Their loss in killed, wounded, and sick was 554,885—a number considerably greater than the whole force which, according to the figures of our General Staff, they could put into the field. They sent 320,000 sick and wounded back from Manchuria to Japan.
Other available information is to the effect that the bodies of 60,624 killed were buried in the cemetery of honor in Tokio, and that, in addition to these, 75,545 men died from wounds or disease. The Japanese thus admit the loss of 135,000 men by death.[C]
Their Chief Medical Inspector says that their killed and wounded amounted to 14.58 per cent of their entire force, from which it would appear that they put into the field against us troops of various categories to the number of 1,500,000—or more than three times the estimate of our General Staff. In view of these facts, it is evident that our information with regard to their fighting strength was insufficient. At the time when they had hundreds of avowed and secret agents in the Far East, studying the strength of our land and naval forces, we entrusted the collection of data with regard to their military strength and resources to a single officer of the General Staff, and, unfortunately, our military observers were not always well selected. One of these experts in Japanese affairs said, in Vladivostok, before hostilities began, that, in the event of war, we might count on one Russian soldier as equal to three Japanese. After the first engagements he moderated his tone and admitted that it might be necessary to put one Russian against every Japanese. At the end of another month he declared that, in order to win victories, we must meet every Japanese soldier in the field with three Russians. Another of our military agents, who had been in Japan, predicted authoritatively that Port Arthur would fall in a very short time, and that immediately thereafter the same fate would overtake Vladivostok. I sharply reprimanded the faint-hearted babbler and threatened to dismiss him from the army if he continued to make such injurious and inopportune remarks.
Moral Superiority of the Japanese
But it was not only with regard to Japan's material strength that our information was insufficient. We underestimated, or entirely overlooked, her moral strength. According to that great leader Napoleon, three fourths of an army's success in war is due to the moral character of its soldiers. This relation of moral character to material success still exists, although the conditions of battle, in these days, are more trying than they were in the Napoleonic wars. And now, more than ever before, the moral strength of the army depends upon the temper of the nation. Armies are now so organized that, in case of war, soldiers are drawn, for the most part, from the reserves. A successful war, therefore, must be a popular war, and victory must be attained by the hearty coöperation of the whole people with its Government. The recent contest in Manchuria was a popular war for the Japanese, but not for us. The Korean question, and the question of naval supremacy on the waters of the Pacific, involved vital Japanese interests, and the immense importance of these interests was so clearly understood and so fully appreciated by the Japanese people that the war for their protection was a national war. Japan spent ten years in preparing for it, and then the whole nation carried it on. Japanese soldiers, deeply conscious of the bearing that their exploits might have on the future of the country, fought with a self-sacrificing devotion and a stubbornness that we had never seen in any war in which we had previously been engaged. Sometimes, in villages that we had taken by assault, a handful of Japanese soldiers would barricade themselves in native houses and die there rather than retreat or surrender. Japanese officers who fell into our hands—even wounded officers—generally committed suicide.
GENERAL TERAUCHI
JAPANESE MINISTER OF WAR
It is quite possible that when we have a true history of the war based on Japanese sources of information, our pride may receive another blow. We already know that in many cases we outnumbered the enemy, and still we were not victorious. The explanation of this, however, is very simple. The Japanese, in these cases, were inferior to us materially, but they were stronger than we morally.[D] To this aspect of the struggle we should give particular attention, because military history shows that, in all wars, the antagonist who is strongest morally wins the victory. The only exceptions are such contests as that between the English and the Boers in South Africa and that between the North and the South in America. The English were weaker than the Boers morally, but they put into the field an overwhelming force, and, in spite of many defeats, they finally conquered. In the American war, the army of the South was in the same position that the Boer army was, and the Northerners had to put a superior force into the field in order to overcome it.