The Truth About Port Arthur

by E. K. Nozhin

General Fock's Memorandum re the Surrender of Fort No. 2. [Chi-kuan-shan.]

In order that General Fock's motives may not be misunderstood, the Memorandum written by him, in which he essayed to clear himself of the charge of wrongfully abandoning Fort No. 2, is reproduced. It needs, however some elucidation, both for the sake of clearness and accuracy. Those who are not well acquainted with Fock's proceedings in Port Arthur, both as a General and as an individual, and with all the circumstances of the defence, might possibly misunderstand this document, as the authors possessed a great power of persuasion, both with pen and speech, and even now has a considerable number of adherents and advocates.

Memorandum.

'Fort No. 2 was abandoned on December 18, 1904, with General Stössel's permission and by my order. Next day I had a conversation on the subject with General Smirnoff, who said:

'"Why did you surrender the fort? I would have sent you as many reinforcements as you wanted; I have some 30,000 in the Fortress. By abandoning it you have undermined the root of my principle—that no fort should pass into the enemy's hands except after the death of all its defenders."'

In saying this General Smirnoff was quite in the right. Fock did not reinforce the garrison either in time or sufficiently, although quite able so to do. The whole essence of the defence at the end consisted in the use of mobile reserves for the reinforcement of threatened points. It was by his intelligent anticipation of Nogi's tactics and his skillfull movement and employment of reserves that Smirnoff was able so long to check the attack.

' ... Later, when giving evidence before General Roop's Commission, I was asked:

'"Did you take any steps to prevent the example of Fort No. 2 being followed, and to ensure that the principle that a garrison should resist to the last should not be forgotten?"

'I was amazed at such a question, and that a principle, of which I had never before heard and which is not to be found in any text-book on tactics or field-service manual, should be assumed by the Commission to be an irrefutable axiom, to ignore which was a crime.

'But I was still more astonished a short time ago when, in a paper submitted by General Smirnoff to the War Minister and circulated amongst officials and other educated men, I saw the following:

'"The surrender of Fort No. 2 struck at the root of the principle that a fort 'dies, but does not surrender'—a principle preached and reiterated by myself and all those in command. By the example of the surrender of this fort the garrisons of the others were shaken in their belief that forts are 'holies of holies,' only to be captured after the death of the whole garrison defending them, and were led to consider them as just ordinary fortified positions which can be freely abandoned as soon as their defence becomes difficult. This was proved by the abandonment within ten days of Fort No. 3."

'Only when I became aware of this Note of General Smirnoff's did I understand the drift of the question put to me by the Commission; it was not hard then to see the connexion between the two. It was evident, therefore, that in this important question, as in those which had preceded, the Commission was being guided more by this memorandum of the late Commandant of the Fortress than by the desire for an impartial inquiry into facts.'

Though well on in years, General Fock apparently did not know, and was astonished to hear, that 'forts die, but do not surrender,' that 'the bones of a regiment should surround its fallen colours,' that 'a gun must be fought till not a man is left,' etc. Fock did not know this; he had not seen it laid down in any official text-book!

Naturally he did not and could not know it. Knowledge of the sacredness of duty is not acquired by the perusal of manuals and regulations any more than an honourable feeling is acquired by reading books of a high moral tone. The duty and honour of the citizen soldier has no written code as its guide, but only the long, brilliant list of great deeds extending from far-off olden times to the present day. Upon these legends, matured by time, nations, their armies, and individuals are brought up. A sense of duty and honour is not obtained by reading, but is imbibed with the mother's milk and developed by later teaching. I doubt if there could be found in any European army (naturally not in the Japanese, where officers and generals are brought up on the ethics of the chivalrous spirit 'Bushido') a general officer who would be surprised to hear that a fort should not surrender. How could a Russian general be ignorant of it? Surely such an assertion is a stain on all the general officers of the Russian army!

No, it is not so. For General Fock's ignorance of the rudiments of military duty one must seek deeper reasons. He was, it appears, in the Gendarmerie—where the duties were somewhat different to those of the army—for almost five years. Their atmospheres are totally opposed: the work of the one is to fight an external foe: of the other to fight an internal enemy.

One amongst the many surprises so liberally provided for us by the old régime was Fock's sudden reappearance in the army and arrival in the Far East as Officer Commanding the gallant fighting 4th Division, as the friend and adviser of General Stössel, and, indeed, as the sole individual to work out Arthur's destiny. The defence of a fortress is soldiers' and not gendarmes' work.