The strength of the land force that a war with Japan would require depended upon three things: (1) the strength of the army that the Japanese could put into Manchuria, or across our boundary; (2) the strength of our fleet; and (3) the transporting capacity of the railway upon which our troops would have to depend in concentration. If our fleet could defeat the fleet of the Japanese, military operations on the main land would be unnecessary. And even if the Japanese were not defeated in a general naval engagement, they would either have to obtain complete mastery of the sea, or leave a considerable part of their army at home for the protection of their own coast. Without command of the sea, moreover, they could not risk a landing on the Liao-tung peninsula, but would have to march through Korea, and that would give us time for concentration. By their desperate night attack upon our fleet at Port Arthur, before the declaration of war,[H] they obtained a temporary superiority in armored vessels, and made great use of it in getting command of the sea. Our fleet—especially after the death of Admiral Makaroff at the most critical moment in the execution of the Japanese plan of campaign—offered no resistance to the enemy whatever. Even when they landed in the immediate vicinity of Port Arthur, we did not make so much as an attempt to interfere with them. The results of this inaction were very damaging to our army. The Japanese, instead of finding it impossible to land troops in Korea Bay, as our naval authorities anticipated, were able to threaten us with a descent along the whole coast of the Liao-tung peninsula, beginning at Kwang-tung. Notwithstanding our weakness on land, Admiral Alexeieff thought it necessary to authorize a wide scattering of our troops, so we prepared to meet the Japanese on the Yalu, at Yinkow, and in the province of Kwang-tung. He had also permitted a dispersal of our naval forces, so that we were weak everywhere.
Advantages Secured by Japan's Naval Victory
Instead of making a landing in Korea only,—as was anticipated in the plan worked out at Port Arthur,—the Japanese, with their immense fleet of transports, landed three armies on the Liao-tung peninsula and a fourth in Korea. Then, leaving one army in front of Port Arthur, they pushed the other three forward toward our forces, Which were slowly concentrating on the Haicheng-Liaoyang line in southern Manchuria. Thus, having taken the initiative at sea, they obtained the same advantage on land. Their command of the sea enabled them to disregard the defence of their own coast and move against us with their entire strength. In this way—contrary to our anticipations—they were able, in the first stage of the war, to put into the field a force that was superior to ours. Command of the sea, moreover, made it possible for them to supply their armies quickly with all necessary munitions, and to transport to the field, in a few days, masses of heavy supplies, which we, with our feeble railroad, were hardly able to get in months. But command of the sea, and the almost complete inactivity of our fleet, gave them another advantage, not less important, and that was the possibility of bringing safely to their ports and arsenals quantities of commissary and military stores, weapons, horses, and cattle, which had been ordered in Europe and America. Their line of communications, furthermore, was short and secure, while we were at a distance of eight thousand versts from our base of supplies and were connected with our country only by one weak line of railway. The advantage that they had over us in this respect was immense. The slow concentration of our army, which had to be brought eight thousand versts over a single-track railroad, gave them time, after the war began, to form new bodies of troops, in considerable numbers, and send them to the front. They had time enough, also, to supply their army with innumerable machine guns, after they had observed, in the early stages of the war, the importance of machine-gun fire.
The field of military operations in Manchuria had been familiar to the Japanese ever since their war with China. Its heat, its heavy rains, its mountains and its kiaoliang, were well known to them, because they had seen them all in their own country. In the mountains, especially, they felt perfectly at home, while a mountainous environment, to our troops, was oppressive. The Japanese, moreover, in their ten years of preparation for war with us, had not only studied Manchuria, but had secured there their own agents, who were of the greatest use to their army. The Chinese, I may add, assisted the Japanese, notwithstanding the severity and even cruelty with which the latter treated them.
The Japanese had a considerable advantage over us, also, in their high-powered ammunition, their machine guns, their innumerable mountain guns, their abundant supply of explosives, and their means of attack and defence in the shape of wire, mines, and hand grenades. Their organization, equipment, and transport carts were all better adapted to the field of operations than ours were, and their bodies of sappers were more numerous than ours.
The Japanese soldiers had been so trained as to develop self-reliance and ability to take the lead, and they were credited by foreign military observers with "intelligence, initiative, and quickness," In the fighting instructions that were given them, very material changes were made after the war began. At the outset, for example, night attacks were not recommended; but they soon satisfied themselves that night attacks were profitable and they afterward made great use of them. Major von Luwitz, of the German army, in a brochure entitled "The Japanese Attack in the War in Eastern Asia in 1904-05" says that while the Japanese did not neglect any means of making attacks effective, the secret of their success lay in their determination to get close to the enemy, regardless of consequences.
The Intellectual Superiority of the Japanese Soldier
The non-commissioned officers in the Japanese army were much superior to ours, on account of the better education and greater intellectual development of the Japanese common people. Many of them might have discharged the duties of commissioned officers with perfect success. The defects of our soldiers—both regulars and reservists—were the defects of the population as a whole. The peasants were imperfectly developed intellectually, and they made soldiers who had the same failing. The intellectual backwardness of our soldiers was a great disadvantage to us, because war now requires far more intelligence and initiative, on the part of the individual soldier, than ever before. Our men fought heroically in compact masses, or in fairly close formation, but if deprived of their officers they were more likely to fall back than to advance. In the mass we had immense strength; but few of our soldiers were capable of fighting intelligently as individuals. In this respect the Japanese were much superior to us. Their non-commissioned officers were far better developed, intellectually, than ours, and among such officers, as well as among many of the common soldiers, whom we took as prisoners, we found diaries which showed not only good education but knowledge of what was happening and intelligent comprehension of the military problems to be solved. Many of them could draw maps skilfully, and one common soldier was able to show accurately, by means of a plan sketched in the sand, the relative positions of the Japanese forces and ours.
But the qualities that contributed most to the triumph of the Japanese were their high moral spirit, and the stubborn determination with which the struggle for success was carried on by every man in their army, from the common soldier to the commander-in-chief. In many cases, their situation was so distressing that it required extraordinary power of will on their part to stand fast or to advance. But the officers seemed to have resolution enough to call on their men for impossible efforts—not even hesitating to shoot those that fell back—and the soldiers, rallying their last physical and spiritual strength, often wrested the victory away from us. One thing is certain: if the whole Japanese army had not been inspired with an ardent patriotism; if it had not been sympathetically supported by the whole nation; and if all its officers and soldiers had not appreciated the immense importance of the struggle, even such resolution as that of the Japanese leaders would have failed to achieve such results.