“We are of little account, General,” said Ricalton, “but it is a very serious thing for a man on whom the world’s eyes are centered to have dysentery.”
The General smiled. “I am quite well now,” he said; “but how old are you?” he asked, looking at Ricalton’s gray hairs. They compared ages. Ricalton proved to be three years the older.
From Stereograph, Copyright 1904, by Underwood & Underwood, New York
“The command of the army, then, belongs to me,” said Ricalton. “I’m your senior.”
“Ah,” said the General, “but then I should have to do your work and I fear I could not do it as well as you do.”
That night a huge hamper came to Ricalton’s tent in charge of the headquarters orderly. It contained three huge bunches of Malaga grapes, half a dozen Bartlett pears, a peck of fine snow apples, and bore a card reading: “The General sends his compliments to his senior in command.”
“He is a great man,” said Ricalton, “who can so notice, in the midst of colossal labors, a passing old photographer.”
But, as Nogi goes, so go the other generals, and so goes the army. Villiers and I went yesterday to call on a certain Lieutenant-General who commands the most important third of the forces. His division has borne the brunt of the fighting, and he doesn’t live as Nogi does, on the edge of the zone of fire, but close under the guns within a mile of the Russian forts, so close that in his lookout two of his staff officers were recently killed. His home is a dugout in the side of a mountain. It is large enough for him to lie down in and turn over. He had a heavy white blanket, a rubber pillow to be inflated with lung power, a fan, an officer’s trunk that carries sixty pounds, and a small lantern of oiled silk—this was his furniture, his complete outfit. On a peg hung his sword, and outside, on the ground, lay his boots. Some member of his staff had fixed up an iron bedstead and a water bowl, but they were lying off at the side of the dugout, untouched. He came to meet us in a thin pair of rubber slippers, his uniform a bit worn, the string on his breast, where the order of the Rising Sun is usually worn, barren, his eyes kindly, his manner fatherly and his hospitality generous; he spread a lunch bountiful as Nogi’s.
“I know the Russians,” said Villiers that night. “I was with them all through the Russo-Turkish War. I remember Skoboleff, their great cavalry leader, a magnificent type of man, a soldier to the ground, but fiery, emotional, vivacious, vain, fond of orders, jewels, wine and women, looking on war as a lark, dashing and brilliant, the scourge of Europe! He was not this type of man—a scientific chap, sober, full of business to the chin, no lugs to him, and as unemotional as a fish. Kuropatkin was Skoboleff’s Chief of Staff and you see what these fellows have done with him. The day of cynical dash and reckless valor has gone by in war, my boy. We are living in an age of modesty and gentleness, of science and concentration; Japan is the master.”