ON THE DECK OF THE "RURIK."
The Port Arthur Garrison
The fall of Port Arthur, which the Japanese, in the pardonable confidence begotten of their uninterrupted victories on sea and land, had believed to be imminent long ago, now became the object of renewed and desperate endeavor. Dalny Harbor had been cleared of mines, and rendered available for the landing of siege trains; and no sooner had the ill-fated sortie of the fleet been frustrated, than the Japanese settled down again to a fierce assault. As a preliminary, on the 16th of August a message was sent to General Stoessel under a flag of truce demanding the surrender of the fortress, and proposing that, in case of non-compliance, the non-combatants should be allowed to leave. To the former of these proposals, General Stoessel, as might have been expected of so brave and resolute a soldier, returned an emphatic and indignant negative; and the second, with much less reason, he equally refused to entertain. Just at this moment all good Russians had been gladdened, even in the midst of their disasters, by the long-hoped-for birth of an heir to the Imperial Throne, and General Stoessel was able to send a congratulatory message to the Czar, while receiving in his turn an order appointing him, as a mark of special Imperial favor, an aide-de-camp general. The determination of the Russian garrison had never abated for a moment; and such assurances that the eyes and hopes of all Russia were centred on them, stirred them to the heroic pitch of endurance. Shut off from the outer world both by sea and land, with provisions and ammunition daily becoming more scanty, and beneath the harassment of an incessant bombardment and fierce and desperate assaults, they held grimly on to the defences, and defied the worst that the enemy could do, in spite of his overwhelming numbers. The progress of the siege could not be followed easily by the external spectator, because the Japanese strictly kept their own counsel; while the reports that were brought to Chifu from time to time by Chinese refugees were conflicting and contradictory in the last degree. One thing only was undeniably evident—that the Japanese assaults on different sections of the main line of defence had been made with desperate valor and indifference to loss of life; and that, except in unimportant instances, these assaults had not prevailed. Forts were indeed captured, but had to be abandoned again, because they were exposed to the fire of neighboring forts. Not in vain had the Russian engineers exercised their best brains in devising the defences of this "impregnable fortress". Mines, wire entanglements, and every other grim expedient for checking assault had been constructed with patient ingenuity; and, most deadly and cunning device of all, every fort in the long chain that shuts in Port Arthur on the land side had been so placed as to be dominated by the neighboring forts; so that no enemy who succeeded in capturing it could hope to plant his own guns there. It is not in question that the Japanese suffered appalling losses in the attempts to storm these defences; but they persevered, though for weeks together their hostile activities were limited to pouring into the Russian lines a tremendous shell fire at long range. The fall of Port Arthur which had seemed possible in June, was confidently predicted for July. Then August was fixed, and the Japanese forces, largely reinforced, undertook another desperate assault in the middle of that month. It failed; and though the dogged, impenetrable defence and the fierce and reckless struggle went on with few intermissions, October came without any perceptible change having been effected in the situation of the combatants.
Fury Unparalleled in History
Two Russian officers who escaped with dispatches to Chifu, brought accounts of the terrible pitch to which the temper of the opposing forces had been wrought in their long-drawn and implacable struggle. They stated that the Japanese losses during the last attack were enormous, and that even several days afterwards wounded men were to be seen raising their arms by way of appeal, but that it was impossible to help them as the fire was incessant. As for the struggle, it was carried on with an amount of fury to which there is no parallel in history. The Japanese dashed forward with the bayonet like madmen, and in serried columns, in which the shells made terrible furrows. Every time that they reached the Russian lines horrible mêlées, in which even the wounded fought to the death, took place. No quarter was given. Pairs of corpses were found clinging to each other, the teeth of the men being buried in their adversaries' throats and their fingers in their eyes as they had expired. In the last attack the 9th Japanese Division was sent forward in two columns, each composing a brigade, and when the first gave way under the avalanche of iron, the general commanding the second fired upon and exterminated it. So intense was the fury that when they got within hearing of their foes, the Japanese shook their fists at and insulted them. The failure of the Japanese to make headway with the siege of Port Arthur was the one substantially gratifying aspect of the war from the Russian point of view. Russian patriotic sentiment had something to be proud of in the courage, endurance, and resource of General Stoessel and his troops. But, as a matter of fact, the fall of Port Arthur would have been a far better service to Russian arms than the heroic resistance of its garrison. Because the fortress, which from the first had exercised such a benumbing influence on the Russian fleet and such a distracting influence on military counsels, still remained as a fatal factor in the equation for Russian strategy. The garrison were counting on relief from the north, and the honor and pride of Russia were engaged to send that relief if possible. Consequently, Kuropatkin never had his hand free. He could never review the situation with a single eye to its supreme strategical necessities; he must always qualify his dispositions and plans by regard for the plight of Port Arthur. It was this vitiating influence that brought about the initial reverses of the Russian armies; and that prevented any bold and effective plan for meeting the Japanese advance. Finally, it was this consideration that induced Kuropatkin to give battle at Liao-yang, and to expose his entire army to a disaster from which he only escaped by the skin of his teeth. Allusion to that tremendous conflict, between forces larger than any that have ever before been opposed in modern war, has already been made in the last chapter. But the event was so memorable, and has such bearing on the future course of the campaign, that it is permissible to return to the subject, especially as further light has been thrown on it by the detailed narratives of correspondents. Of this great battle, by the way, the world has received fuller descriptions than of any other feature of the campaign by land or sea; for it so happened that the sufferance of the war correspondents under the restriction of the Japanese military authorities broke down here, and several of the most distinguished representatives of the English press threw up their connection with the Japanese army after Liao-yang, and hurried back to neutral territory to cable home the full dispatches which the censor would not have permitted.
Kuroki Improves his Reputation
It is perfectly evident in the light of these accounts that the Japanese, emboldened by their previous successes, rated their enemy too lightly, and without any preponderance, and indeed with scarcely an equality of numbers, they attempted to take by assault a position naturally strong and fortified by all the art and resources of the military engineer. The battle did indeed prove the incomparable qualities of the Japanese soldier; but it did little to add to the reputation of Japanese generalship; while, on the other hand, it exhibited General Kuropatkin in a light infinitely more favorable than any in which he had previously appeared. If one of Kuropatkin's subordinates—General Orloff—had not blundered badly in carrying out the movements against Kuroki on the Russian left, it is probable that the battle might have resulted in a decisive defeat instead of in a nominal victory for the Japanese. That blunder—which cost Orloff his command—enabled Kuroki to hold his own at a most critical juncture, and so to obviate the dangerous possibilities which the situation had developed. It was the peril of Kuroki that compelled Oku and Nodzu, who faced the centre and right wing of the Russian position, to press on their assaults with redoubled fury, even after they had been fighting for five days and losing thousands of men without making appreciable headway. In twenty-four hours Oku made three grand assaults upon the entrenched hills before him; and, when the last had been beaten back with awful loss, the laconic order came from headquarters: "Reinforce and attack again at dawn". Such a demand upon the endurance and morale of troops is well-nigh unexampled; and that the Japanese soldier responded to it speaks volumes for his qualities as a fighting man. His persistence prevailed in the end, and the Russian line was forced. But even then the retreat was slow and stubborn. While a rear guard held the Japanese at bay, all the guns and wounded were safely withdrawn, and when at last the Japanese came into possession of Liao-yang, it was to find the fruits of their dearly-bought victory snatched from them, and their own forces too exhausted to follow victory up. The casualties in this awful conflict were enough "to stagger humanity", if one may use Mr. Kruger's famous phrase. The Japanese losses cannot have been less than 40,000, and those of the Russians were perhaps half as many; while the expenditure of ammunition on both sides was terrific. More than a thousand guns belched forth their deadly missiles continuously for nearly a week, and all eye-witnesses agree that never before has such tremendous artillery fire been witnessed. Well might it be necessary for both armies to rest after such a titanic struggle, and to devote more than a month to reforming and reinforcing the shattered ranks and to refilling their ammunition trains. The main result of the battle was to drive the grand army of the Czar one step further back from the beleaguered fortress still counting so confidently on and waiting so anxiously for relief. But, as the event showed the contest had been too indecisive to destroy finally the Russian hope of a victorious march southwards; and to that extent the Japanese might congratulate themselves. As long as the fatal fascination of Port Arthur was felt by Russian strategy, the Japanese generals could count on an invaluable ally; and very soon that ally was to come to their assistance again in a manner which their best hopes could not have conjectured.
The Grim Reality of War
In order to realize the spectacle that that awful battlefield presented, one has only to read the vivid narrative of the London Times' correspondent who was attached to General Oku's army. This is how he describes the earlier and abortive attempts of Oku's devoted troops to penetrate the Russian centre:—
