Mr. E. Martinoff, in an article entitled "Spirit and Temper of the Two Armies," points out that "even in time of peace, the Japanese people were so educated as to develop in them a patriotic and martial spirit. The very idea of war with Russia was generally popular, and throughout the contest the army was supported by the sympathy of the nation. In Russia, the reverse was true. Patriotism was shaken by the dissemination of ideas of cosmopolitanism and disarmament, and in the midst of a difficult campaign the attitude of the country toward the army was one of indifference, if not of actual hostility."
This judgment is accurate, and it is evident, of course, that with such a relation between Russian society and the Manchurian army, it was impossible to expect from the latter any patriotic spirit, or any readiness to sacrifice life for the sake of the fatherland. In an admirable article entitled "The Feeling of Duty and the Love of Country," published in the "Russian Invalid" in 1906, Mr. A. Bilderling expressed certain profoundly true ideas as follows:
"Our lack of success may have been due, in part, to various and complicated causes; to the misconduct of particular persons, to bad generalship, to lack of preparation in the army and the navy, to inadequacy of material resources, and to misappropriations in the departments of equipment and supply; but the principal reason for our defeat lies deeper, and is to be found in lack of patriotism, and in the absence of a feeling of duty toward and love for the fatherland. In a conflict between two peoples, the things of most importance are not material resources, but moral strength, exaltation of spirit, and patriotism. Victory is most likely to be achieved by the nation in which these qualities are most highly developed. Japan had long been preparing for war with us; all of her people desired it; and a feeling of lofty patriotism pervaded the whole country. In her army and her fleet, therefore, every man, from the commander-in-chief to the last soldier, not only knew what he was fighting for and what he might have to die for, but understood clearly that upon success in the struggle depended the fate of Japan, her political importance, and her future in the history of the world. Every soldier knew also that the whole nation stood behind him. With us, on the other hand, the war was unpopular from the very beginning. We neither desired it nor anticipated it, and, consequently, we were not prepared for it. Soldiers were hastily put into railway trains, and when, after a journey that lasted a month, they alighted in Manchuria, they did not know in what country they were, nor whom they were to fight, nor what the war was about. Even our higher commanders went to the front unwillingly and from a mere sense of duty. The whole army, moreover, felt that it was regarded by the country with indifference; that its life was not shared by the people; and that it was a mere fragment, cut off from the nation, thrown to a distance of nine thousand versts, and there abandoned to the caprice of fate. Before decisive fighting began, therefore, one of the contending armies advanced with the full expectation and confident belief that it would be victorious, while the other went forward with a demoralizing doubt of its own success."
Generally speaking, the man who conquers in war is the man who is least afraid of death. We were unprepared in previous wars, as well as in this, and in previous wars we made mistakes; but when the preponderance of moral strength was on our side, as in the wars with the Swedes, the French, the Turks, the Caucasian mountaineers and the natives of Central Asia, we were victorious. In the late war, for reasons that are extremely complicated, our moral strength was less than that of the Japanese; and it was this inferiority, rather than mistakes in generalship, that caused our defeats, and that forced us to make tremendous efforts in order to succeed at all. Our lack of moral strength—as compared with the Japanese—affected all ranks of our army, from the highest to the lowest, and greatly reduced our fighting power. In a war waged under different conditions—a war in which the army had the confidence and encouragement of the country—the same officers and the same troops would have accomplished far more than they accomplished in Manchuria. The lack of martial spirit, of moral exaltation, and of heroic impulse, affected particularly our stubbornness in battle. In many cases we did not have dogged resolution enough to conquer such antagonists as the Japanese. Instead of holding, with unshakable tenacity, the positions assigned them, our troops often retreated, and, in such cases, our commanding officers of all ranks, without exception, lacked the power or the means to set things right. Instead of making renewed and extraordinary efforts to wrest victory from the enemy, they either permitted the retreat of the troops under their command, or themselves ordered such retreat. The army, however, never lost its strong sense of duty; and it was this that enabled many divisions, regiments, and battalions to increase their power of resistance with every battle. This peculiarity of the late war, together with our final acquirement of numerical preponderance and a noticeable decline of Japanese ardor, gave us reason to regard the future with confidence, and left no room for doubt as to our ultimate victory.
The Failure of the Russian Fleet
Among other reasons for the success of the Japanese, I may mention the following.
The leading part in the war was to have been taken by our fleet. In the General Staff of the navy, as well as in that of the army, a detailed account was kept of all Japan's ships of war; but the directors of naval affairs in the Far East reckoned only tonnage, guns, and calibers, and when, in 1903, they found that the arithmetical totals of our Far Eastern fleet exceeded those of the entire Japanese fleet, they adopted, as a basis for our plan of operations, the following conclusions:
1. "The relation that the strength of the Japanese fleet bears to the strength of our fleet is such that the possibility of the defeat of the latter is inadmissible."
2. "The landing of the Japanese at Yinkow, or in Korea Bay, is not to be regarded as practicable."