General Stoessel’s house has still one room, kept as it was with some startling brocade furniture, but the other rooms are being turned into offices, I believe, of the war department.
Our minds were filled with an awful pathos as we wandered about and the light jests of our companions did not seem in place. The garden was much as it was, doubtless a tangle of marigolds and astors, and we were told to carry away as much as our arms would hold, which we did. Ah, nature, how little thou dost care!
The war museum has a fence surrounding it which shows every kind of defense in the way of crossed spikes and barbed wire and other sorts of infernal devices used in sieges.
Inside you can see war accoutrements, garments, implements, dynamos, bombs, machines of every sort to destroy, until the mind sickens.
Plans of now disused forts show how they were taken, where blown up, where tunneled; earthworks and redoubts we passed on our way over and all the ingenious ways are still there of how men can protect themselves from death and deal out death to each other.
I never heard once either in Japan or Manchuria, or Port Arthur, where pride, military pride, if ever, would be admissible, one word of boasting and one little Jap said at Port Arthur, “The Russians need never be ashamed of Port Arthur. To the everlasting disgrace be it of a nation which will punish men for doing as well as they could.”
To view this remarkable place which will be in time one of the great tourist points of the East, one need count no fatigue too great.
No trip in Europe offers more grandeur both in natural setting and historic significance.
Marathon, salute thy peers. The years have taken much, but left us men,
Men of thy stature, O, Sophocles, who asked the fairest boon,
To die like heroes, even if to taste life were still denied,
Thinking with scorn of late, or soon, the now, or then.
Empires may lose their monarchs and renown,
But never to be forgotten is this hill, dyed in the purple of man’s supreme nobility,
For here the Hand which balances each crown,
Placed forevermore a diadem of heroes, on brothers death mowed down.
(Written on “203 Metres Hill”)