"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
—Tennyson's Ulysses.
My dear Raymond,
Last year I wove a romance about the early incidents of the great war now happily at an end; this year I have chosen its later incidents as the background for my hero's adventures. But while in "Kobo" the struggle was viewed from the Japanese stand-point, in "Brown of Moukden" (which is in no sense a sequel) you will find yourself among the Russians, looking at the other side of the shield. It is not the romancer's business to be a partisan; and we British people were at first, perhaps, a little blind to the fact that the bravery, the endurance, the heroism, have not been all on the one side.
As a boy preparing for the Navy, you would have liked, I dare say, to see Jack Brown in the thick of the great naval battle at Tsushima. But I had three reasons for giving no space to that famous victory. First, Jack could not possibly have seen it. Secondly, sea-fights had a very good turn in "Kobo". Thirdly, I hope some day to give you sea-dogs a whole book to yourselves—but that, as Mr. Kipling somewhere says, will be another story. Meanwhile, if you get half as much fun in reading this book as I have had in writing it, I shall count myself very lucky indeed.
Yours sincerely,
HERBERT STRANG.
September, 1905.
Contents
Chapter I