Peace has been officially announced. Among the officers I have seen, opinions vary, but the men are delighted. They are tearing the telegrams from each other.
September 7th.
I arrived at Gonchuling yesterday. Gonchuling is now what Mukden used to be before the battle of Mukden was fought. It consists of dozens and dozens of small grey brick houses, with slate roofs, on one side of the line, and on the other side of the line is a small Chinese town. The Military Attachés are here in their car. I am living with the Press Censors. People talk about peace as if it was not yet a fact. An officer, whose wife I met in the train coming out, has been sent to fortify positions. Kouropatkin’s army is said to have received orders to advance. People express doubts as to whether the peace will be ratified, and there is talk of a revolution in Japan.
I have the intention of joining the 2nd Transbaikal Cossack battery, with which I lived last year. I have telegraphed to them to send horses to meet me at Godziadan, the Head Quarters of the Staff.
September 10th.
I have arrived at Godziadan. In the station is the train of the Commander-in-Chief. There is also a correspondents’ car, where I have been put up and hospitably entertained by Boris Nikolaievitch Demchinsky, correspondent of a Russian newspaper. The news has come of the first pour-parlers which are to take place between the Russian and Japanese Commanders-in-Chief.
CHAPTER II
JEN-TZEN-TUNG
September 13th.
I arrived at the quarters of the battery this morning. It is quartered in a village near the large Chinese town of Jen-tzen-tung on the Mongolian frontier. I started from Godziadan at eight o’clock in the morning on the 11th, when I found two Cossacks waiting for me, with a third pony for me to ride, saddled with my own English saddle, which I had left behind me last year. As we started one of the Cossacks said: “You must be careful with that pony, he throws himself.” I wondered what this meant; whether the pony ran away, or bit, or kicked, or stumbled, or bucked, or fell, my experience of Chinese ponies being that they do all these things. I was not long in finding out; it meant that the pony took a sort of dive forward every now and then, tearing the skin off one’s fingers in the effort to hold it up.
After we had ridden for about two hours, one of the Cossacks asked the other if he knew the way. The other answered that he did not. The first one told him he was a fool. “But,” I interrupted, “as you have just come from Jen-tzen-tung, surely you know the way back.”