After Port Arthur--Raids in Manchuria--The Battle of
Sandepu--Kuropatkin Asks for Reinforcements--The North Sea
Inquiry.
[Sidenote: After Port Arthur]
With the fall of Port Arthur, the Russo-Japanese War entered upon an
entirely new phase. Although the situation of the gigantic armies that
faced one another across the Sha-ho River remained unchanged, the
strategic problems to be solved by their instrumentality were in effect
transformed. The struggle for the possession of the great naval
fortress had operated as a vitiating factor in the military counsels of
both belligerents. Japan had sacrificed between 50,000 and 100,000 of
her best soldiers in bringing the six months' siege to a triumphant
issue, and in doing so had, by dividing her armies, moreover, forfeited
the opportunity of dealing a crushing blow at her adversary. The
magnificent infantry that broke themselves in so many vain assaults
upon the fortifications of Port Arthur might have enabled Oyama to turn
the Russian retreat at Liao-yang into a rout, or to drive the Russians,
after the battle of the Sha-ho, back beyond Mukden. On the other hand,
Kuropatkin had found himself hampered at every turn by the instructions
imposed on him from St. Petersburg to attempt the relief of the
beleaguered fortress, by which was symbolized so much of the pride and
prestige of the Russian Empire. In the game of chess a strong player,
to handicap himself against a weaker, will sometimes undertake to mate
with a certain piece. If the piece is lost, the game is lost, and
therefore the player's defence is awkwardly compromised by being
divided in aim--between protecting his vital piece and at the same time
shielding his king from checkmate. Very similar was the task imposed on
the unhappy generalissimo of the Czar, who, while trying to baffle
Oyama's vigorous combination, had to keep one eye always on Port
Arthur. The fall of Port Arthur at least set free both combatants from
a distracting preoccupation, and to that degree it was a strength to
either side. But its ulterior effects were much less evenly balanced.
The capture of Port Arthur at one stroke deprived Russian arms of the
possibility of complete triumph, whatever issue future military
operations might have; and it secured Japan from the last lingering
fear of disastrous defeat. When the remnant of the once powerful
Pacific Squadron fell into the hands of the Mikado's soldiers, Russia's
last hope of recovering, during the present war, the command of the sea
expired utterly; and without the command of the sea, Kuropatkin's boast
of "settling the terms of peace at Tokio" could obviously never be
fulfilled. Even if invincible armies swept Oyama out of Manchuria, out
of Liao-tung Peninsula, and out of Korea itself, there would still be
the impassable Straits of Korea to render the victory barren and to
impose their inexorable "Thus far and no further". As a matter of fact
it became evident to the whole world that, with Japan supreme by sea,
the continuance of the war would only be a costly futility for Russia,
in which she had everything to lose and nothing to gain--a struggle in
which she was exhausting herself to no possible purpose. Her adversary
had already won the odd-trick, and the only doubt that remained to be
solved was how near she would get to making grand slam. But the blind
arrogance and reckless folly which had precipitated Russia into a
wanton war for which she was utterly unprepared, were still obdurate to
conviction even by the logic of such disastrous events. Nothing is more
stubborn than wounded pride, or more blind than baffled vanity. The
more desperate the situation, the more perversely bent became the
bureaucracy of Russia in prolonging it, and in refusing to recognize
facts which impeached the competence and sagacity of the existing
régime. Already the strain of maintaining the army in Manchuria had
begun to have its effect at home in widespread distress and growing
discontent among the peasant and industrial classes. The characteristic
remedy of the governing clique was to attempt not a cure, but a
diversion. Kuropatkin was ordered to renew his activity and to achieve
something that could be represented as a victory at any cost.
[Illustration: THE BAMBOO GUN AT PORT ARTHUR.]
[Sidenote: Raids in Manchuria]
Since the last great battle in October--the battle of the Sha-ho, when
Kuropatkin's ill-advised offensive had been converted into a perilous
retreat that almost degenerated into disaster--the two opposing armies
had been practically quiescent. Before they had either recovered from
the exhaustion of their last tremendous struggle--before their awful
losses could be repaired and their depleted stores and supplies could
be replenished--the inexorable grasp of the Manchurian winter had
fallen upon them and frozen them into immobility. While the last
critical acts in the siege of Port Arthur were being enacted, the
troops of Oyama and Kuropatkin were occupied only in maintaining a
jealous vigilance on each other, and in digging themselves into their
winter quarters. In a climate that is almost Arctic in its severity,
where the temperature is regularly for weeks and months together 30 and
40 degrees below freezing-point, active campaigning would be
impossible, even if the deep snow under which the face of the country
is buried did not make transport impossible. Each army proceeded to
entrench itself securely and to construct huts or dig out shelters in
the ground in which the troops could find it possible to sustain life.
The sufferings of the devoted soldiers during these months of inaction
must have been intense, and on both sides the roll of casualties from
exposure and frost-bite was appalling. Week after week went by without
any incident other than trifling affairs of outposts being recorded in
the meagre dispatches given to the world by the authorities at Tokio
and St. Petersburg. It has always been the Russian habit, however, to
cloak failure in essentials by proclaiming success in trifles; and from
General Kuropatkin came a steady trickle of trivial information about
brushes between patrols and pickets, wherein the Japanese were always
worsted, with the loss of a horse and rifle, or perhaps even of a
cooking-stove. But on the very day that the negotiations for the
surrender of Port Arthur were opened, a serious interruption to the
long inactivity on the Sha-ho occurred. The Russians attempted for the
first time a raid on the Japanese line of communications. It was an
attempt that an enterprising enemy would have made long before; for it
is to be remembered that every mile of the Japanese advance from the
sea rendered them increasingly dependent on the railway which they had
taken from the Russians. Their army on the Sha-ho was, roughly
speaking, more than one hundred miles from the nearest sea-base,
Niuchwang; and any interruption to that vulnerable line of
communications must inflict much inconvenience at least on Marshal
Oyama. The Russians, of course, were exposed to the same risk, and the
long line between Mukden and Harbin had, in fact, frequently been cut
by the Chunchuses--roving bands of fierce native horsemen, whose hatred
for the Muscovite invader had proved a valuable auxiliary to the
Japanese. Their activity, in many cases organized and directed by
Japanese officers, compelled Kuropatkin to guard jealously every mile
of the railway in his rear, and especially every bridge and culvert,
and this necessity of maintaining large forces on the lines of
communication seriously detracted from the effective strength of his
armies in the field. The Russians' idea of giving their enemy tit-tat
was at first merely tentative, however. A couple of officers,
practically unattended, managed to make their way southward almost as
far as Hai-cheng, which is itself some forty or fifty miles south of
Liao-yang. There they succeeded in blowing up a culvert and tearing up
some yards of railway line--damage which, though not serious in itself,
was enough to encourage similar attempts on a larger scale. Kuropatkin
knew that the bulk of the army which had been engaged in the siege of
Port Arthur was about to be entrained northward, and that with these
reinforcements for Oyama were to go the great siege trains which had
been employed in battering the ships and fortifications of the captured
fortress into submission. To cut off these reinforcements, perhaps to
capture train-loads of men and destroy some of the enemy's most
formidable artillery, would evidently be a great counter-stroke to the
effect produced by the fall of Port Arthur; and so a great Cossack raid
was authorized on the Japanese lines of communication. The scheme was
admirably conceived and organized, and it achieved at least the first
and most important condition of success--namely, a complete surprise.
At the outbreak of the war it was predicted in many quarters that what
must certainly turn the scale in favor of the Russian arms was Russia's
overwhelming superiority in cavalry. The experience of the Boer War had
left fresh in every mind the incalculable value of mobility. Now
Russia, in her hordes of Cossack horse, possessed a cavalry which had
the reputation of being unique in the world. "Other countries have
infantry, artillery and cavalry; but Russia is alone in possessing
Cossacks," said one distinguished general shortly after the outbreak of
hostilities. But as the campaign progressed, critics began to revise
their judgments. The terrible Cossack horsemen, for some reason or
other, failed to play any considerable part in events. They attempted a
raid in Korea from the northeast, but without any result, and in the
subsequent fighting they found no opportunity for asserting themselves.
The campaign was an infantry and artillery campaign entirely; and the
notorious weakness of the Japanese army in cavalry was no impediment to
their victorious advance. The war in Manchuria proved in fact that the
conditions of the war in South Africa had been peculiar and
exceptional. But at last the Cossacks were to be given an opportunity
of showing their mettle. On January 8th a force of 6,000 Cossacks under
General Mistchenko crossed the Hun-ho and began to march rapidly
southwards. This formidable force, composed of three brigades, was
accompanied by six batteries of light artillery, and in its
organization everything had been done to give to it the _maximum_ of
mobility. The Hun-ho, which Mistchenko's division crossed immediately
after setting out, is a tributary of the Liao River, into which it
flows some forty or fifty miles above Niuchwang. While the course of
the Liao is roughly due north, that of the Hun is northeast, or almost
directly in the line from Mukden to Niuchwang. The severity of the
weather had moderated and was most favorable for the movement of such a
great body of mounted men, who swept down the vast Liao plain on a
front extending for five miles. By the second night Mistchenko's three
brigades had reached the confluence of the Liao and the Hun, and there
they made the first contact with the enemy. A Japanese convoy was
captured, but the escort succeeded in making its escape, and from that
moment it was impossible to conceal knowledge of the movement from the
enemy. With their characteristic thoroughness--which throughout this
war has left nothing unforeseen and nothing unprovided for--the
Japanese had organized a plan for giving instant warning of a raid on
the line to the troops guarding all the depots and the lines of
communication, in case of any surprise attack such as that devised by
Mistchenko. Great beacon fires had been laid at intervals up and down
the country, and the kindling of one of these--the signal of
approaching danger--was sufficient to set the whole plain from
Niuchwang to Liao-yang ablaze with warning flame. No sooner had the
Cossacks made their first capture than a house in the village which
they had entered suddenly began to emit heavy columns of black smoke,
followed by leaping tongues of fire; and so well had the house been
filled with combustibles, that every effort to extinguish the fire was
vain. Nor had the portent been unobserved. As soon as darkness closed
on the scene, the horizon north, south and east was illuminated with
the answerable flash of innumerable beacons that passed on from one to
another the tidings of the enemy's approach. All hope of surprise being
now at an end, the only resource left was to strike swiftly before
troops could be hurried down from the front to the threatened points on
the railway. Mistchenko's division separated into three bodies--one
moving due south towards Niuchwang, another making due east for the
railway above Haicheng, and the third striking southeast towards
Tashichao, where the branch-line from Niuchwang meets the main line
running north and south. The third body almost immediately encountered
a force of Chunchuses, 500 strong, armed with Mausers and led by
Japanese officers. This force, though overwhelmingly outnumbered,
fought with desperate bravery until they were cut to pieces. At another
village, held by 500 Japanese infantry, the raiders again encountered a
stubborn resistance which they could not overcome; but they swept on
southwards, and reached Old Niuchwang at noon on January 11th. Here
some 50 Japanese soldiers, the only garrison, shut themselves in a
house, and, refusing to surrender, held their own. But they could not
prevent the enemy from wreaking destruction on the stores which had
been accumulated in the town; and many large transports were burnt.
Yinkow, or the port of Niuchwang, had for many months been the
principal base of supplies for Oyama's army, as being the seaport
nearest to the front, and to work havoc at this vital depot was the
principal purpose of Mistchenko's raid. On January 12th the Cossacks
approached Yinkow Station, where army stores of enormous value had been
accumulated, and opened fire with their six batteries. But the
promptitude of the Japanese commanders foiled the attack at this
critical point. In spite of the cutting of the line north and south of
Hai-cheng, reinforcements had been got through, and the attack on
Yinkow Station was resisted by 1,000 riflemen, well entrenched. Against
their accurate and well-sustained fire Mistchenko's Cossacks, in spite
of artillery support, could make no headway; and as the casualty list
mounted up, the Russian general was obliged to draw off, lest the
mobility of his retreat should be encumbered by too many wounded. Some
damage was done to the station buildings, but it was trivial compared
with that which the raiders had set out to effect; and from that moment
the only concern of Mistchenko was how to make good his escape from the
forces that were rapidly concentrating upon his line of retreat. He had
failed not only to destroy the stores of the enemy, but even to inflict
any serious damage on the railway line. The boast of his detachments
detailed for the latter purpose that they had torn up 600 yards of line
north of Hai-cheng, and had blown up the bridge at Tashichao, were
obvious exaggerations; or it would not have been possible for the
Japanese to move down the reinforcements that secured the repulse of
the attack on Yinkow Station. With the whole country roused against
him, Mistchenko, encumbered as he was with many wounded, might have
found it difficult to break back over the 80 or 100 miles to be
traversed before he could count himself in safety. His horses and men
were both more or less exhausted with the five days' continuous
marching and fighting; but an easy and convenient resource was open to
him by simply invading and passing through neutral Chinese territory.
On the outbreak of the war, the belligerents, at the instigation of the
Powers, led by the United States, had agreed to respect absolutely the
neutrality of China, and to confine military operations to the left or
eastern side of the great Liao River. But necessity knows no law, and
Mistchenko, finding that his road northward from Niuchwang was blocked
by a strong force detached by Oku for the purpose of intercepting his
retreat, promptly wheeled westward and crossed the Liao River some
miles below its junction with the Hun-ho. Thenceforth his progress was
easy. It was as if a football player were to run down the field behind
the touch-lines in order to reach the goal. The flagrancy of the
stratagem would have called for less remark if Russia had not chosen
this precise moment to address representations to the Powers
complaining of acts done by the Japanese in violation of China's
neutrality. As it was, the casualties suffered were heavy--at least 500
all told--and though it was ostentatiously announced from St.
Petersburg that such raids would in future be of frequent occurrence,
this descent upon Niuchwang remained a solitary as well as a barren
enterprise.
[Sidenote: The Battle of Sandepu]
But again the inactivity of the armies was to be broken before the
month of January had come to an end. The second Manchurian army, the
command of which had been committed to General Gripenberg, had now been
brought up to strength, and almost immediately proceeded to put itself
in evidence. On the 25th General Kuropatkin telegraphed to the Czar
announcing briefly two facts--that the offensive had been begun against
the enemy on the right (or western) flank; and that the thermometer
registered 16 degrees of frost. The full significance of this message
only appeared a few days later, when it was revealed that an attempt in
force was being made to turn the Japanese left. The main objective of
the Russian attack was the village of Sandepu, the main northwest
position of the Japanese left army. It will be remembered that after
the battle of Yentai or the Sha-ho, which took place in October, the
Japanese were left holding a front of fifty miles or more along the
south bank of the Sha-ho, a tributary to the Hun-ho, running roughly
due east and west at a distance of ten or fifteen miles south of
Mukden. The Russian position faced the Japanese on the other bank of
the Sha-ho, and then inclined away northwest in the direction of
Hsinmintun, a Chinese town on the west bank of the Liao River, from
which the Russian army had for a long time been drawing large supplies,
in contempt of the neutrality of China. Sandepu is over thirty miles
south of Mukden, and lies in the angle made by the Hun River with the
railway. It consists of some hundred houses, or farmsteads, each
surrounded by high walls of sun-dried bricks, about three feet thick.
Loop-holed for musketry, these walls, form an admirable defence,
especially as the surrounding country is quite open and flat. But at
this season of the year, the Hun-ho, which is a natural defence to the
flank of an army resting on Sandepu, is frozen over to a thickness of
several feet, and can be safely crossed both by men and transport. The
Russians, 85,000 strong, and with no less than 350 guns, moved
southwards down the right bank of the Hun-ho until they reached a point
a few miles southwest of Sandepu, and there they crossed the frozen
river and occupied two villages in which the Japanese had stationed
outposts. On the 26th the Russians, who had at the same time crossed
the Hun at Chang-tau, again advanced, encountering a steadily
increasing resistance and seized after a fierce fight the village of
Sha-ho-pu, a few miles northeast of Sandepu, and from that moment the
action became general. The capture of Sandepu was essential to any
attempt to roll up the Japanese left, and to this object the Russian
forces now set themselves with fierce determination. On January 27th,
after giving an account of much promiscuous fighting, General
Kuropatkin announced to the Czar that "in the evening, after a
desperate fight, our troops having, with the help of the sappers,
surmounted all artificial obstacles entered the village of Sandepu,
which is large and strongly entrenched." Unfortunately, however, for
the triumph of the Russian arms, this announcement proved to be
premature--or rather to be an incomplete version of the actual fact.
The Russian troops entered Sandepu only to be driven back after a
desperate struggle; and the indomitable Japanese infantrymen who manned
the loop-holed walls of the hamlet were never dislodged from their
position. This successful stand was the turning point of the battle. It
checked the flank movement of the Russians and gave Oku time to bring
up his reinforcements and deliver his counter-stroke. The Russian
attack had been from the west and northwest, the object being to
envelop the Japanese extreme left. The movement was met by an extension
of the Japanese left, which in turn threatened to outflank the
outflankers. On the southwest of Sandepu the Russians were driven back
along the line of the Hun-ho, and soon the battle centred about the
village of Heikautai, a few miles southwest of Sandepu. That this was
no mere affair of outposts may be gathered from the fact that the
Russian force was made up of two divisions of the Eighth Army Corps,
two brigades of Russo-European Rifles, one division of the Tenth Army
Corps, part of a division of reserve infantry, and part of the First
Siberian Army Corps, and a large force of Cossacks under Mistchenko. On
the 27th and 28th, the fighting became desperately fierce and after the
Japanese had succeeded in carrying Heikautai and the surrounding
positions, they were exposed to repeated night attacks before the
Russians at last made up their minds to accept defeat. From Russian
sources came the usually inconsistent story--a story in which a long
series of unbroken successes culminated inexplicably in an admission of
failure and retreat. It now appeared that far from capturing Sandepu,
the Russian column that attacked that place lost twenty-four officers
and 1,600 men killed and wounded by coming unexpecedly upon "a triple
row of artificial obstacles" on the ground swept by artillery and
machine-gun fire which the Russian gunners could not subdue. This
intelligence came as a severe disappointment to the friends of Russia,
who had begun to believe that the tide of war had at last begun to
turn, and that Russian arms were about to secure their first victory.
Eager strategists in St. Petersburg pointed out that Sandepu was only
twenty or thirty miles from Liao-yang, and that its retention would be
such a serious menace to the Japanese line of retreat that the
evacuation of the whole position on the Sha-ho would be a necessity.
Alas! while these fascinating speculations were being indulged in, the
Russian Army of the right was already in full retreat, and was indeed
suffering appalling losses in the effort to extricate itself from the
toils of the enemy. The fighting round Heikautai lasted five days, and
the issue almost to the last hung in doubt. The capture of Heikautai
had become necessary to the security of the Japanese position, but
repeated attacks on it had been repulsed. The spirit in which the
emergency was met is revealed in the laconic words of Marshal Oyama's
dispatch. "Our object had not been attained, so I encouraged all the
columns to make night attacks. All the columns of the attacking parties
expected annihilation. We attempted several attack movements, but
suffered heavily from the enemy's artillery, and especially from the
machine-guns, but all the columns continued the attack with all their
might. The enemy was unable to withstand our vigorous attack, and began
to retreat at half past five in the morning. Our forces charging into
Heikautai, occupied the place firmly and entirely by half past nine in
the morning." The net result of the battle was to give the Japanese
secure possession of a line east and west of Hun-ho and south of
Mukden, and to inflict on the Russians casualties which certainly
exceeded 10,000, and probably reached 15,000. In war especially "the
attempt and not the deed" confounds. It is not the first step but the
last that costs--not the attack, but the retreat after repulse. No
sooner had the failure of this big attempt on the Japanese left been
fully confirmed than it became known that the movement had been
directed by General Gripenberg, the commander of the Second Manchurian
Army. When, after the battle of Liao-yang, the Czar sanctioned the
formation of this Second Army and committed the command of it to
General Gripenberg, there was a great flourish of journalistic trumpets
in the Russian and French press. At last Kuropatkin would have not only
an "Army worthy of the might and dignity of Russia," but would have a
lieutenant worthy of himself to share the tremendous strain of
directing nearly half a million of men. The two Generals exchanged
cordial messages, and then Gripenberg set out for Harbin to superintend
the gradual organization of his Second Army. By the end of the year its
units had been completed, and then the impatience of General Gripenberg
to assert himself appears to have become uncontrollable. He conceived
the movement against the Japanese left--a movement that might easily
have achieved substantial results if the Japanese had not been so well
prepared for it--and his direct responsibility for it was made patent
to the world by the angry and undignified recriminations between him
and Kuropatkin that followed the repulse. General Gripenberg
immediately asked to be relieved of his command, ostensibly on the
ground of ill health, but really as he allowed to be perfectly
manifest, in dudgeon at the treatment which he alleged had been meted
out to him by his superior officer. He claimed that his flanking
movement had in fact succeeded, and that he only needed reinforcements
to maintain the position he had won. He complained loudly that he
applied very urgently for these reinforcements, but that they were
withheld, and that he was not even supported in his retreat by a
diversion in other parts of the field. A great victory had been within
his grasp, General Gripenberg represented, and it had been snatched
from him simply by the perverse inactivity of General Kuropatkin. So
strained were the relations at headquarters that General Gripenberg's
request to be relieved of his command was immediately complied with,
and the General set off post-haste back to St. Petersburg to lay his
complaints personally before the Czar. The quarrel was conducted
practically in public by the advocates of the two rivals; and General
Kuropatkin's friends were not slow to put forward his side of the case.
According to this account, General Gripenberg's costly defeat was
caused directly by his deliberate disobedience to instructions. He had
been permitted to embark on his movement against the Japanese left on
the strict understanding that it was to be only in the nature of a
reconnaissance in force, and that a general action was not to be
forced. While nominally accepting these limitations, General Gripenberg
had in his heart rebelled against them, and had not hesitated to commit
his army to a pitched battle beyond the reach of support, and in
conditions of weather which made the movement of troops most
undesirable. Finally it was contended that General Kuropatkin had done
all he could to relieve the pressure on General Gripenberg by
bombarding the Japanese right and centre, and threatening an advance in
those directions. The wrangle could not but be ignominious, but at
least more dignity pertained to the disputant who remained at his post
and strove to repair the blunder that had been committed than to the
disputant that threw down his responsibilities and went home in a pet.
This view of the case seems to have prevailed with the Czar himself,
whose reception of General Gripenberg was not cordial. According to the
reports that came from well-informed French sources, the Czar took
General Kuropatkin's part very decidedly, and administered to General
Gripenberg a severe rebuke for his insubordination. Whatever the
character of the frequent audiences which the disappointed General had
of his Sovereign, the fact remained that Kuropatkin was maintained in
the supreme command of the armies in Manchuria, and that while General
Gripenberg lingered in St. Petersburg, if not in disgrace, at least in
inactivity, General Kaulbars was definitely appointed to the command of
the Second Manchurian Army.
[Illustration: ON THE SLOPES OF OJIKEISHAN, BEFORE PORT ARTHUR.]
[Sidenote: Kuropatkin Asks for Reinforcements]
If this five days' desperate fighting scarcely affected the position of
the two armies, it inflicted on the Russian armies the discouragement
of another defeat at the hands of a numerically inferior force, and the
moral effect of adding to this unbroken series of reverses is not
easily computed. With troops less dogged and devoted than those of the
Czar, demoralization would have set in long before. The anxieties of
Kuropatkin were now aggravated, too, by circumstances which no
generalship on his part could alleviate and remove. All through the
autumn reinforcements had been pouring along the Trans-Siberian
Railway, the carrying capacity of which had been stretched so
wonderfully by Prince Khilkoff. But even the resources of engineering
genius have their limits. They cannot contrive a pint pot in such a way
that it will hold a quart; and the number of trains that can be run
over a single line is fixed inexorably by circumstance. Kuropatkin's
urgent and incessant demands for more and more reinforcements had been
met in large measure, but only at the expense of the other traffic,
including the carriage of military stores. The enormous supplies
required to provision and maintain at war efficiency armies numbering
half a million of men may be imagined, and for these supplies
Kuropatkin had become increasingly dependent on the railway. The more
reinforcements he received the more mouths he had to feed; and the
longer the campaign endured the less reliance was to be placed on what
a devastated and exhausted countryside could provide. During the
earlier months of the war, some relief to the strain on the railway
could be found by drawing supplies from Vladivostock, which in turn
could be fed from over-seas; but no sooner had the destruction of the
Port Arthur fleet been completed, than the inexorable Japanese
established a strict blockade of Vladivostock, and cut off this last
resource. While the wretched troops amid all the rigors of the
Manchurian winter were in need of such ordinary necessities as proper
clothing, fuel, and even food, vast accumulations of stores, more than
sufficient to supply all their needs, were lying rotting on the sidings
of the Siberian Railway, immovable because of the congestion of traffic
on the already overburdened line. To add to the anxiety of the
situation came the grave dislocation caused by the riots and strikes
which broke out in all the great industrial and distributive centres of
Russia after the fall of Port Arthur, and which revealed an internal
crisis even more menacing than the military crisis which confronted the
army in Manchuria. For weeks together, just at the moment that prompt
and vigorous action was demanded, the whole administrative system of
Russia was paralyzed, and the energies of its directors were absorbed
in staving off domestic revolution instead of in organizing the
measures for conducting a foreign war. On the other hand, the Japanese
generals had not only the strategic advantage of being within easy
distance of several sea-bases, but they also were able to rely on a
system of supply which is perhaps the most perfect that has ever been
seen in war. The minute prevision with which the necessities of a
campaign on such an enormous scale had been provided for is well
exemplified by the organization of the Army Medical Service. In spite
of all the hardships and exhaustion to which General Oku's army had
been exposed, for instance, the Chief Surgeon was able to report that
from the date of its landing on the Liao-tung Peninsula on May 6th to
the end of January there had only occurred 40 deaths in its ranks from
disease. The cases of typhoid numbered but 193, and the cases of
dysentery no more than 342. The marvelous character of this record may
be realized by remembering how appalling were the ravages of disease
during the South African campaign. Typhoid and dysentery in that war
carried off infinitely more victims than shell or bullet; and if
sometimes in their assaults on fortified positions the Japanese have
seemed shockingly reckless of human life, it is to be remembered that
in another and not less important direction they have shown themselves
infinitely more careful of it. Such were the conditions as the long
winter months drew to their close, and as silently the Japanese armies
girded themselves for the great stroke which was in a few weeks' time
to eclipse both in magnitude and consequence everything that had
hitherto marked the progress of this epoch-making campaign.
[Sidenote: The North Sea Inquiry]
Meanwhile the unhappy Baltic Fleet protracted its embarrassing sojourn
in Madagascar waters. Having got so far on the road to its appointed
revenge, discretion overcame heroic resolution on the part of its
Admiral. The nearer Rozhdestvensky came to his task of wresting the
command of the sea from Admiral Togo, the less he appeared to like it;
and finally the Armada which had begun its voyage with such a
sensational progress through the North Sea, decided to continue to
avail itself of French hospitality until it should have received the
reinforcements of the third Baltic Squadron. While the Russian fleet
was thus ingloriously hung up at Diego Suarez, the International
Commission appointed to inquire into the circumstances of its exploits
in the North Sea met at Paris, and having heard exhaustively the
evidence in support of the British and Russian cases, at length issued
its report. In spite of the preliminary rumors that the conduct of the
Russian Admiral had been vindicated, the event proved that the justice
of the British case had been as completely sustained as it could be by
any judgment which was more diplomatic than judicial in character. The
Admirals of the Commission, with the exception of their Russian
colleague, found that there were no hostile torpedo boats present on
the Dogger Bank; that the British trawlers did nothing to provoke
attack; and that the firing to which they were subjected was
unjustifiable. To coat this rather unpleasant pill, the Commissioners
amiably added, in contradiction of the direct implication of their own
findings, that their report threw no discredit either on the military
quality or the humane sentiments of Admiral Rozhdestvensky.