate

front and which formed the center of the army, two regiments were

entirely decimated and a battalion and a company of artillery put

out of action, to a man. For a week the roads at the bases of our

mountain dribbled stretchers loaded with masses of flesh, clothes

and blood. The soldiers’ “bandaging places” overflowed, and the

living were so busy helping others to live, and still others to

die, there was no time to bury the dead.

And all for nothing. Not a single permanent fort had been taken,

not a prisoner, not a gun from the enemy was in our hands. The

opposing mountains, responsive with explosives to the touch, where

no art of the engineer was lost, held before us as always, grim,

monstrous, calm in mighty strength. On their under-features,

between the opposing outposts, lay thousands whom no first aid

dared reach, and other thousands whom no burial squad came near.

The men of words argued long that week. They could not agree

whether it was a reverse or a repulse. The anti-Japanese contended

that as we had not gained one point the action was a “reverse.” The

lenient were certain that as we had not been driven back no one

vain of military technique could call it more than a “repulse.”

The fifty thousand interested parents in Japan knew not if it was

victory or defeat; presently they are to find that it is death.

“Reverse” or “repulse” the commander cared not: he had disobeyed

an Imperial order, for the instructions were to enter Port Arthur

on the 21st of August. And the caterers of the treaty ports,

what cared they of “reverse” or “repulse”? The banquets had been

ordered, the five-dollar tickets sold, the day fireworks stored

for the fall of the eastern Gibraltar on this pre-ordained day. And

now the eggs were no longer strictly fresh, the vegetables were

stale, the meats off-color, while the back of Port Arthur was still

game and careless in all that brilliant weather.

With us, to meet an officer was to see a face drawn and grave.

Useless to utter sympathy, superfluous to express confidence. They

had underestimated a great foe, miscalculated his strength, and

were paying the price--a fearful one--with the “two o’clock in

the morning” courage of desperately determined men. They did not

waver or complain, but it was terrible to see them, calm, patient,

silent, suffering, still resolute to go on, meeting each salutation

with a hollow smile, ghastly with ache.

“What fine weather,” we say, wanting better speech.

“For him--yes. Bad for us.” “Him” is the enemy, on whom the sun

shone gayly and for whom the new moon was a few hours off.

Clouds came with last evening. Slowly the houses on the edge of the

old town disappeared against the murky hills. Then the new town

went. The huge cranes that marked the western harbor, where lay the

hunted warships, evaporated, the docks faded away, the stone quarry

was lost. At length the tall factory chimney on the outskirts,

which for days had been our chief landmark, went out in the haze.

That was the last we saw of the complete Port Arthur, whose

beleaguered, respected front had mocked us for eight desperate days.

The moon had a hard time. She came up with a huge cigar in her

face--shocking in a lady moon!--which choked her till she spewed

and sputtered and went out. She was a new moon and died gamely,

filling the air with impudence and bravado, so it was some time

after midnight before the rain pattered her off about her business

with that silly cigar behind the clouds, and filled the valley

with mist. Thus, the rain was our friend and we welcomed it,

casting happy and fragrant remarks into the rising storm, singing

the mountain to sleep with our lullaby of content, for we knew

that “his” searchlights could do little, perhaps nothing, against

our soldier boys, already sore and tired, but valiant down there

in the huge night. Foiled in the light, we looked for them to do

something in the dark.

But even before that we knew the night was big with promise, for

eight officers climbed up at dusk to stay the night with us. We lay

at length under rubber blankets and rough oiled paper used in Japan

for cart covers, with our noses stuck between the rocks, scenting

for excitement as deer are fire-stalked in the great woods.

This mountain, the Phœnix, is directly in the rear center of Nogi’s

army and about a mile from his advance posts. Thus, with little

danger, we command as grand a battlefield as the world has yet

produced. From here we have seen, at the same time, exasperating as

a three-ring circus, two infantry assaults, three artillery duels,

and a naval engagement. The human impetus we knew not until last

night. Until then we knew only the sound and color of battle, and

its wild glory. So we fell asleep, the rain pattering.

Past midnight and only stray sentry shots have carried out that

promise of something big. With difficulty we keep awake, yet the

officers behind lie expectant and the night is young. The fresh

rain dapples delicious coolness and filters mosquitoes--tiger

mosquitoes--more terrible than war. I hear deep breathing--then

quiet--and dreamland.

Rain pelting in my face wakes me to greet a flash of lightning.

I tuck in the rubber blanket, reach for my watch and by the next

flash see the hands at seven minutes past three. I snuggle myself

into a ball and crunch the rocks closer. Another flash behind and

I spasmodically close my eyes, but open them in time to see the

mountain side and road below livid. Two horses are lying in the

road, killed, I suppose, by the flash. But, no, I remember that a

shell laid them out yesterday. Ricalton cries:

“They’ve begun.”

“No,” I yell, “it’s the storm,” and my voice is lost in the thunder.

Is it thunder? Is it cannon? Who can tell? The vivid flashes, too

great for artillery, lighting up the whole mountain, come in now on

all sides and as fast as the lanyards of a battery could be pulled.

The horrid grandeur rises. Prayerfully thankful to be in it I

desperately resolve not to run. How the molten sheets drag me

from that hole in the rocks! Surely every glass in Port Arthur is

leveled here! The next instant the Russian fire will concentrate

on the Phœnix. Yes. There it is--a flash from Golden Mount, like a

dynamic spark from one electrode to another, pointed this way, lost

in the ink of night.

A double fear--the fear of shame and the fear of death--consumes

me. I shiver. But I grow brave, for I am not alone. Ricalton leaps

to his feet, wrapped in the trailing cart cover.

“Sublime!” he cries, waves his arms aloft, laughs at the storm.

More flashes from the Russian hills, the Japanese answer. The vast

night is hideously alive. Artillery flicks as fireflies spark,

spits tongues of flame, answering thunder with thunder, lightning

with lightning. The rain beats down a torrent.

In the intermittent flashes the ugly eye of the searchlight looks

in, licks phosphorus about us and ambles off into the valleys, as

a cow might run the fur of her tongue over a cocklebur and calmly

go to grass. No taste for rocks over there. They are out for softer

game. Six more fling their deviltry from the head of Cyclops and

down in the valley struggle with mist and rain.

Then, ’mid the sky’s and cannon’s belch, as a fairy into the land

of demons, a thin red line is tossed gracefully over the valley

from the Russian side. It reaches high over the mountains from

the sea forts and above the center of the great plain falls, as a

sailor casts a halyard over the yardarm on to the deck beyond. In

mid-air bursts the _feu de joie_, the delight of fireworks, in war

a spy. On other nights this deathly star bomb revealed all secret

movements, but now the Japanese have allies in the mist and rain.

Neither searchlight nor star bomb can penetrate the storm veil.

Now comes the crackle of infantry, followed by the pop, pop, pop,

of quick-firers, the clatter of Hotchkiss howitzers, the more

sprightly click of Maxims. Another assault--and they have had

eleven in a week! Will they win this time? They are going for the

Cock’s Comb, whose crest stands out ominously against the sky.

Boom! Bo-o-o-m! Far out of the distance a deep voice.

“The navy. That’s a twelve-inch gun. Togo’s with us to-night!”

Ricalton ought to know, but who can tell? Is it a Japanese siege

mortar, a Russian coast defender, field artillery, star bomb,

machine gun, howitzer, or that grand bombardment from the heavens?

They are all in action to-night. Is it defeat or victory? Can they

take the fort?

I can answer none of these questions. I only know that “a child

could understand the De’il had business on his hand.”

As the crashes increase, the wind rising, the furor mounting, I

throw the cart cover aside wrap the blanket more closely about me

and run down the mountain. Ricalton calls, but I hear him not. The

reality of this din must be known. Over my shoulder as I run the

Phœnix looms up monstrous, haughty, wise and terrible, silhouetted

as she was born, anon in fire.

At the foot a regiment is drawn along the road, the men squatting

on their heels, ponchos over heads, their rifle barrels,

brass-capped, peeping from the corners. I make for the valley.

Seeking a trench where I have been before, between the lines of

fire, I hurry for the village of Shuishiying, the location two days

before of our outposts. No living thing is to be seen, but overhead

the big bullets crash from behind and lumber in from the front.

Down here between the two lines of batteries the way grows long,

the village distant, the desire to return manifold. The artillery

of two armies centers on me; not a pleasant sensation! Not on me,

of course, but I am not a Christian Scientist--nor yet a veteran!

It gets on my nerves. I turn back. Then through the dark I feel a

file of soldiers near and go on.

Starting at every sound, in the purest darkness, not knowing

whether we or the enemy occupy the village, and yet so far by this

time I cannot return, I enter the village. A dull light around

the first corner shows me the headquarters of the infantry line

officers commanding the reserves--a place I had been two days

before. I go up. Only a sergeant is there answering the telephone.

“My friends? Where?”

He waves an arm toward the front. I tumble out of the village and

there are the advanced reserves drawn up, squatting on heels,

poncho-covered, rifles uncapped. A movement is beginning. I fall

in with the young lieutenant I know. The regiment quickly breaks

into charging formation--squads of twelve, and deploys single file

into the mealie fields to the left. I am discovered, ordered to

the rear. I protest. The sentry orders arms, bayonets fixed. I

go--back. The regiment goes--ahead.

But why be foiled? Why come halfway round the globe to be turned

back at the summit? There is another way--to the right. I hurry

along it as day begins to break. The mists are heavy, the rain

drizzling, the first light struggling. I find the conical hill in

the center of the plain, quite detached from the fortress proper,

taken by our troops the day before and called the Kuropatkin

battery. I struggle through battered abattis and entanglement

for the elevation. The foss is filled with water--the only moat

before Port Arthur that has the traditional morass. The place is

deserted and if I can reach the front trench the whole action will

lie before me like a chessboard. Across the parapet lies a line

sergeant, his head gone. There has been no time for the dead. The

trail is thick with khaki bodies. Picking my way slowly forward,

halting at each yard to be sure that I am not in range of the

musketry whose wild rattle is now filling the air, I at length find

myself near a bombproof partially splintered by shells. The plain

now luminous, I pause for rest and safety, the din not lessening.

But no sooner do I look around than I scramble quickly on--into

danger. Two figures are rigid there in the half-light of the

bombproof, one in khaki uniform, one in blue blouse and marengo

pants. The one in khaki has his teeth in the throat of the other,

whose eyes, popped like peas from the pod, peer over, rakishly

curious, at his limp hand dropped over the khaki back and holding a

pistol. The khaki hip is drenched with blood, partially dried. The

sun is come and gone and is now here again since that happened. The

faces are ghastly with bloat. I leave the half-light of the shelter

and go out where bullets are.

The star bombs cease, the searchlights die away, the artillery

flags, the infantry grows noisier. Then I see the reserves falling

back, the squads of twelve escaping from one terrace to another,

in good formation, continually firing, but still falling back.

This Kuropatkin battery may see other dramas like the bombproof

duel. I hasten down. In the village I find the lieutenant busy with

trenches, improvising the defense. He throws all his English at me

as I come up:

“The Russians--they come--I fix them. They are very wild. Our men

are very wild. Ah, it is a wild war.” The telephone rings. He runs

to speak with the general. Then the sergeant informs me.

They had attempted an assault in the rain and dark. Beginning with

shrapnel they had tried to find the searchlights. Charges burst

above two of them nearest the Cock’s Comb, and they expired, as

if hit. The guileless infantry then went in, supposing the way

clear. Halfway up the glacis every searchlight, including the

two apparently hit, converged on them, throwing them out, in

spite of the rain, clearly against the red earth. More. They

carried nippers able to cut wire theretofore found before Russian

positions, but here the wire was as thick as the little finger, not

cutable with their weapons. Thus, instead of a lump of dough to be

bowled over the first dark night the advance regiment had found,

even in the rain, that the Cock’s Comb stood out intact as a racing

yacht stripped for her tryout.

Yet another Russian dodge, for a battlefield is as full of

intrigue as a ballroom, completed the disaster. Under our fire of

the afternoon which preceded the rivalry with the storm Stoessel

had his batteries reply, but when we opened up with the storm he

ordered his guns to cease, one by one, battery by battery. Soon our

forces thought that like the searchlights the artillery was done

for. So when the advance, after creeping through the nipper-defying

barbed wire, expecting their job done, was about to leap with a

“Banzai” over the parapet, they were met by light and fire. Turning

to look for their comrades of the second regiment they found these

deep in the dunga, attempting, not to come on, but to cut their way

back, for a battery of pompoms and a regiment of sharpshooters

had sortied, almost segregating them from the command. The whole

brigade was threatened with annihilation and at this moment the

reserves I had joined were ordered to the relief.

The regiment under fire of the machine guns retreated

precipitately, leaving one-half its number on the slope. Turmoil

again through the barbed wire and plump into the rear of the

second regiment, also retreating, not into its own lines, but into

the Maxims and Nordenfeldts. Overwhelmed on all sides, tricked,

defeated, two-thirds of the men killed or wounded, grimy with sweat

and powder and almost fainting in the muggy August, the decimated

brigade, its regiments back to back, fought as Custer fought on the

Little Big Horn, with a coolness that comes to men in the supreme

hour.

Most of them died as Custer died, for out of that brigade of 6,000

men there are to-day uninjured but 640. These were saved by the

reserves from Shuishiying, my lieutenant and his comrades, who, as

dawn came in, hammered the Russian rear and drove the Siberians,

sullen with the joy of successful trickery, up into their trenches.

Wandering back toward Ho-o-zan, the forenoon well on, the rain

almost finished, I wondered was it “reverse” or “repulse”? Coming

to a place where the rear guard had been at my descent of the

mountain before dawn I looked for them in vain. Instead of the

greeting I expected from the side of the road the dust about me,

here and there, was flicked up, as if stones were thrown at me.

“Is this a bit of soldier fun?” The pelting kept up. One of the

stones struck a few inches from my toe, when I heard the well-known

voice of Ricalton yelling from behind a shoulder of rock:

“Here--out of that, you young ass!”

Then I saw him frantically waving, from behind his shelter. But why

should he look for shelter there? The artillery fire was down. All

I could hear was a counter-attack of infantry a mile and a half in

my rear. But as soon as I got near him he ran out and dragged me

into the ditch at his side.

[Illustration: AMMUNITION FOR THE FRONT]

“Where are the soldiers?” I asked. Then I saw his fun. “You were

tossing things at me,” I cried.

“Those! Spent bullets! You ----!”

At this moment an orderly galloping along fell from his horse

several hundred yards up the road, and crawled into the ditch ahead

of us. We wormed up to him and found a slug had traveled from

shoulder to trunk under his ribs and into his thigh.

They were fighting down the reverse slope of the Eternal Dragon,

an outwork of the Cock’s Comb, and the Russian bullets, aimed at

the foe above, cut a parabola in the air, and came down with their

initial velocity two miles off across the plain--where we stood.

The Russians on the reverse, the Rising Sun must be above the

Eternal Dragon.

It is now noon. We are back on Ho-o-zan, looking out to sea. Twelve

warships are on the horizon. From one, the nearest in, comes an

occasional puff of white smoke, then a low, long bo-o-om! A shell

drops into the town. The eye follows.

Now we see how the brigade is avenged. The houses of the old town

are charred and broken. The new town is gutted and smoldering. A

shell has carried away the factory chimney. One leg of the crane is

demolished and the other sags. The rain has put out the flames and

a dirty brown smoke fills the gap from Golden Mount to Tiger’s Tail.

Between sun and sun the navy, brother of the army, has laid a heavy

paw upon the place. Its claws away, the deep scratches show where

Port Arthur bleeds.

Chapter Ten

THE CREMATION OF A GENERAL

Before Port Arthur, Sept. 27th.--Major-General Yamamoto was shot

and instantly killed two days ago. The brigade he commanded--one

leading the right wing of the Army--had captured the outworks of

“203.” This mountain had been long in dispute and was dominated by

certain Russian forts, which made it, while Japanese territory, yet

untenable by our forces. Yamamoto’s brigade, however, clung under

the reverse ridges and occupied trenches at the top, keeping the

foothold secure until artillery could be advanced to reduce the

opposing positions. In this critical situation the General thought

it best to be on the ground in person and advanced his headquarters

to the base of the mountain, which exists on the map only under

the figure “176,” denoting its height in meters, but which his

soldiers had cherished “Namicoyama,” because of its resemblance

to the trepang or namico, a long angular fish abundant in eastern

waters.

The night of the move Yamamoto climbed the mountain and crept

into the trenches for a look at the contested heights opposite.

He came before he was expected and his engineers had not had time

to prepare a bombproof shelter through whose chinks he could look

in safety. He would not wait, but put his glasses through a rift

in the trenches and settled into a comfortable seat to study the

situation. There was no regular firing, but only the desultory

popping that is heard night and day along the whole ten-mile front,

where sharp-eyed pickets are keen and cautious. The General became

bold, raised his head--whit--a bullet through his brain.

Neither officers nor men can be said to be reckless, or even

incautious. The army is devoid of that extravagance expected of

war, when each man’s courage seems in question and cowardice

impels bravado. Evidently, there is not a coward in the army,

for the bravery of each soldier and of each officer seems taken

for granted. All make of war a serious business, in which lives

are units to be kept for the Emperor and skillfully used, as

a go-player advances his pawns, saving all he can for final

victory. The labor done in a week to build cover would gather all

the harvests of Manchuria, which just now are mellow ripe and

gloriously beautiful in the keen sunlight. Whole mountains are

tunneled, in some places through solid rock; in others through

slanting shale, to afford covered ways. At each divisional

headquarters, of which the army has three, the lookout has two

bombproofs dug in the solid rock on commanding heights, buttressed

by three layers of sand bags, covered with two feet of earth,

all supported by poplar poles, with the loophole for lookout

cunningly slanted so the sun will not show behind and indicate to

the enemy--perhaps only 500 yards away--the precious eyes behind.

These bombproofs sometimes are made quite comfortable with rugs

and improvised stools, but mostly knees suffer and the wretched

correspondent traveling from post to post comes to complain not of

“writer’s cramp,” but of “general’s stoop.” A month ago on the left

wing of the army two staff officers were killed in a bombproof

by a bursting shell. The army was scared, for a staff officer is

valuable freight. Since then care has been redoubled; sand bags

have been laid a layer deeper on all lookouts, ramparts have been

heightened, and now venerable, curious heads sink lower as they

turn up for a view.

The death of the General, Yamamoto, was another warning. It

was also a severe blow. He was one of the most competent men

in the army, commanded a star brigade and was slated for early

advancement. Last night his memory received a most distinguished

honor: the corpse was cremated on the battlefield where he lost his

life.

To appreciate how great the honor was it will be necessary to

explain two conditions: First, wood on the peninsula here is worth

its weight in cash. The country is not wooded to begin with, which

is the cause of another difficulty the army has to face--scarcity

of water. About the villages there are usually a few poplars, but

the mountains have nothing but Scotch heather and the plains only

Ventura County bean pods and San Joaquin wheat fields. Then two

great armies have boiled water and savagely wrangled here for three

months, until all the rotten timber of old Manchurian dwellings

has gone for firewood. As a consequence a frequent sight is a

transport cart with some stubs of spruce tied to the whiffletree,

being carried from Dalny, twenty-two miles away. Dried maize stalks

are the universal fuel. Cracker boxes sell for a dollar apiece and

the other day I found my servant brushing the pencil whittlings

from the floor to use for kindling. Second, it was the samurai’s

belief that a warrior who sacrificed his life in combat should be

honored by cremation on the spot of his vicarious atonement. And

the difference between the army of to-day and a samurai clan of a

generation ago is far less than the difference between cuirass and

bombproof; you can’t wipe out the clinging beliefs of generations

in forty years--not in the Orient. It may take hyposcopes and

searchlights, wireless telegraphy and machine guns to win

victories, but only funeral pyres and Shinto sacrifices will pay

for them.

Wood-impoverished, the army cannot honor its humble dead; _i. e._,

not immediately; wait till Port Arthur falls--but of that later.

It is different with generals. As a daimyo in feudal times received

the forehair of all his clan as a final offering, so to-day a

general gone gets the camp fires of his soldiers. Last night the

brigade which had lost its intrepid head ate its rice dinner cold

and went without hot water for its tea. All the mess fires were

contributed to make a pyre worthy the deceased.

Just as the sun went down, at the bottom of Namicoyama, whose

heights war had swept but a day before, in sight and sound of the

grim proofs of his last victory--emplaced batteries and occupied

field hospitals--the body of the major-general was given to the

flames, while his men in the trenches above sternly held the

Russians at bay. Occasional cannon rent the air, infantry popping

cracked in the stillness, myriad tent lights twinkled up into the

moonlight; the blaze shot up, waned, crackled and died down. The

midnight shift of sentries presented silent arms. A donkey brayed

out of the valley. Miles to the left a howitzer boomed. The ocean

lay black like ink beyond a fringe of shore gray under the moon. A

line of coolies passed with bamboo stretchers carrying piteously

mangled forms--the day’s harvest to which the coolies had been

called from their maize and their millet. Embers gleamed from the

brigade’s mess fire. Two orderlies stepped up with a wooden box,

kicked the embers away, and placed in it some ashes.

A week hence a family in Tokyo--a quiet, dry-eyed Japanese lady

with two half-grown boys--will receive the wooden box. It will be

borne a few days later through the streets of the capital on a gun

carriage to Aoyama Cemetery. There, after two white-robed priests

have said a few words over it, a long shelf in a narrow vault will

receive the wooden box. The widow will have notification by special

messenger that his August Highness, the Emperor, sees fit to

remember the illustrious deeds of the departed by conferring upon

him--who is not dead, but who has passed on to wait--the order of

the Rising Sun, and, in the absence of the husband the wife will be

permitted to receive the pension attached thereto. Japanese history

will record that Major-General Yamamoto, after a valiant career

in the service of his Emperor, gave up his life at the Battle of

Namicoyama, in Manchuria, Sept. 24th, 1904.

Last night the brigade bivouacked in joyous envy. Had not its

general received what every soldier longs for--death before the

enemy; had he not also received the soldier’s apotheosis--cremation

on the scene of his exaltation? This is as near religion as these

people get. But the staff and the new major-general, educated

in Europe and living in the twentieth century, when they climb

Namicoyama to spy upon Port Arthur will wait until the engineers

have safe-marked the heights with bombproofs.

Chapter Eleven

THE GENERAL’S PET

He was small, like all his race, and he looked as harmless as a

musician. In fact, his eyes had the dreaminess of a musician’s,

and the clasp of his hand was like that of a woman. He touched

me on the arm one day as I came out of the staff tent at General

Nogi’s headquarters, and asked me in fairly good English if I knew

San Francisco. Together, with a crooked stick, we traced out a

map of the city on the sand at our feet. He knew it as well as I

and he pointed to his former home, near the corner of Washington

and Mason streets. Then he pulled from his breast pocket a letter

sweat-stained and travel-worn, which, read:

“To whomever this may concern, I wish to say that the bearer,

George, is the most faithful servant I have ever had, that he is

a good cook, and that he has a lovely character. I will consider

it a favor to myself if his next employer treats him generously.

“MRS. H. L. HEVENER,

“1180 Mason Street

“San Francisco.”

His real name was Eijiro Nurimiya. He had seen me the day before at

the General’s tiffin and had read the word, “San Francisco,” on my

arm band, but had not ventured to speak to me when in the General’s

presence. He was one of Nogi’s bodyguard, and I immediately knew he

must be a man of some distinction, for throughout the camp it was

well understood that Nogi had about him only those private soldiers

who had become eminent for service in the field. That day and the

following days when Nurimiya came to my bean shed, we had long

talks over the tea and cakes. Thus his story is here set down:

He left the Hevener home nearly a year before the war began and

worked in a watchmaker’s shop on Jackson Street in San Francisco.

Like all of his countrymen he had ambition and desired to rise

above the kitchen. But he was a reserve conscript, subject, as such

reserves are, to the call of the Emperor at any crisis similar to

the one that his country is now in. So he responded to this call

March 23d, sailing on the _Korea_ from San Francisco to Kobe,

twenty miles from which his home lay in the Ugi Provinces.

His father, a mender of broken barrels, is separated from his

mother, who keeps a tea house in Kioto. There is one sister at the

tea house with his mother. He had three days with his parents,

the first time he had seen them in six years. Then he sailed for

Manchuria, where he joined the famous Ninth Regiment, the Black

Watch of Japan, a part of the Ninth Division of the Third Army

chosen to conduct the operations against Port Arthur. This same

regiment had a number of other American Japanese.

The campaign had progressed two months, when Nurimiya saw his first

great battle. It was the grand assault against the permanent forts

of Port Arthur, lasting through seven frightful August days. He is

one of the fifteen survivors of Company C of this Ninth Regiment,

which marched into the Seven Days’ Battle three hundred and fifty

strong.

The first day Nurimiya went with his comrades against the north

battery of the Cock’s Comb Fort, which was finally captured on

December 18th. Thus, it took the Japanese four months of desperate

work to accomplish that for which Nurimiya’s comrades were lost

those seven days in August. Most of the regiment was wiped out

in front of the Cock’s Comb. What was left, including Nurimiya,

was ordered to reinforce the Seventh Regiment, operating to the

right against the fort of the Eternal Dragon. Against the Cock’s

Comb Nurimiya fought in the front line. He also had the same

good fortune in the fight against the Eternal Dragon, for to the

Japanese such an opportunity is considered good fortune. More of

his comrades were lost here, including all that came from America.

The following two days he lay with a few others hugging the base of

the fort in the broiling sun, cut off from provisions. About this I

asked him:

“Were you thirsty?”

He replied: “By-m-by very much want to drink, so I make water--red

water.”

With that he struck his wrist mimically showing that he had slit

one of his veins to slake his thirst.

But the great act of Nurimiya’s life came on the 25th of August,

when he made the ninth assault he had participated in during the

seven days--and the first successful one. Each Japanese infantryman

carries in his breast a linen flag--a cheap affair that you might

pick up in a department store for a few pennies--a red sun on a

white field. The first man into an opposing trench or redoubt waves

this flag above his head. It is a signal to his own artillery,

showing them where they must not fire, and also acquaints the

commanding officer, viewing the action from some eminence in the

rear, with the situation. Nurimiya was the first man to wave his

little flag over the Eternal Dragon. The Eternal Dragon was the

only fort which the Japanese held in that permanent Russian line

through the three months of August, September and October, and it

was the object essential to the engineers in outlining their vast

siege operations across the plain. Thus it was the San Francisco

watchmaker who planted the flag of the Rising Sun on the key fort

at Port Arthur.

General Nogi chose Nurimiya and his fourteen comrades for body

servants and relieved them for the rest of the campaign from active

duty on the firing line.

This is how I found him at the General’s house. I asked if he

wanted to go back to America. He replied:

“War all finish I go. Nogi-San need me I stay.”

Then with great eagerness he told me how he wanted to get back into

the fight and for the first time in all our acquaintance his eyes

lost their dreaminess and the clasp of his hand became taut with

energy.

I did not tell him how I that morning had learned from the General

himself that never again should Nurimiya be subjected to the

supreme test.

“Is it not pleasant here at headquarters, with the band, and the

foreigners, and the nice cooking, and the easy work?” I asked.

He was not interested in what I said. He waved an indefinite arm

toward the front and replied:

“By-m-by they make plenty die off there. Then I go back.”

He had not yet learned that he was the General’s Pet.

Chapter Twelve

COURTING DEATH UNDER THE FORTS

Willow tree village, Headquarters Third Imperial Army, Manchuria,

four miles from Port Arthur, Oct. 5th:

It was in August that the Japanese took the Eternal Dragon,

advanced their outposts beyond its walls, threw up trenches, and

settled down this inch nearer the coveted goal. In this fearful

fight a certain part of the field was taken and retaken seven

times, and finally, for strategic reasons, though the fort which

was the bone of contention rested with the victors, a piece of dead

ground beyond, over which these repeated charges had occurred,

lay partly within the Russian lines and partly within our own.

Dead bodies mingled with wounded--Russians jowl by cheek with

Japanese--lay over it so thick that a man might have walked from

one trench to another without touching the earth. The wounded could

not be succored, the dead could not be buried except when they

lay behind the opposing trenches. Between, no living thing could

exist. The lines were but three hundred yards apart--a distance at

which even a poor marksman could shoot fatally, and through all the

twenty-four hours the two trenches were lined by sharpshooters a

rod apart and on the constant lookout.

The weather was perfect. By day the sun shone; by night the moon,

assisted by searchlights and star shells, kept the plain of death

as light as day. The light showed the loopholes of the trenches so

well that they could not be used, for the moment a shadow appeared

behind one a marksman from the other side would put a bullet

through it. The men sighted the hyposcope--an instrument first

used extensively at this siege--which is a telescope arranged with

mirrors at a reflex angle, so the scope goes over a wall while

the eye sees in perfect safety twelve inches below. At occasional

places, carefully shadowed, they kept chinks covered by stones,

which, when the sun sank to the proper angle, or at dawn, could be

uncovered to make a peephole large enough for a man’s eye.

Now for a month, under a torrid sun, unmarred by a day of rain

or scarce a fleck of cloud, hundreds of dead have lain rotting

in that compact space. A flag of truce to bury them was out of

the question. The Japanese had far the worst of it, as their

lines, drawn in a lunette, partly surrounded the charnel house

below which they lay, steeped in its noisome drains. Moreover,

in hastily throwing up their trenches the night of the battle,

corpses, loosely covered; had been used to improvise the walls,

so bodies and stones together formed a shelter which in life the

men thus commandeered could not have made. Well the Russians knew

of the disease the sun was breeding, and refused a truce, for the

dead played well into their hands. Stench could be a weapon more

effective than bullets or strategy. So, day after day they held the

Japanese there, as a dog’s nose is rubbed in his own mess.

Watch on sentry posts was cut from four hours to two, and at the

worst portion of the line to one hour. The pickets swathed their

thin brown faces in towels and the commissary supplied smelling

salts. An officer who served on that picket line twelve days told

me that the sun alone was enough to defeat an ordinary man in four

hours. Added to that the slightest zephyr bore a fetid breath more

foul than the lowest of a city’s sewers.

During the first day groans could be heard occasionally from the

contested ground. Wounded--no one could guess how many--lay there

dying. To have attempted succor would have been suicide. The

pickets did all they could. They threw rations of biscuits beyond

the trenches, scattering them along the ground, blindly, of course,

but carefully as a farmer strews a field. A company divided itself;

one part sacrificed its water bottles, slinging across their

shoulders beer bottles, instead of the handy and handsome aluminum

ones furnished by the army. Then the aluminum bottles, that would

stand the shock of striking, which might shatter a beer bottle,

were tossed over to the starving, thirsty wretches.

The second morning there came some desultory groans from the

farther side. The groans suddenly ceased. Successive rifle pops

told that the Russian sharpshooters had picked off the wounded.

Picket duty in the trenches became more deadly. The army had

settled, with quiet determination, into a siege. One night, as the

moon rose over another division of the army, two thousand yards

to the west, there appeared above the trenches a cap. A bullet

pierced it instantly, but it was only a feint cap on the end of a

stick. The picket nearest saw it was a Japanese cap, and called his

challenge, “Who goes there?”

“Tomodachi!” (a friend) came the response.

“Show your arm.”

A small grimed hand on an emaciated forearm was thrust above the

parapet. The picket grasped it and pulled sharply. With a groan of

agony and relief a bundle of rags, dirt and clotted blood tumbled

into the trench. The picket forgot his duty as he knelt over his

comrade, for, ground in filth and caked as it was with dried blood,

he could not mistake the universal brown khaki, and under an arm

was slung a bit of cotton-incased wood--a Shinto emblem, for this

time, at least, triumphant. The wounded soldier fainted.

[Illustration:

_Copyright, 1905 by Collier’s Weekly_

HOW THEY GOT IN

Eighteen miles of these trenches were dug through the plain before

the Russian forts.]

In a field hospital this afternoon I was privileged and honored

in looking upon and talking with this hero. He is a distinguished

soldier of the famous Ninth Regiment, the Black Watch of Japan,

which lost all but ten per cent. of its forces in that illustrious

assault under the Chinese wall. So marvelous is the recovery of the

wounded that the soldier smiled as he lay, speaking occasionally

a few words in response to my interpreted questions. His head

and legs were swathed in bandages and he was sipping saké--a

present from his Emperor. How these soldiers love their Emperor!

Well they may, for a week ago there sailed into Dalny harbor

a transport laden with presents from His Majesty to his sick

soldiers. All the privates got saké, all the officers brandy. In

addition, every private received a present of three yen in cash,

the non-commissioned officers from three to ten yen, and the

commissioned officers from ten to sixty yen each.

Here is the soldier’s remarkable account:

“I was one of the few who reached the Chinese wall that terrible

August afternoon. There were but a few of us left, scarce half a

company out of a regiment, when the Captain in command ordered

us to scale the wall. I had but reached for the stones when my

legs went from under me--melted away. A shell fragment had smashed

them as a bamboo pole is smashed under a hammer. The pain was

little, but it gradually spread over my body. I became numb, then

unconscious, and though shells were busy all about me, lay for

hours with no further hurt. I came to, under the stars.”

The soldier told little of what he felt and saw, but it can

be imagined; the vast plain, silent but alive with hostile

trenches; the gloomy fortress above, bristling with cannon, but

silent; the concealed batteries--his own--miles beyond, from

which an occasional boom and whiz startled the gaunt and shivery

searchlights in their fantastic pencilings; then his sense of

comrades lost, of dear ones perhaps dead within sound of his voice,

with memories of home and better days; then desolation at defeat,

the foe victorious, pride alone resolute, triumphant to the last.

He could hear sounds of pick and spade scratching the chilly earth,

clamping into the shale. Only a few rods away the reinforcements

were hastily throwing up earth-works to hold the hard-won ground.

He saw indistinct forms groping in the dusk, pulling about other

forms, inanimate ones, and hastily covering them with earth. The

dead were being used to more quickly fill in the embankments. In a

few days those carcasses--rotting--would charge usurious toll for

all the improvised help they were this fatal night.

The soldier tried to crawl toward his comrades, but he could move

only a few inches at a time, so intense was the agony in his legs,

for the cool of night and renewed circulation had brought back his

senses in full keenness.

Soon dawn came and with it hell. The battle was on again, this

time in other parts of the field, but the shells and bullets so

often passed over him that he came to think of himself as a dead

man and lived on only because nature exerted her just law. Like an

opossum he feigned death. Within his sight were more than a hundred

dead and twice as many wounded. Groans welled up like bubbles from

a pot. Arms tossed feverishly. Backs writhed in despair. Then

biscuits began falling from his own trenches; one fortunately fell

near him. He also managed to get a tossed-over water bottle. To

reach it he was obliged to crawl a few feet and as his hand touched

it he felt a sharp pain in his shoulder and the blood trickled. A

bullet had pinked him. Instinctively he fell as if dead.

It was then that there occurred the thing which has inflamed

the army as tow is inflamed on bonfire nights. The whole vast

amphitheater was quiet. It was sundown. Nature was in her most

gorgeous raiment. Both armies were at supper and an involuntary

truce seemed to still the hills and valleys so lately fire-ringed.

In the midst of this peace and beauty a desultory firing rang from

the Russian trenches nearest the bloody angle in which lay the

soldier with his comrades--dead and worse than dead. The bullets

were directed, not into the opposing trenches, but into the wounded

in the bloody angle.

“Stand to your guns, men!” came from the Japanese trenches, and the

men sprang as though to resist a sortie.

But there was no sortie. The Russians were killing the wounded,

that the bodies might rot and drive their comrades from below.

The moving ceased, the groans ceased, the sun went down, the stars

and searchlights came. Impelled by the first law of nature the

soldier dragged on, wearily, as he supposed, toward his friends.

But the ground was level and he must have gone laterally. Toward

dawn he tumbled into a deserted trench and found a sort of

sheltered dugout. It was a covered passage to the Russian fort

and untenable now by either side. In it were two Japanese so

desperately wounded they could not move and could barely speak. He

shared his last drop of water with them.

As they were drinking a figure slouched along the trench and

blocked the doorway. It wore a black-visored cap, shiny with

celluloid--a Russian cap. Searching the gloom the Russian found

the three wounded soldiers. Then he poked his rifle in and fired

three bullets--one at the brain of each. Two died instantly. The

third--the soldier who had already survived as by a miracle--passed

into what he thought was the rigor of death. All grew black before

his eyes. Never from that moment to this--seventeen days later--has

he seen even a glimmer, nor will he ever see again. The bullet

passed across his eyes as he lay side down and shattered the optic

nerve.

The Russian thought his work complete. Leaving his rifle outside he

passed into the dugout and emptied the pockets of the two dead men

and the third, whom he believed to be dead. Then sneaking back up

the passage, the Russian regained his own lines.

For five days the soldier lay in the dugout, unable to move,

unable to see, numb from long suffering. Almost crazed by thirst

and hunger, he at length severed the arteries of one of his fallen

comrades, newly dead, and lived on. He found worms crawling in the

wounds of his legs. He tore up the shirt of a corpse and bound them.

Then began as memorable a journey as man ever made, as heroic a

combat for life as pioneer or warrior ever underwent. He started

to crawl to the Japanese lines. Blinded, paralyzed, his legs

shattered, one arm useless, half dead with fatigue, his tongue

swollen with thirst, and starving, he made his piteous way a few

yards each night.

Directions were useless. Seeing nothing he could not tell whether

firing came from friend or foe. He only knew that his way

was down. So down he crawled. Bullets and shells passing over

him became so common he lost all sense of them. By a terrible

mistake--an error that cost twelve days of agony, for otherwise he

might have traveled the few essential yards in a night--he missed

the captured fort which marked the apex of the wedge driven into

the Russian lines. And so his fearful, sublime crawl was for a

thousand yards along the front of his own lines, into which at any

time, had he turned straight along the face of the hill, he might

have come and found sound legs and new, clear eyes. But down was

his direction and down he went--a thousand yards in twelve nights.

He found a few new dead with biscuit in their pockets and blood in

their veins--this saved him.

So history repeats itself. Ten years ago--to the month--the

Japanese lay without Port Arthur as they do to-day. Instead of

Russians, Chinese were inside. But as the Japanese advanced along

the western wall they suddenly at a bend in the way came upon ten

bodies--no more--of their own comrades, stripped and mutilated, the

heads grinning from pikes above. The Chinese had visited their

own vengeance on successful enemies. But the act lost them Port

Arthur. The Japanese became an army of fanatics, a tribe of solemn,

righteous men, inflamed with the zeal of retribution, blazing with

revenge, as did once that ancient civilization founded on the

prophetic watchword, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” The

next day Port Arthur fell. Those ten bodies cost the Chinese a

province, a fortune and an island kingdom.

How will the Russians pay? I asked this of a certain

Lieutenant-General, who told me some of the details I have just

related. He raised his arm and pointed beyond the bombproof in

which we sat to where the western harbor, with its magnificent

Russian stone dwellings rising beyond could be plainly seen.

“We have a proverb in our country,” said he, “like this, ‘Once won,

well won; twice won, never lost.’”

Chapter Thirteen

FROM KITTEN TO TIGER

Headquarters, Third Imperial Army, Before Port Arthur, Sept.

30th:--We went yesterday to the foremost firing line, where all the

venom of war is concentrated in a score of yards among a dozen men.

There we saw how the besiegers of Port Arthur are besieging it, how

they live, what manner of men they are, and some of the facts of

modern warfare which those who want to know about the humanity of

science had better not read. Before we went an officer led us to a

bombproof on the Japanese side of the great valley across which we

were to go to gain the captured fort.

“Look!” said he, turning over his hyposcope, “the way is about a

mile and a half. The real danger is in the fort itself, but if

you are very careful to crawl with your heads low you are safe.

If you decide to go you must relieve our authorities from all

responsibility for your lives.”

Across the valley a puff of white spat out a tongue of flame; a

shell crashed into the escarpment below us. From across the valley

came the intermittent puffing of outposts. A mis-shot bullet lapped

up a patch of dust twenty paces to our right.

“Well, gentlemen, will you go? It’s a quiet morning. We had better

start soon if at all, for the sun is in their eyes now; soon it

will be against us and then they can pick us off like flies.”

Villiers was with me. “What do you say?” he asked. “It’s time to

measure risks. Think what you’ll get out of it. A correspondent

dead is of no use to his paper, and people remember him as a fool

who got shot in some reckless venture. Remember, you’re going into

bullet fire for the first time. You’ve had shell fire only, up to

now, and shell fire is to bullets what a bluebottle fly is to a

tiger mosquito. Forbes used to have a supreme contempt for shell

fire and a supreme respect for bullets. A shell buzzes and blows--a

bullet flits in quietly, spits through an artery, the heart, the

head--and it’s all over. Their rifles fire point blank at 200 yards

and up where you want to go the lines are but forty yards apart.

They can pick off a ten-cent piece at that distance. Remember, if

your head shows so much as an inch above that parapet, you’re only

good to sniff at when the wind blows from you, for these people

have no extra stretcher for your useless carcass.” Villiers can say

these things. Somewhere in his London studio is his order of St.

George which the Czar gave him for audacity at Plevna. Also some

seven other governments have decorated him for fit war behavior, so

he is an expert on battlefields.

“But,” said I, “think of what there is up there: the bloody angle,

scene of the death of 3,000 men, heaps of unburied slain, trenches

made of corpses, sentries firing, the living sleeping, eating,

working among their dead comrades, the enemy on three sides, with

this single line of supply and retreat down which only four men can

march abreast. This captured fort is to the siege of Port Arthur

what Nanshan is to the campaign--its decisive battle. It is the

wedge Japan is driving into the heart of Russia and we’ll be on its

tip. When the nations hear the truth about this fort--the assault

that captured it, the odds against which it was fortified and held

for six weeks--it will be the marvel of the age. Think! Would you

miss standing on the apex of the world?”

“I was a youngster myself once and I’m not old now,” replied

Villiers. “They fake these things in London almost as well as I

can do them in the field, so why risk my bones? But I’m as good

as a Japanese officer or an American reporter. Up to now we’ve

been chaperoned scribblers; here we become war correspondents. It

smells of the old days: Forbes, Cameron, Pierce, McGahan, Jackson,

Burleigh--and that crowd of gay devils. Lead on.” Perhaps you will

be more interested in Villiers to know that he is supposed to be

the original of Kipling’s character, Dick the Artist, in “The Light

that Failed.”

So we went into the chipmunk’s burrow, up through the cornfields,

frowned on by a hundred thousand guns, menaced by two armies,

until we nestled in the ragged hole Japan has torn in Russia’s

impregnable last stand. Laterally down the line of our advance, but

high over our heads, shells often rammed their harsh bewilderment

and we could hear them strike, sometimes rods, sometimes miles

away. How like a live thing a shell snarls--as some wild beast, in

ferocious glee thrusting the cruel fangs in earth and rock, rending

livid flesh with its savage claws, and its fetid breath with poison

powder scorching the autumn wind! ’Most always it fizzes and funks

in shameful waste. Bullets are the nasty things; a who-whit, a dry

spat, a thin hole drilled in a frightful way, as snakes sling their

venom in sly and easy scorn. When we got halfway up, and into the

angle, so that Russian trenches were on three sides, a number sped

about us. Hardly a minute but one passed over our heads.

The situation looks well in print. Yet we were in little danger.

Our wits kept--we were safe. For this let us profoundly thank the

engineer who built that siege parallel--a cunning masterful Yankee

of the East, whose name as a military engineer must be handed

down to future generations of technical students. He had taken

advantage of every rise in the ground and of every depression. Of

corn stubble he made a drapery, of hillocks a screen, of ravines an

ambuscade, until Nature so aided him that she and not the Japanese

infantry was the assaulting force against those heights beyond.

We walked twenty meters apart, for, should we by any chance lift

our heads together and be sighted in a party, the Russians could

drop a bit of shrapnel over us. Otherwise we might be off for a

morning stroll down a country lane. We crouched as we walked, for

the trench was built for Japanese, who average a few inches less in

height than a foreigner. The distance as the crow flies was little

over half a mile; we went nearly a mile and a half. At one side

ran a telephone wire, staked down at intervals with broken, rusty

rifles. At every angle a sentry saluted, stepping forth grimly

from a dugout. Halfway up we passed a stretcher bearing a body,

the face covered with coarse matting, sewn roughly--a corpse of

the night before. Farther on came a soldier with his arm in a wet,

crimson sling. Half an hour before, feeling secure after days in

the ominous place, he had passed into a ravine he thought safe,

but out of the path chosen by the clever engineer. He was in the

Russian fire zone and presently a shell fragment smashed his arm.

From a dozen to fifteen are lost that way every day.

Across the valley we halt at the foot of a hill and then turn

into the fort. Chloride of lime is sprinkled here over the human

effluvia that nowhere else can be deposited, but a bone sticks

out of the trench wall. I look closely. It is a human femur. From

it projects a heavy coil of rubber-insulated cable. The officer

explains that this formed the electric communications with the

barbed wire entanglements through which we are passing, and that

on the day of the fight it was charged so that when the Japanese

pioneers tried to cut the wire with pincers they were prostrated

with the shock and had to wait for glove-handled tools. Beside it

is a long strip of bamboo, torn and shattered. This was carried to

the attack by two soldiers who with it tossed into the fort a short

strip of bamboo stuffed with gun cotton. This, exploding, tore a

hole through which the men could charge. It was a more effective

bombardment than the shells. As we turned the corner we came upon

the men and at last we saw the besiegers of Port Arthur, where they

were living, 200 yards from the Russian trenches, in the famous

redoubt where enough men have been killed to cover the place four

deep with corpses.

The officer took up a pick lying in the trench. “Look!” said he,

“the point was sharp as a grindstone could make it to begin with,

but in some places, you know, the rock is hard and--” he would

apologize. He was very sorry we should find the picks in such bad

condition. He was always apologizing. He apologized for the length

of the way, the heat of the sun, the annoyance of the shells. But

the boys in khaki smiled on. Word passed as to who we were and they

greeted us dumbly, spread out their pitiful small blankets, pulled

from obscure coats and corners their precious sweetmeats, advanced

the cigarettes that mean more than beef to a soldier, offered us

their still more precious tea. All over them was written their joy

in being recognized, in having someone share their hardships.

Death on the battlefield is the height of this soldier’s ambition.

But not uncleanliness on the battlefield, and all the time we

sat there I was aware of a pervasive, sickening odor, something

strange, something frightfully offensive.

“What can it be?” I said as it bore in upon me and I felt suddenly

nauseated.

“Well, in the hurry of building these trenches, in the night,

under fire, a few dead bodies--only a few--were rolled into the

escarpment. We very much regretted it----.” The officer apologized

profusely, but they had been under fire ever since and the trenches

could not be torn down. So they stood--human walls. “But I can

assure you there is no smell now. The first week, in the hot

sun--Ah! then I should not have liked to bring you here.” As I

leaned against the wall something crushed, like the snap of a

pencil, under my back. I leaped, in alarm, to my feet. As I turned

around a blue coat, which I had pushed back in my fatigue, fell

over the skeleton of a hand, and at my feet dropped the joint of a

forefinger. Villiers pulled me to my knees.

“Look over there,” he said and pointed beyond the trench. I saw

fresh earth heaped up. “It is the brow of the Russian works,” he

said, “but look in between--that pit of uniforms.” A mound of

soiled, tattered clothes, higher than a man could stand, and longer

than a company street, lay before us, not fifty feet away. At the

base, facing me, detached from the rest, a hideous skull leered.

“Unburied dead,” Villiers said, “hugging the ground, sent back into

the earth from whence they came.”

Then the officer apologized. Yes, there was no chance to bury the

dead. Under constant fire for six weeks, between hostile lines,

they slowly rotted away until only bones and rags remained--Russian

and Japanese inextricably together on the scene of the last

desperate Russian stand, where was concentrated all the machine gun

fire of both sides.

Wounded and dying had been mixed with dead. No succor was possible.

A general must count his men as fighting units and he could not

afford to pay a dozen good lives for one injured. We turned to

go--stomach and heart sick, but the boys in khaki smiled. They

were used to it. Just then the postman passed. He had a handful of

cards, scrawled over with loving messages.

As we saw how complete the service was--mail delivered under the

shadow of guns, and as a man goes on to the firing line to offer

up his life--we suddenly came to the telephone which made us think

how near we were to all we held dear. That line was connected with

headquarters, headquarters with Tokyo, Tokyo with New York and

London. I suddenly saw myself ringing up the editor to catch an

edition.

“Hello! just arrived at the Eternal Dragon. Quiet this morning.

Russian sortie last night. Repulsed. One Japanese, eighteen

Russians lost--three wounded between the lines calling for

water----”

“Hold on, what’s that?”

“Wait a minute till I stop this infernal racket.” Down with the

receiver. To the Colonel: “Can’t you stop that battery a minute?

I’m at the ’phone.”

“All right, editor. Wounded man says--Hold on a minute. It’s that

blasted volley firing. All right. I was saying, a wounded--Hell,

here comes a shell!”

We turned another corner and came upon the commander of the

regiment--a lieutenant-colonel, stern-faced, with that eternal

smile, a countenance nationally characteristic. He welcomed us to

his shelter between two walls--which the Russians had built and

which our shells destroyed. His staff--a captain and a major--sat

crosslegged on one side. We sat on a red-blanketed bench on the

other. Crosslegged, on his red blanket, he was no better fitted

than his men. At his side on a nail hung his sword and cap. Behind

him suspended from two wires was the regimental flag, in a plush

case. It is 30 years old, has been in 18 battles, and is all but

gone from bullet fire. To the regiment it is a sacred emblem. This

is the illustrious Seventh Regiment which captured the Eternal

Dragon, after losing all but ten per cent. of its number and

which now, after a month with the reserves when its ranks were

replenished, is back for a week on sentry duty. So intense is the

service there, one week in four is all a single regiment can stand.

We were served with tea in daintily lacquered cups and then the

lieutenant-colonel passed saké and tea, asking permission to drink

our health.

[Illustration:

_Copyright, 1905, by Collier’s Weekly_

THE LAST WORD

An officer giving final instructions to his men before the Grand

Assault of September 21. This photograph was taken in the front

parallel, 300 yards from the Cock’s Comb Fort.]

“Where is the Colonel?” I asked the officer. Then he apologized

again. He was sorry he couldn’t oblige me, but unfortunately the

Colonel had been killed about twenty yards from where I then

sat. His body had been cremated within three paces of my present

seat. Just beyond the tent I could see his grave, should I look.

I leaned out and in a niche of the wall saw a plain white stick

ideographed in black. At the base was a bottle of flowers and a

Chinese pumpkin. It contained the ration a soldier calls “iron,”

and some sweetmeats beside a can of water. Then we knew what some

living soldier had done. The ghost might come wandering back in the

night and be hungry. It should not suffer. We went on to more tea

with the new live Colonel and some sweetmeats which we utilized

differently than the ghost had evidently utilized his. “How was he

killed?” I asked. Then we heard the story of the capture of the

Eternal Dragon.

“It was a hot August afternoon,” said the officer, our interpreter,

“and the general of this division, a very determined man, resolved

that the time had come to pierce the Russian center. So he chose

the Seventh Regiment for the honor. It is the regiment to which

the young Captain, wounded, and rescued by the Russian prisoner,

of whom you were talking this morning, belonged. The Colonel made

his plan of attack to have his command advance in three battalions,

one on each flank and one in the front, the flanks to be the real

attack, the front to be a feint. He, himself, commanded the feint,

and, as usual, stayed in the rear. He sent his pioneer corps ahead

to cut the barbed wire entanglements. They came back with the

report of electric charge. They went forward again with insulated

pincers and the regiment followed. All the way to the base of the

hill, where we now are, they were almost unmolested, when they had

expected to meet a fierce shell fire. This made them confident.

But the Russian general, as we afterward learned, had ordered his

men to reserve their fire till we got within close range, and then

to give it to us with machine guns. So the two side battalions got

safely well up to the slope, only to meet a terrible rain of steel

from the top. The aim was so sure and the firing so heavy that

nearly two-thirds of the command was mowed down at once. And the

surprise we found was in their construction of the fort. Where we

supposed our shells had opened gaps in it, we found it intact and

our assaulting party unable to gain foothold, for the Russians had

placed boiler plates under two feet of earth and the shells had had

little or no effect on it.

“When the Colonel learned all this he got mad, and instantly

ordered the third Battalion to assault the front in force. He

led the charge. A few of the men got in and fought hand to hand

with the Russians. By that time another regiment had arrived with

reinforcements, charged through the breach and overwhelmed the

Russians, driving them out of the place. Though we are dominated

by six of their batteries and have been assaulted by them eighteen

times in attempts to recapture, we have ever since held it.

The Colonel’s body was found under a heap of slain. In it were

twenty-four bullet holes. His sword was broken at the hilt. His cap

was missing and we searched for it a long time without success,

until one day our lookout spied it between the lines. Certain death

seemed the price for a man to try to get it, but as soon as the

Colonel’s servant, a soldier, learned where it was, he volunteered

and succeeded one dark night in regaining it, so the cremation

could take place properly. If you wish now, follow the Captain into

the fort and you will see the foremost trenches. Keep your heads

low.”

Then we saw the kitten become a tiger. We passed from the

hospitable soldier, with his sweetheart’s letters, his welcoming

smile, his innocent and friendly telephone, his harmless tea and

cakes, to the firing line, to death, and to worse than death.

It was hands and knees into the fort and the front trenches. This

is the tip of the bloody angle, with the enemy on three sides.

Bullets passed over us continually. Shells were bursting far

away. Twice we passed half ruined chambers built of timber below

ground--Russian food and ammunition shelter. It was high noon. At

length we lay, panting, under a pile of sapling poplars; above us

were sand bags six deep.

“We are perfectly safe here,” said the officer, and we looked out.

“Except from ricochet bullets,” added Villiers. “The zone of fire

of those chaps yonder is away from us and as long as they exchange

we’re all right. Shells can’t reach us, even shrapnel would be

nullified by this covering, but when those bullets strike a stone

no one can tell how they will come. They can shoot around a corner

from a flat stone as easily as in the open through a loop-hole.”

I heard nothing. Standing up, secure, my eyes came upon him

suddenly--the soldier of the Emperor, the boy who does the

trick--at work. He was crouched under the parapet in front, rifle

to cheek, its steel nose through a loophole, his finger on the

trigger. The tensity of his muscles and his eyes glancing down

that barrel in deadly aim made me think of nothing but a great cat

pausing for a spring. One leg was drawn up, his cap was pulled down

viciously over his eyes, the sun beat upon him and he lay, venomous

with pent-up passion, cut in silhouette against the trenches, a

shade darker than the shale. A minute before he had offered me tea

and a cigarette; now he was dealing out hot lead. Yet, who could

suspect danger, with all so still and clear! But life most intense

and death the most terrible and swift dwelt all about us. Through

chinks in the wall a row of sand bags on a mound of earth could be

seen. They marked the Russian trenches behind which the enemy lay

as silent and deadly as the boys on our side. Not a minute passed

without its bullet. Forty meters was the distance, the officer

said, the closest place in the whole ten-mile front of the two

armies. By day, when the Russians stay quiet, sentries stand three

yards apart, by night, shoulder to shoulder. They are changed every

thirty minutes so intense is the strain. A regiment can stay in the

fort only seven days because the Russians are above and on three

sides, and they must keep them out, while they stew in their own

juice and their comrades rot beyond the wall. When a sortie is made

neither side asks for quarter nor expects it. The Russians know

that unless they regain their trenches they will not live, for to

be wounded and fall in the bloody angle means slow death where

no aid can come; to meet the Japanese line means instant death.

The Japanese know their chances, if wounded, are the same, and if

they reach the Russian lines they accept only two things--victory

or death. So it is that here through long weeks the siege has

concentrated its bitterest essence, living has come to be a burden

and death a joy.

Then came the thud of a bullet. It was a different thud from any

we had had up to that time, and though I had never before heard a

bullet strike flesh, I could not mistake the sound. It goes into

the earth wholesome and angry, but into flesh ripping and sick with

a splash like a hoof beat of mud in the face.

I turned to look. I saw the nearest sentry sinking to his knees.

His rifle had dropped and was leaning against the wall, butt down.

He sank together all in a heap and his head hung limp, his chin

against his breast.

“Poor chap,” said Villiers, “he was looking at us and got in

front of the loop hole. I suppose we are so great a novelty in

his strained existence that he could not resist the temptation to

neglect his duty for a minute.”

We crawled back and out silently and quickly, bade a hurried

good-by to the Colonel, hastened past the smiling, oblivious

men--they are used to it--and over a mile and a half of chipmunk

burrow. The General was waiting tiffin for us in his tent. There

was a jar containing strawberry jam like grandmother used to

make. With a flash it brought back all the comforts of home. An

empty shell in the center of the table held some field daisies

and wild chrysanthemums. All the fragrance of the fields and the

beauties of nature came with them. At my mess plate lay an American

newspaper, just delivered by this incomprehensible field post. With

it civilization, its myriad passions and joys, floated in. As the

cigars were passed I opened the paper. I found an interview with

Dr. Nicholas Senn, of Chicago, in which he said:

“All the talk of inhumanity which some correspondents are sending

out from the Orient is foolish. Statements of soldiers being

wounded in the mouth and reports of all similar acts of atrocity

can be set down as being without foundation. Russia has the best

Red Cross Society in the world and the Russians are an extremely

humane people. Likewise, this war is going to be a humane war. As

for the Japanese, the worst that can be said of them is that they

are a proud people.” I read this aloud. It was translated and the

officers, Lieutenant-General Oshima and his staff, listened. None

of them replied. Finally Villiers said:

“The question is not: Are the Japanese or the Russians a humane

people, or not a humane people? It is: Are individual men, under

conditions the most terrible the imagination can devise, Christians

or savages? Both Japanese and Russians socially are delightful

people. I’ve lived with the armies of both nations and their

soldiers are delightful and humane. But that is not the question.

“Now, is it possible for soldiers living as we saw them to-day--in

their own filth, unable to succor the wounded, preyed on by

stenches from the dead, until battle in which they neither ask nor

give quarter is a welcome relief--can the word ‘humane’ be uttered

in speaking of lives such as theirs? Or can it be uttered of the

Russians--driven into a trap, half-starved, night and day in the

trenches, confronted by overwhelming numbers, with certainty of

no relief, yet defending a lost hope with lives easier lost than

lived? Would you be ‘humane’ under such conditions? I am sure I

would not.