INTRODUCTION

After a long still-hunt in Tokio, and a long pursuit through Manchuria, following that Sun-Flag of Japan, I gave up the chase at Liao-Yang.

Not being a military expert, my purpose was simply to see under that flag the brown little "gun-man"—as he calls himself in his own tongue—in camp and on the march, in trench and in open field, in assault and in retreat; to tell tales of his heroism, chivalry, devotion, sacrifice, incomparable patriotism; to see him fighting, wounded—and, since such things in war must be—dying, dead. After seven months my spoils of war were post-mortem battle-fields, wounded convalescents in hospitals, deserted trenches, a few graves, and one Russian prisoner in a red shirt.

Upon that unimportant personal disaster I can look back now with no little amusement; and were I to re-write these articles, I should doubtless temper both word and spirit here and there; but as my feeling at the time was sincere, natural, and justified, as there is, I believe, no over-statement of the facts that caused it, and as the articles were written without malice or the least desire to "get even"—I let them go, as written, into book form now.

No more enthusiastic pro-Japanese than I ever touched foot on the shores of the little island, and no Japanese, however much he might, if only for that reason, value my good opinion, can regret more than I any change that took place within me when I came face to face with a land and a people I had longed since childhood to see.

I am very sorry to have sounded the personal note so relentlessly in this little book. That, too, was unavoidable, and will, I hope, be pardoned.

John Fox, Jr.