Three hours later, the Guardsmen found us awake. We arose and stumbled in the mud and darkness for a cup of coffee, and started single file through raining blackness toward that ever-vanishing front. Nobody said a word, and the silence and mystery of the march was oppressive as we waded streams and ploughed through mud between walls of dripping corn. Every now and then the Authority on International Law, who led us, would halt the column and get off his horse to look for the trail that had been left for us the day before. At least he did the looking, but it was always Captain James, the Englishman, who found the trail; a more stealing, mysterious, conspirator-like expedition I have never known. It was hard to believe that we were not creeping up to make an attack on something ourselves, or that the Russians might not burst from the corn on either side at any minute.
On we went until another hill loomed before us, and at the foot of this hill we waited for the dawn. By and by another cavalcade approached, the military attachés, equally impressive, equally mysterious, equally solemn and expectant. And on that little hill we waited, in the cold wind and drifting sleet and rain, the correspondents huddled on top, the cloaked attachés stalking along on a little terrace some thirty feet below, everybody straining his eyes through the darkness to see the first flash of a gun. Morning came and we were still straining—big Reggie nibbling a hard-boiled egg on the very summit of the hill, a Lieutenant-General of the English Army patrolling the terrace like some "knight-at-arms alone and palely loitering," because no shells sang, and the rest of us dotting the muddy mound with miserable, shivering shapes, while wind, rain, and cold made merry over the plight of all. The Three Guardsmen moved restlessly about, speaking words of good cheer; but something was happening to that battle and we got tired of straining and began to walk recklessly around that hill and borrow chocolate and tobacco and bread from one another for breakfast. Even the Guardsmen got uneasy—hopeless—and once I found myself on the other side of the hill, where one of them lay huddled in his army coat. For a little while we talked inter-continental differences.
"We do not understand, we Occidentals, why the Japanese prefers to commit hara-kiri rather than be captured, and we argue this way: If I allow myself to be captured, I may be exchanged or escape, and thus have a chance to fight another day; if not, my enemy has to take care of me and feed me, so that I reduce his force and resources just that much. If I kill myself I make a gap in my own ranks that I can't fill again. If I accept capture, I am worrying and exhausting you all the time. The only good I can see in hara-kiri is the effect that it might have on the fighting capacity of the men who are left. Is there any economic consideration of that sort under the Japanese idea?"
The Guardsman shook his head. "No," he said, "it is instinct with us; but," he added presently, "I think we are coming around to your point of view, and I think we will come around to it more and more. You see, we have transferred the Buschido spirit of feudalism into the army. The loyalty of Samurai to Daimio has been transferred to soldier and officer, and this instinct for hara-kiri is so great an element in the Buschido spirit that I think our officers are a little fearful about trying to change it too rapidly." But a Japanese will not talk long about such matters with a foreigner.
The Guardsman pulled a little brass check covered with Chinese characters from his pocket.
"This is how we identify our dead," he said. "Every soldier carries one of these, and every officer."
"That's a good idea," I said, but I couldn't help thinking how little use he could ever have for that check as long as he was guarding us. It is said that just about this time the wife of a correspondent back in Tokio went trembling to the War-Office. "I have heard nothing from my husband," she said. "Tell me if he has been killed." The official was startled.
"Impossible!" he said.
I climbed the hill again to see how that battle was going on. The first line of "The Burial of Sir John Moore" will do for that battle. It wasn't going on, so one of the Guardsmen galloped ahead to learn what the trouble was with the Schedule, and for two long, chilly hours we huddled on that windy mole-hill, with no flash of gun in the distance, no puff of smoke high in the air. The Guardsman came back then. Kuropatkin had quietly sneaked away while we were sneaking for that hill, and the Japanese were after him. Thus passed the second day of the battle of Anshantien.