COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF IN MANCHURIA OF THE JAPANESE ARMY DURING THE
RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR]
In all the public schools prominence was given to military exercises,
and the pupils took part in them with enthusiasm. Even in their walks
they practised running, flanking, and sudden, unexpected attacks of
one party on another. The history of Japan was everywhere made a means
of strengthening the pupils' patriotism and their belief in Japan's
invincibility. Particular stress was laid upon the country's successful
wars, the heroes of them were extolled, and the children were taught
that none of Japan's military enterprises had ever failed.
_Japan's Material Resources_
In the manufactories of arms I saw the turning out of rifles in immense
numbers, and the work was being done swiftly, accurately, and cheaply.
In Kobe and Nagasaki I inspected attentively the ship-building yards,
where they were constructing not only torpedo boats but armored
cruisers, and where all the work was being done by their own mechanics
and foremen under the direction of their own engineers. At the great
national exposition in Osaka there was a splendid and instructive
display of the country's manufactures, including textiles, products of
cottage industry, complicated instruments, grand pianos, and guns of
the largest caliber--all made in Japan, by Japanese workmen, and out of
Japanese materials. I saw nothing of foreign origin except raw cotton
and iron, which were imported from China and Europe. And the products
displayed at this exposition were not more worthy of attention than the
observant, courteous, and always dignified throng of Japanese visitors.
In the agriculture of Japan many of the methods were ancient, but the
culture was unquestionably high. The fields were carefully worked,
and the effort to make every foot of land yield all that it could,
the struggle to raise crops even on the mountain sides, and the
insufficiency of the country's food products despite this intensive
culture, showed that the people were becoming overcrowded on their
islands, and that the Korean question was for them a question of vital
importance. I lived ten days among the fishermen, and saw something
of the reverse side of Japan's rapid development under European
conditions. Many complaints were made to me of heavy taxes, which
had increased greatly in later years, and of the high cost of the
necessaries of life.
I witnessed reviews of the Japanese troops, including the division
of Guards, two regiments of the First Division, two regiments of
cavalry, and many batteries. The marching was admirable, and the
common soldiers appeared like our younkers. The officers and leaders
of the Japanese army whom I saw and met made upon me a very favorable
impression. The culture and knowledge of military affairs that many
of them possessed would have given them places of honor in any army.
With General Terauchi, the Japanese Minister of War, I had had
friendly relations ever since 1886, when we met in France at the
great manoeuvers directed by General Levalle. Among others whose
acquaintance I made were Generals Yamagata, Oyama, Kodama, Fukushima,
Nodzu, Hasegawa, and Murata, and the Imperial princes, Fushimi and
Kanin. In spite of a terrible war, which has separated by a barrier
nations that were apparently created for union and friendship, I
still cherish a sympathetic feeling for my Tokio acquaintances.
Especially do I remember with respect their ardent love of country and
their devotion to their Emperor--feelings that they have since made
manifest in deeds. I met also in Tokio many leaders in fields other
than that of war, among whom were Ito, Katsura, and Komura. In the
report that I made to the Emperor, after my return from Japan, I placed
the military power of the Japanese on a level with that of European
nations. I regarded one of our battalions as equal to two battalions of
Japanese in defence, but I estimated that in attack we should have two
battalions to their one. The test of war has shown that my conclusions
were correct. There were lamentable cases, of course, in which the
Japanese, with a smaller number of battalions, drove our forces from
the positions that they occupied; but these results were due either to
mistakes in the direction of our troops, or to numerical inferiority
in the fighting strength of our battalions. In the last days of the
battle of Mukden, some of our brigades consisted of hardly more than a
thousand bayonets. It is evident that the Japanese had to put into the
field only two or three battalions in order to deal successfully with a
brigade of such depleted strength.
All that I saw and learned of Japan, or her military strength, and of
the nature of her problems in the Far East, convinced me that it would
be necessary for us to come to a peaceable understanding with her, and
that we should have to make great concessions--concessions that, at
first sight, might seem humiliating to our national pride--in order to
avoid war with her. As I have already said, I did not hesitate even
to propose the return of Port Arthur and Kwang-tung to China and the
sale of the southern branch of the Eastern Chinese Railway. I foresaw
that the threatened war would be extremely unpopular in Russia; that
there would be no manifestation of patriotic spirit, on account of the
people's ignorance of the objects of the war; and that the leaders of
the anti-Government party would avail themselves of the opportunity
to increase domestic discontent and disorder. I did not, however,
anticipate that the Japanese would display so much energy, activity,
courage, and lofty patriotism, and I therefore erred in my estimate of
the time that the struggle would require. In view of the insufficiency
of our railroad transportation, we should have allowed three years for
the war, instead of the year and a half that I thought would be enough.
With all their strong points, the Japanese manifested weaknesses that
may be shown again in future wars. I shall not enumerate them, but I
will say that, in many cases, the outcome of the fight was in doubt,
and that in other cases we escaped defeat only through the errors of
the Japanese commanders. There is a saying that "the victor is not
judged." I may add that to the victor is rendered homage, and this is
true of the Japanese. The general tone of the whole press was favorable
to them, and even their practical and well-balanced heads might well
have been turned by the praise that they received. No one went further
in this direction than Count Leo Tolstoi. In an article published in
a foreign journal,[E] our gifted author and philosopher expressed
the conviction that the Japanese defeated us because, owing to their
warlike patriotism and the power of their ruling authorities, they are
the mightiest nation on earth, and are not to be conquered by any one,
either at sea or on land.
[Illustration: _Stereograph copyrighted by Underwood & Underwood_
JAPANESE ARMY TRANSPORTATION CORPS MOVING ONE OF THE GREAT SIEGE GUNS
WHICH WERE USED IN THE DESTRUCTION OF PORT ARTHUR]
The strength of Japan was in the complete union of her people, army,
and government, and it was this union that gave her the victory. We
carried on the contest with our army alone, and even the army was
weakened by the unfavorable disposition of the people toward all things
military. Our aims in the Far East were not understood by our officers
and soldiers, and, furthermore, the general feeling of discontent
which already prevailed in all classes of our population made the war
so hateful that it aroused no patriotism whatever. Many good officers
hastened to offer their services--a fact that is easily explained--but
all ranks of society remained indifferent. A few hundreds of the common
people volunteered, but no eagerness to enter the army was shown by the
sons of our high dignitaries, of our merchants, or of our scientific
men. Out of the tens of thousands of students who were then living
in idleness,[F] many of them at the expense of the Empire, only a
handful volunteered,[G] while at that very time, in Japan, sons of the
most distinguished citizens--even boys fourteen and fifteen years of
age--were striving for places in the ranks. Japanese mothers, as I have
already said, killed themselves through shame, when their sons were
found to be physically unfit for military service.
_Russian Discipline Undermined by the Revolutionists_
The indifference of Russia to the bloody struggle which her sons were
carrying on--for little understood objects and in a foreign land--could
not fail to discourage even the best soldiers. Men are not inspired
to deeds of heroism by such an attitude toward them on the part of
their country. But Russia was not merely indifferent. Leaders of the
revolutionary party strove, with extraordinary energy, to multiply our
chances of failure, hoping thus to facilitate the attainment of their
own dark objects. There appeared a whole literature of clandestine
publications, intended to lessen the confidence of officers in their
superiors, to shake the trust of soldiers in their officers, and to
undermine the faith of the whole army in the Government. In an "Address
to the Officers of the Russian Army," published and widely circulated
by the Social Revolutionists, the main idea was expressed as follows:
"The worst and most dangerous enemy of the Russian people--in fact, its
only enemy--is the present Government. It is this Government that is
carrying on the war with Japan, and you are fighting under its banners
in an unjust cause. Every victory that you win threatens Russia with
the calamity involved in the maintenance of what the Government calls
'order,' and every defeat that you suffer brings nearer the hour of
deliverance. Is it surprising, therefore, that Russians rejoice when
your adversary is victorious?"
But persons who had nothing in common with the Social Revolutionary
party, and who sincerely loved their country, gave aid to Russia's
enemies by expressing the opinion, in the press, that the war was
irrational, and by criticizing the mistakes of the Government that had
failed to prevent it. In a brochure entitled "Thoughts Suggested by
Recent Military Operations," M. Gorbatoff referred to such persons as
follows:
"But it is a still more grievous fact that while our heroic soldiers
are carrying on a life-and-death struggle, these so-called friends of
the people whisper to them: 'Gentlemen, you are heroes, but you are
facing death without reason. You will die to pay for Russia's mistaken
policy, and not to defend Russia's vital interests.' What can be more
terrible than the part played by these so-called friends of the people
when they undermine in this way the intellectual faith of heroic men
who are going to their death? One can easily imagine the state of
mind of an officer or soldier who goes into battle after reading,
in newspapers or magazines, articles referring in this way to the
irrationality and uselessness of the war. It is from these self-styled
friends of the people that the revolutionary party gets support in its
effort to break down the discipline of our troops."
Soldiers of the reserves, when called into active service, were
furnished by the anti-Government party with proclamations intended
to prejudice them against their officers, and similar proclamations
were sent to the army in Manchuria. Troops in the field received
letters apprising them of popular disorders in Russia, and men sick in
hospitals, as well as men on duty in our advanced positions, read in
the newspapers articles that undermined their faith in their commanders
and their leaders. The work of breaking down the discipline of the army
was carried on energetically, and, of course, it was not altogether
fruitless. The leaders of the movement, in striving to attain their
well defined objects, took for their motto: "The worse things are, the
better"; and the ideal at which they aimed was the state of affairs
brought about by the mutinous sailors on the armor-clad warship
"Potemkin." These enemies of the army and the country were aided by
certain other persons who were simply foolish and unreasonable. One can
imagine the indignation that the Menchikoffs, the Kirilloffs and the
Kuprins would feel, if they were told that they played the same part in
the army that was played by the persons who incited the insubordination
on the "Potemkin"; yet such was the case. It would be difficult,
indeed, to imagine anything that could have been said to the sailors of
the armor-clad for the purpose of exciting them against their officers
that would have been worse than the language of Menchikoff, when, in
writing of our army officers, he referred to their "blunted conscience,
their drunkenness, their moral looseness, and their inveterate
laziness." Firm in spirit though Russians might be, the indifference of
one class of the population, and the seditious incitement of another,
could hardly fail to have upon many of them an influence that was not
favorable to the successful prosecution of war.
_Attacks of the Russian Press_
[Illustration: _Copyrighted by Underwood & Underwood_
SCENE IN SHIBA PARK, TOKIO, WHERE TOGO'S NAVAL VICTORY WAS CELEBRATED
WITH WILD ENTHUSIASM]
The party opposed to the Government distributed among our troops,
especially in the West, hundreds of thousands of seditious
proclamations exhorting the soldiers to work for defeat rather than
for victory. Writers for newspapers and magazines, even though they
did not belong to the anti-Government party, contributed to its
success by lavishing abuse upon the army and its representatives. War
correspondents, who knew little about our operations and still less
about those of the Japanese, and who based their statements, not upon
what they had seen, but upon what they had heard from untrustworthy
sources, increased the disaffection of the people by exaggerating the
seriousness of our failures. Even army officers, writing from the
theatre of war, or after returning to Russia for reasons that were
not always creditable to them, sought to gain reputation by means of
hasty criticism which was often erroneous in its statements of fact and
generally discouraging or complaining in tone. On the fighting line,
heroic men without number faced and fought the enemy courageously for
months, without ever losing their faith in ultimate victory; but from
that part of the field little trustworthy news came. Brave soldiers,
modest junior officers, and the commanders of regiments, companies,
squadrons, and batteries in our advanced positions, did not write and
had no time to write of their own labors and exploits, and few of the
correspondents were willing to share their perils for the sake of being
able to observe and describe their heroic deeds. There were among the
correspondents some brave men who sincerely wished to be of use; but
their lack of even elementary training in military science made it
impossible for them to understand the complicated problems of war, and
their work therefore was comparatively unproductive. The persons best
qualified to see and judge, and to give information to the reading
public, were the foreign military observers, who were attached to our
armies in the field and who, in many cases, were extremely fortunate
selections. These officers felt a brotherly affection for the soldiers
whose perils and hardships they shared, and were regarded by the latter
with love and esteem. Their reports, however, are very long in coming
to us.
[Illustration: _Stereograph copyrighted by the H. C. White Co._
JAPANESE ARTILLERY TRANSPORTING A 7-1/2 C. M. MOUNTAIN GUN ACROSS THE
HILLS]
Some of our correspondents, who lived in the rear of the army and saw
the seamy side of the war, wrote descriptions of drunkenness, revelry,
and profligacy (at Kharbin, for example) which distressed our reading
public and gave a one-sided view of army life. Our press might have
made our first defeats a means of rousing the spirit of patriotism
and self-sacrifice; it might have exhorted the people to redouble
their efforts as the difficulties of the war increased; it might have
helped the Government to fill the gaps in our thinned ranks; it might
have encouraged the faint-hearted, called forth the country's noblest
sons, and opened to the army new sources of material and spiritual
strength. But instead of doing any of these things, it played more or
less into the hands of our foreign and domestic enemies; made the war
hateful to the great mass of the population; depressed the spirits of
soldiers going to the front, and undermined, in every way, the latter's
faith in their officers and their rulers. This course of procedure
did not rouse in the nation a determination to increase its efforts
and to win victory at last, in spite of all difficulties. Quite the
contrary! The soldiers who went to the front to fill up or reinforce
our army carried with them seditious proclamations and the seeds of
future defeats. Commanding officers in the Siberian military districts
reported, as early as February, that detachments of supernumerary
troops and reservists had plundered several railway stations, and at
a later time regular troops, on their way to the front, were guilty
of similar bad conduct. The drifting to the rear of large numbers
of soldiers--especially the older reservists--while battles were in
progress, was due not so much to cowardice as to the unsettling of
the men's minds and to a disinclination on their part to continue the
war. I may add that the opening of peace negotiations in Portsmouth,
at a time when we were preparing for decisive operations, affected
unfavorably the morale of the army's strongest elements.
_The Russian Army Cut Off from the Nation_
Mr. E. Martinoff, in an article entitled "Spirit and Temper of the
Two Armies," points out that "even in time of peace, the Japanese
people were so educated as to develop in them a patriotic and martial
spirit. The very idea of war with Russia was generally popular, and
throughout the contest the army was supported by the sympathy of the
nation. In Russia, the reverse was true. Patriotism was shaken by the
dissemination of ideas of cosmopolitanism and disarmament, and in the
midst of a difficult campaign the attitude of the country toward the
army was one of indifference, if not of actual hostility."
This judgment is accurate, and it is evident, of course, that with
such a relation between Russian society and the Manchurian army, it
was impossible to expect from the latter any patriotic spirit, or
any readiness to sacrifice life for the sake of the fatherland. In
an admirable article entitled "The Feeling of Duty and the Love of
Country," published in the "Russian Invalid" in 1906, Mr. A. Bilderling
expressed certain profoundly true ideas as follows:
"Our lack of success may have been due, in part, to various and
complicated causes; to the misconduct of particular persons, to bad
generalship, to lack of preparation in the army and the navy, to
inadequacy of material resources, and to misappropriations in the
departments of equipment and supply; but the principal reason for our
defeat lies deeper, and is to be found in lack of patriotism, and in
the absence of a feeling of duty toward and love for the fatherland.
In a conflict between two peoples, the things of most importance are
not material resources, but moral strength, exaltation of spirit, and
patriotism. Victory is most likely to be achieved by the nation in
which these qualities are most highly developed. Japan had long been
preparing for war with us; all of her people desired it; and a feeling
of lofty patriotism pervaded the whole country. In her army and her
fleet, therefore, every man, from the commander-in-chief to the last
soldier, not only knew what he was fighting for and what he might have
to die for, but understood clearly that upon success in the struggle
depended the fate of Japan, her political importance, and her future in
the history of the world. Every soldier knew also that the whole nation
stood behind him. With us, on the other hand, the war was unpopular
from the very beginning. We neither desired it nor anticipated it, and,
consequently, we were not prepared for it. Soldiers were hastily put
into railway trains, and when, after a journey that lasted a month,
they alighted in Manchuria, they did not know in what country they
were, nor whom they were to fight, nor what the war was about. Even our
higher commanders went to the front unwillingly and from a mere sense
of duty. The whole army, moreover, felt that it was regarded by the
country with indifference; that its life was not shared by the people;
and that it was a mere fragment, cut off from the nation, thrown to a
distance of nine thousand versts, and there abandoned to the caprice of
fate. Before decisive fighting began, therefore, one of the contending
armies advanced with the full expectation and confident belief that it
would be victorious, while the other went forward with a demoralizing
doubt of its own success."
Generally speaking, the man who conquers in war is the man who is
least afraid of death. We were unprepared in previous wars, as well
as in this, and in previous wars we made mistakes; but when the
preponderance of moral strength was on our side, as in the wars with
the Swedes, the French, the Turks, the Caucasian mountaineers and the
natives of Central Asia, we were victorious. In the late war, for
reasons that are extremely complicated, our moral strength was less
than that of the Japanese; and it was this inferiority, rather than
mistakes in generalship, that caused our defeats, and that forced us
to make tremendous efforts in order to succeed at all. Our lack of
moral strength--as compared with the Japanese--affected all ranks of
our army, from the highest to the lowest, and greatly reduced our
fighting power. In a war waged under different conditions--a war in
which the army had the confidence and encouragement of the country--the
same officers and the same troops would have accomplished far more
than they accomplished in Manchuria. The lack of martial spirit, of
moral exaltation, and of heroic impulse, affected particularly our
stubbornness in battle. In many cases we did not have dogged resolution
enough to conquer such antagonists as the Japanese. Instead of holding,
with unshakable tenacity, the positions assigned them, our troops often
retreated, and, in such cases, our commanding officers of all ranks,
without exception, lacked the power or the means to set things right.
Instead of making renewed and extraordinary efforts to wrest victory
from the enemy, they either permitted the retreat of the troops under
their command, or themselves ordered such retreat. The army, however,
never lost its strong sense of duty; and it was this that enabled
many divisions, regiments, and battalions to increase their power
of resistance with every battle. This peculiarity of the late war,
together with our final acquirement of numerical preponderance and a
noticeable decline of Japanese ardor, gave us reason to regard the
future with confidence, and left no room for doubt as to our ultimate
victory.
_The Failure of the Russian Fleet_
Among other reasons for the success of the Japanese, I may mention the
following.
The leading part in the war was to have been taken by our fleet. In the
General Staff of the navy, as well as in that of the army, a detailed
account was kept of all Japan's ships of war; but the directors
of naval affairs in the Far East reckoned only tonnage, guns, and
calibers, and when, in 1903, they found that the arithmetical totals
of our Far Eastern fleet exceeded those of the entire Japanese fleet,
they adopted, as a basis for our plan of operations, the following
conclusions:
1. "The relation that the strength of the Japanese fleet bears to the
strength of our fleet is such that the possibility of the defeat of the
latter is inadmissible."
2. "The landing of the Japanese at Yinkow, or in Korea Bay, is not to
be regarded as practicable."
The strength of the land force that a war with Japan would require
depended upon three things: (1) the strength of the army that the
Japanese could put into Manchuria, or across our boundary; (2) the
strength of our fleet; and (3) the transporting capacity of the railway
upon which our troops would have to depend in concentration. If our
fleet could defeat the fleet of the Japanese, military operations on
the main land would be unnecessary. And even if the Japanese were
not defeated in a general naval engagement, they would either have
to obtain complete mastery of the sea, or leave a considerable part
of their army at home for the protection of their own coast. Without
command of the sea, moreover, they could not risk a landing on the
Liao-tung peninsula, but would have to march through Korea, and that
would give us time for concentration. By their desperate night attack
upon our fleet at Port Arthur, before the declaration of war,[H] they
obtained a temporary superiority in armored vessels, and made great
use of it in getting command of the sea. Our fleet--especially after
the death of Admiral Makaroff at the most critical moment in the
execution of the Japanese plan of campaign--offered no resistance to
the enemy whatever. Even when they landed in the immediate vicinity of
Port Arthur, we did not make so much as an attempt to interfere with
them. The results of this inaction were very damaging to our army. The
Japanese, instead of finding it impossible to land troops in Korea Bay,
as our naval authorities anticipated, were able to threaten us with a
descent along the whole coast of the Liao-tung peninsula, beginning at
Kwang-tung. Notwithstanding our weakness on land, Admiral Alexeieff
thought it necessary to authorize a wide scattering of our troops, so
we prepared to meet the Japanese on the Yalu, at Yinkow, and in the
province of Kwang-tung. He had also permitted a dispersal of our naval
forces, so that we were weak everywhere.
_Advantages Secured by Japan's Naval Victory_
Instead of making a landing in Korea only,--as was anticipated in the
plan worked out at Port Arthur,--the Japanese, with their immense fleet
of transports, landed three armies on the Liao-tung peninsula and a
fourth in Korea. Then, leaving one army in front of Port Arthur, they
pushed the other three forward toward our forces, Which were slowly
concentrating on the Haicheng-Liaoyang line in southern Manchuria.
Thus, having taken the initiative at sea, they obtained the same
advantage on land. Their command of the sea enabled them to disregard
the defence of their own coast and move against us with their entire
strength. In this way--contrary to our anticipations--they were able,
in the first stage of the war, to put into the field a force that was
superior to ours. Command of the sea, moreover, made it possible for
them to supply their armies quickly with all necessary munitions, and
to transport to the field, in a few days, masses of heavy supplies,
which we, with our feeble railroad, were hardly able to get in months.
But command of the sea, and the almost complete inactivity of our
fleet, gave them another advantage, not less important, and that
was the possibility of bringing safely to their ports and arsenals
quantities of commissary and military stores, weapons, horses, and
cattle, which had been ordered in Europe and America. Their line of
communications, furthermore, was short and secure, while we were at
a distance of eight thousand versts from our base of supplies and
were connected with our country only by one weak line of railway. The
advantage that they had over us in this respect was immense. The slow
concentration of our army, which had to be brought eight thousand
versts over a single-track railroad, gave them time, after the war
began, to form new bodies of troops, in considerable numbers, and send
them to the front. They had time enough, also, to supply their army
with innumerable machine guns, after they had observed, in the early
stages of the war, the importance of machine-gun fire.
The field of military operations in Manchuria had been familiar to the
Japanese ever since their war with China. Its heat, its heavy rains,
its mountains and its kiaoliang, were well known to them, because they
had seen them all in their own country. In the mountains, especially,
they felt perfectly at home, while a mountainous environment, to our
troops, was oppressive. The Japanese, moreover, in their ten years of
preparation for war with us, had not only studied Manchuria, but had
secured there their own agents, who were of the greatest use to their
army. The Chinese, I may add, assisted the Japanese, notwithstanding
the severity and even cruelty with which the latter treated them.
The Japanese had a considerable advantage over us, also, in their
high-powered ammunition, their machine guns, their innumerable mountain
guns, their abundant supply of explosives, and their means of attack
and defence in the shape of wire, mines, and hand grenades. Their
organization, equipment, and transport carts were all better adapted
to the field of operations than ours were, and their bodies of sappers
were more numerous than ours.
The Japanese soldiers had been so trained as to develop self-reliance
and ability to take the lead, and they were credited by foreign
military observers with "intelligence, initiative, and quickness," In
the fighting instructions that were given them, very material changes
were made after the war began. At the outset, for example, night
attacks were not recommended; but they soon satisfied themselves that
night attacks were profitable and they afterward made great use of
them. Major von Luwitz, of the German army, in a brochure entitled "The
Japanese Attack in the War in Eastern Asia in 1904-05" says that while
the Japanese did not neglect any means of making attacks effective, the
secret of their success lay in their determination to get close to the
enemy, regardless of consequences.
_The Intellectual Superiority of the Japanese Soldier_
The non-commissioned officers in the Japanese army were much superior
to ours, on account of the better education and greater intellectual
development of the Japanese common people. Many of them might have
discharged the duties of commissioned officers with perfect success.
The defects of our soldiers--both regulars and reservists--were the
defects of the population as a whole. The peasants were imperfectly
developed intellectually, and they made soldiers who had the same
failing. The intellectual backwardness of our soldiers was a great
disadvantage to us, because war now requires far more intelligence and
initiative, on the part of the individual soldier, than ever before.
Our men fought heroically in compact masses, or in fairly close
formation, but if deprived of their officers they were more likely to
fall back than to advance. In the mass we had immense strength; but few
of our soldiers were capable of fighting intelligently as individuals.
In this respect the Japanese were much superior to us. Their
non-commissioned officers were far better developed, intellectually,
than ours, and among such officers, as well as among many of the
common soldiers, whom we took as prisoners, we found diaries which
showed not only good education but knowledge of what was happening and
intelligent comprehension of the military problems to be solved. Many
of them could draw maps skilfully, and one common soldier was able to
show accurately, by means of a plan sketched in the sand, the relative
positions of the Japanese forces and ours.
But the qualities that contributed most to the triumph of the Japanese
were their high moral spirit, and the stubborn determination with which
the struggle for success was carried on by every man in their army,
from the common soldier to the commander-in-chief. In many cases, their
situation was so distressing that it required extraordinary power
of will on their part to stand fast or to advance. But the officers
seemed to have resolution enough to call on their men for impossible
efforts--not even hesitating to shoot those that fell back--and the
soldiers, rallying their last physical and spiritual strength, often
wrested the victory away from us. One thing is certain: if the whole
Japanese army had not been inspired with an ardent patriotism; if it
had not been sympathetically supported by the whole nation; and if all
its officers and soldiers had not appreciated the immense importance
of the struggle, even such resolution as that of the Japanese leaders
would have failed to achieve such results.
[A] General Kuropatkin makes frequent use of the expression
"moral strength," or "moral character," and often employs the
English word "moral" instead of the corresponding Russian word.
He evidently intends that the adjective shall be understood in
its broadest signification, as a term covering patriotism, the
sense of duty, capacity for self-sacrifice, and all the qualities
that go to make up character as distinct from mere intellectual
ability.--G. K.
[B] Considerations of space have forced me to omit the greater
part of General Kuropatkin's detailed and somewhat technical
statement with regard to Japan's military strength and the extent
to which it was underestimated by the Russian General Staff.--G. K.
[C] According to information contained in Immanuel's work, "The
Russo-Japanese War," the Japanese lost 218,000 men in battle.
[D] General Kuropatkin uses the English words "materially" and
"morally."--G. K.
[E] _Fortnightly Review._
[F] On account of student disorders that had led to the closing of
the universities.--G. K.
[G] Medical students excepted.
[H] General Kuropatkin, it will be noticed, calls this night
attack "desperate," but does not characterize it as treacherous
or unfair. At the time when it occurred, however, the Russian
Government denounced it as a dishonorable violation of civilized
usage, if not of international law, while the loyal Russian
press held Japan up to the scorn of the world as a tricky and
treacherous antagonist. It is an interesting but little known fact
that the Tsar himself had ordered Admiral Alexeieff to attack
the Japanese in the same way, without notice and before any
declaration of war had been made. In the historically important
series of official dispatches from the archives of Port Arthur,
published in the liberal Russian review "Osvobozhdenie" at
Stuttgart in 1905 appears the following telegram sent by the Tsar
to the Viceroy just after the Japanese had broken off diplomatic
relations.