Port Arthur

by Richard Barry

The last thing Imazawa did was a mistake—not his, but still a mistake. In preparing for the third grand assault on October 29th, after the sapheads had been worked to within a hundred yards of the parapet on the Two Dragons redoubt, it was found that a dry moat separated the Japanese from their prey. The width and depth of this moat were difficult to determine. In the most fiercely contested zone, and on a plateau so situated that it could not be accurately seen from any of the heights possessed by the Japanese, its exact nature remained a mystery. Scouting was difficult, for it was commanded not only by the batteries of the Two Dragons, but also by the batteries of the greatest forts at Port Arthur—the Chair, the Table, the Cock’s Comb, and Golden Hill. To reach it a scout would have to cross several hundred yards of red earth, bare to every sight, and commanded by sharpshooters. Of those who went in for information about that mysterious dry moat, for a week none came back. Finally one scout, more cautious than the rest, returned and reported to Imazawa, “Ten meters.” Thirty-nine feet is big width for a moat, and no one could wonder that, sneaking along there in the dark, with momentary fear of searchlights and sharpshooters, the scout, finding a hole wider than his imagination, thought the distance great if it was ten meters. So Imazawa made his bamboo ladders fourteen meters long. On the day of the assault, everything having progressed favorably up to that point, the bombardment and the flank work against forts on each side being successful, the advance went in with Imazawa’s fourteen-meter ladders. Under fierce fire nearly half of the men dropped from the ranks, and only enough were left to handle three ladders, the glacis of the redoubt being littered with four others whose bearers had been slain. The hardy scaling party at last placed their ladders securely on one edge of the moat and dropped them across, expecting the next moment to dash across them to victory, leaving the reserves crouched in the trenches, waiting for the word to follow. Judge of their dismay when the ladders fell from the perpendicular to horizontal, from the horizontal to the perpendicular again! They failed to touch the other side, failed to touch bottom, and disappeared. The moat was fourteen meters wide. The dismayed assaulters hastened back to Imazawa. That night a party advanced and dropped a thousand bags, at one point, into this terrible moat. These sand bags disappeared, and not a ripple of their indent could be seen. This sunken road of Ohaine baffled the army and was the chief reason that Port Arthur did not fall on the Emperor’s birthday. Had they passed it, the Two Dragons redoubt would have fallen and the town could have been entered.

Those who charge the Japanese with suicidal folly should remember that when confronted with this crack in the earth they did not emulate emotional Frenchmen at Waterloo. They sat down and gave Imazawa a chance to study. They did not die in a climax of frenzy. Their sacrifice is for a grand and patriotic idea. Sensational despatches about losses spread the belief that they die like flies. The truth is, they never waste a life.

Copyright, 1905, by Collier’s Weekly

The use of many successful inventions showed the Japanese equal to all the progress of the age. The hyposcope enabled them to observe what went on in the town, and from 203-Meter Hill revealed the fleet. This is a telescope cut in half, the front elevated two feet above the rear by a further length of scope, and the line of vision between made straight past the angles by two mirrors. It gives a lookout within a few hundreds yards of the enemy’s line a chance to explore calmly at his leisure.

Bombproofs for the generals were cut in the solid rock a thousand yards in advance of the artillery and overtopping the firing-line. Thus commanding officers could get the traditional bird’s-eye view of the battlefield. Instead of sitting at headquarters, miles in the rear, as the generals in the North were compelled to do, and directing the action from an office desk, as a train-despatcher regulates his system, the divisional, brigade, and regimental commanders with their own eyes could observe all that was going on. The commander-in-chief had a fine lookout in the rear center of his army, two and a half miles from the town of Port Arthur. From there his eye glanced over as grand a battlefield as the world has yet produced, for within an area of ten square miles was brought every possibility of modern warfare. Even cavalry maneuvered. While his optic vision was extraordinary, his mental horizon was vast and comprehensive. Telephones centering to a switchboard in the next bombproof connected him with every battery and every regiment under his command. He was in instant touch with the most outlying operations, and, almost with the ease and certainty of Napoleon at Austerlitz could march and countermarch, enfilade and assault.

Telephone and post office follow the flag. In the advance of the Japanese army down the peninsula, telephone linesmen bearing on their shoulders coils of thin copper wire, not much larger and of no more weight than a pack-thread, followed through the kaoliang-fields on each side of the commander. The moment he stopped, a table was produced, a receiver was snapped on the wire, and a telegrapher stood ready. More remarkable was the advance of the telephone into the contested redoubt of the Eternal Dragon, where a station was placed and operated for four months, with the Russians holding trenches only forty meters distant and on three sides. At this station, along the front of which twenty men a day were slain by sharpshooters, mail was delivered every time that a transport arrived, which was almost daily. Men on the firing-line received postal cards from their sweethearts and mothers an hour before death.

Telephone and post office followed the flag; the Red Cross preceded it. The medical corps came, not in the wake of the army, but close on the heels of the pioneers. Before even the infantrymen entered a Chinese village it was explored, the water of its wells analyzed, its houses tested for bacteria, and the lines of encampment laid down. This unusual sanitation is looked upon by surgical authorities as perhaps the chief cause of Japanese success.

But one could find another cause of Japanese success, if the analytical probe is to be used and the mystic impulse which gives men resolution for supreme sacrifice ignored. This great cause may be called originality. The record of superficial observers of her recent advance is that Japan to-day selfishly and slavishly reaps the values wrung from time and chance through many centuries by other nations. If this be true, she is original enough to survive the ordeal of imitation. Had a single person shown the qualities displayed at Port Arthur he would be charged with having the audacity of genius. This audacity did not hesitate to make use of anything, new or old, possible or impossible, conventional or unconventional, which might win success from desperate conditions.