Port Arthur

by Richard Barry

We went. There were some long tables peppered with aluminum ware, fruit and wine under the pear trees of a Manchurian back yard. We stood up to the cold luncheon, partly foreign, partly native, charmingly served by soldiers. There was a crowd of dignitaries distinguished by uniforms. They were of all ranks, from the three stars and three stripes of the General of the forces to the single star and stripe of the sub-lieutenant, who is commissary adjutant. But it was not an affair of dress, so out of the crowd rose two personalities who burned themselves into my consciousness, where they hang yet, resplendent in energy. There was about them a native dignity, a primal force, that indefinable something that distinguishes great men.

One wore a pair of yellow boots and might have stepped from an American fashion plate. There was American vitality and freshness in him, too. He dispensed with ceremony, spoke keenly, decisively, almost brusquely, and looked you square in the eye with a twinkle that said he appreciated all the social gayety and yet kept back his own opinion. He had a square jaw, thick neck, broad shoulders, massive palms and a head long from chin to crown—all unusual for a Japanese. This was Major Yamaoka, the parliamentaire who recently rode into Port Arthur with the Emperor’s offer of safety to noncombatants. He is one of General Nogi’s most trusted aides, a popular orator, a man of decision. He walks like a thoroughbred. Had Cæsar seen Major Yamaoka walk across that Manchurian garden he would surely have put him on his staff.

The other wore a pair of Pomeranian top boots, elegant and serviceable as Yamaoka’s were fresh and hardy. They were pulled snugly over his knees to keep out the bitter Manchurian wind. Above were a pair of white kersey breeches, spectacular as Napoleon’s. He was fond of rising on the toes of these boots and writhing sinuously in them, like an acrobat testing, as he responded to a toast or applauded the music and fun. Everything about him indicated the strong man of action—the tensity of his muscles, the flex of his waist, the sure set of his heels, the poise of his head, the ease and power of his bearing, his well-knit mouth, his regular, beautiful teeth, the clarity of his eyes, the sincerity of his smile, even the straight, tough fiber of his hair. In physique the opposite of Yamaoka, for he is five feet nine in height, exceedingly tall for a Japanese, slender, and with delicate hands, the two yet have the same vivacity and shrewdness, the same kindliness touched with hauteur. But the second man is chief of the army, not only in rank, for it was General Nogi, but in worth as well. His mastery was easily felt to-day. He stands at the pinnacle of a wonderful career and the world’s eyes center on him. How handsome he was—and how simple and friendly, how easily pleased, how innately courteous! Is he not also that ideal philosopher whom the Roman Emperor Aurelius wrote about as bethinking him always of his enemy’s comfort? I asked him how he would like to exchange places with General Stoessel.

“I think often of General Stoessel,” he replied. “To be frank I think of him every day. When I go to bed at night and when I get up in the morning, and often between times I wonder about him, how hard his position must be, and how well he defends it, and if he is really injured as we have heard. Sometimes I put myself in his place and imagine what I should do. Then I try to think that some day I might be in just his position. And so I fight the battles all over again from his side and from mine.”

“Does it teach you much?”

The General laughed heartily. “We have learned much from the Russians. I am always pointing them out to my soldiers as model fighters.” He took from the ground a pick whose handle had been splintered by a shell, evidently found on the battlefield. Both nose and heel had been worn half away, rounded with dullness and rust. It was not like the Japanese picks, which are small and short-handled.

“I assembled all the battalion commanders a few days ago,” he continued, “and showed them this pick as an object lesson. It has turned over many a hundred weight of earth and shows how expert the Russians are at trench-making. Our soldiers do not like to dig trenches. Many of them are of gentle blood and think it is coolie work. Besides, they say: ‘We are going forward in the morning. Why dig trenches to-night?’ The Russians have taught us tactics, too.”

Here Villiers interrupted. “Men who, like the Russians, build trenches so they must show themselves on the skyline to shoot can’t teach tactics,” he said. The talk slid on to the bonzais, mutual promises to dine together next in Port Arthur, and au revoirs.

But I started to write of the Manchurian. He knows not, neither does he learn. Yet you can scarcely ask who let down that shaggy jaw and who sloped that head away, for he has a magnificent, strong, clean jaw and his head is handsome and high. That he bathes only once a year and cares not who owns the land so long as he tills it; and that his wife and daughter sit on the stone fence of his donkey stable picking the lice from one another’s heads, doubtless has nothing to do with the question propounded by our sociological poet.