Other available information is to the effect that the bodies of 60,624
killed were buried in the cemetery of honor in Tokio, and that, in
addition to these, 75,545 men died from wounds or disease. The Japanese
thus admit the loss of 135,000 men by death.[C]
Their Chief Medical Inspector says that their killed and wounded
amounted to 14.58 per cent of their entire force, from which it would
appear that they put into the field against us troops of various
categories to the number of 1,500,000--or more than three times the
estimate of our General Staff. In view of these facts, it is evident
that our information with regard to their fighting strength was
insufficient. At the time when they had hundreds of avowed and secret
agents in the Far East, studying the strength of our land and naval
forces, we entrusted the collection of data with regard to their
military strength and resources to a single officer of the General
Staff, and, unfortunately, our military observers were not always
well selected. One of these experts in Japanese affairs said, in
Vladivostok, before hostilities began, that, in the event of war, we
might count on one Russian soldier as equal to three Japanese. After
the first engagements he moderated his tone and admitted that it might
be necessary to put one Russian against every Japanese. At the end of
another month he declared that, in order to win victories, we must meet
every Japanese soldier in the field with three Russians. Another of
our military agents, who had been in Japan, predicted authoritatively
that Port Arthur would fall in a very short time, and that immediately
thereafter the same fate would overtake Vladivostok. I sharply
reprimanded the faint-hearted babbler and threatened to dismiss him
from the army if he continued to make such injurious and inopportune
remarks.
_Moral Superiority of the Japanese_
But it was not only with regard to Japan's material strength that
our information was insufficient. We underestimated, or entirely
overlooked, her moral strength. According to that great leader
Napoleon, three fourths of an army's success in war is due to the moral
character of its soldiers. This relation of moral character to material
success still exists, although the conditions of battle, in these
days, are more trying than they were in the Napoleonic wars. And now,
more than ever before, the moral strength of the army depends upon the
temper of the nation. Armies are now so organized that, in case of war,
soldiers are drawn, for the most part, from the reserves. A successful
war, therefore, must be a popular war, and victory must be attained by
the hearty coöperation of the whole people with its Government.
The recent contest in Manchuria was a popular war for the Japanese, but
not for us. The Korean question, and the question of naval supremacy
on the waters of the Pacific, involved vital Japanese interests, and
the immense importance of these interests was so clearly understood
and so fully appreciated by the Japanese people that the war for their
protection was a national war. Japan spent ten years in preparing
for it, and then the whole nation carried it on. Japanese soldiers,
deeply conscious of the bearing that their exploits might have on
the future of the country, fought with a self-sacrificing devotion
and a stubbornness that we had never seen in any war in which we had
previously been engaged. Sometimes, in villages that we had taken by
assault, a handful of Japanese soldiers would barricade themselves in
native houses and die there rather than retreat or surrender. Japanese
officers who fell into our hands--even wounded officers--generally
committed suicide.
It is quite possible that when we have a true history of the war based
on Japanese sources of information, our pride may receive another blow.
We already know that in many cases we outnumbered the enemy, and still
we were not victorious. The explanation of this, however, is very
simple. The Japanese, in these cases, were inferior to us materially,
but they were stronger than we morally.[D] To this aspect of the
struggle we should give particular attention, because military history
shows that, in all wars, the antagonist who is strongest morally wins
the victory. The only exceptions are such contests as that between the
English and the Boers in South Africa and that between the North and
the South in America. The English were weaker than the Boers morally,
but they put into the field an overwhelming force, and, in spite of
many defeats, they finally conquered. In the American war, the army
of the South was in the same position that the Boer army was, and the
Northerners had to put a superior force into the field in order to
overcome it.
[Illustration: GENERAL TERAUCHI