PORT ARTHUR
PortArthur is the most dramatic spot away from Europe: nothing that Nature can do, or history suggest of grandeur is lacking in this stupendous panorama!
Hills which have been swept bare by shot and shell are still bare and will be as the palm of the hand, to denote what has passed over them!
A huge fortress-like eminence suggesting Gibraltar, stands out like the champion of the army before the series of forts which lie behind it.
There are two bays, “Pigeon Bay” and “Kerr Bay,” which have dimpled waters of sparkling blue and admit ships on both sides of this gigantic promontory.
As you leave the station, you find yourself facing a long stretch of unkempt ground, over which the new town is being erected inland.
Further behind lie the cliffs, rising one within another, with a series of natural fortifications, one of which has begun its immortal fame, “203 Metres Hill.”
Its sides are covered with huge stones, piled in volcanic confusion, partly by nature, partly by the concussion of balls.
This point, as all remember, was surrounded by a barbed wire fence and heaps of sand bags.
On one edge men passed over living flesh and dying flesh, their hands torn from the sockets, as they mounted up a perpendicular side of some three hundred feet.
The hills on the land side are well covered with the rough and tumble of the up-torn rocks, pieces of bone and rusty implements and the torn sand bags are still there. Seventeen thousand men fell on this hill and it took five days to capture it.
Once on top after a climb of some twenty minutes of slow scrambling, like the ascent of the pyramids, you reach the summit. Then you realize why Russia wanted to keep it and Japan to win it at any cost. It is a center of billowy hills on the land side and of the whole sweep of bays and promontories stretching out towards the Yellow Sea and Pechilli Bay.
Port Arthur is the sharp beak of the promontory, which cuts into two waters and can guard the lands of Japan, Korea and China. As you stand then on the top of “203 Metres Hill” you have at your back hills, in the front the towns, the circling mountains about the water, the advanced cliffs of the defensive works and the bays and the sea. Your guns can command any point and your view has every detail before it. You are, as I remember, about one mile and a half from town.
This latter is composed of a small park from which the adorning center has been removed, whether in disgrace as offensive to non-classical taste or not I do not know.
The Civil Office building is new or repaired and not specially attractive as the Japanese do not seem to care to put beauty in their public buildings. A new and very elaborate hotel soon to be opened, is being put up.
This is made out of concrete and stone, quarried, I believe, out of the near-by mountains. The roads leave everything to be desired; they are full of ruts and must be horriblein the rainy months.
The Czar’s mother built the “Red Cross Hospital” whose gigantic outlines of red warm the heart during the frozen months of a Manchurian winter.
Vice Admiral Hashimoto and his lovely family live in a palatial residence, while set in wide gardens at only a few feet away is the steep descent to the gate of the navy yard, where you can stroll about with a guide seeing sunken ships being repaired and the “Amur,” one of Russia’s relics lying on her side, kept there as a reminder of the dreadful days gone.
Shops full of busy workmen are alongside and the little men who are hard at work to the ceaseless blows of the hammer, bob about blithely at their tasks, getting ready for another conflict.
Far up over one’s head, on the terraced gardens, I saw a marquise and asked what it had been used for.
It was the Russian bandstand, where every evening the Russians played their national airs; now only the breeze blows its requiem there, for “dead souls.”
Nearby is the “Army and Navy Club” at whose inviting door I bade good bye to the American Consul who had so gallantly chaperoned me for the day.
The visit to Port Arthur for a lady alone, would not be agreeable. We had the pleasure of meeting the commanding general, Membo Camio, and he told us about his two dogs and they were introduced, one of them his special favorite, “a left over” from Russian occupation!
Dog lovers know no geographical lines and his most interesting face took on that peculiar “love me, love my dog” look seen on the faces of those devoted to canine pets.
It was an easy task for me and while they talked diplomatic compliments, I talked dog.
I told General Camio of a friend in Manila who possessed one from the Russian fleet, a beautiful collie, given her from off the fugitive Russian ships. How also on the Fourth of July the sensitive creature crept away to avoid hearing the firing, which brings to mind that awful day.
We were provided with a guide, by the kindness of the general, to the war museum and to General Stossel’s house.
This residence was and is a very plain one, not very large, set on a single hill commanding a view over the forts and town opposite and is opposite the new palace of the civil governor.
General Nakamura, who was acting governor of Manchuria, a most affable and agreeable personality, did us voluntarily a great service, which he anticipated the moment we came into the room. He gave us our return pass to Fusan, as Baron Goto of the South Manchurian Railway was away from his home in Dalny.
The delicate way the Japanese, in their kindness even think for one, is wonderful.
“’Twas fated I should seek this battle field and here above the multitudinous dead, be the white victim, growing daily whiter. The breath of death has rustled thru my hair! The shudder of death has passed athwart my soul! I am all white, a sacrificial host!”
So felt the Duke of Reichstadt at Wagram, so feels every noble soul at Port Arthur. It is for humanity, an altar of blood and fire!
The fields have been put under the plow, but labor cannot wait.
The necessities of existence have, perhaps fortunately, no sentiment. Parts of our road are blasted thru the solid rock. We move towards the battle field, watching alternately the dismantled homes and the primitive methods of agriculture. Some buildings are left as wrecks. The configuration grows every mile more sinister. In a distant low roofed building we are told that General Stoessel surrendered but it is all a dream; we are seeking something. There on the horizon! Yes, it rises! Calm as at creation’s dawn, when its Maker saw this hour. “203 Metres Hill”! Name forever immortal!
Oh, the sublimity of the view over that billowy plain from its summit! There “Pigeon Bay” and “Kerr Bay.” The monuments of Russia’s generosity and Japan’s gratitude.
We visited the war museum and the Administration buildings. The blue of that day’s sky, so blue, with the glory of the sun on the “Golden Hill” and the “Tiger’s Tail” forts but the hosts were visible to the unseen eye, the cries of agony and victory were in our ears and in the garden of General Stoessel we found growing the flowers so thoughtless, or so healing of it all! The flowers which have no memory!
“Les fleurs nont pas de memoire,Nouvelles dans un monde ancien!”
General Stoessel’s house has still one room, kept as it was with some startling brocade furniture, but the other rooms are being turned into offices, I believe, of the war department.
Our minds were filled with an awful pathos as we wandered about and the light jests of our companions did notseem in place. The garden was much as it was, doubtless a tangle of marigolds and astors, and we were told to carry away as much as our arms would hold, which we did. Ah, nature, how little thou dost care!
The war museum has a fence surrounding it which shows every kind of defense in the way of crossed spikes and barbed wire and other sorts of infernal devices used in sieges.
Inside you can see war accoutrements, garments, implements, dynamos, bombs, machines of every sort to destroy, until the mind sickens.
Plans of now disused forts show how they were taken, where blown up, where tunneled; earthworks and redoubts we passed on our way over and all the ingenious ways are still there of how men can protect themselves from death and deal out death to each other.
I never heard once either in Japan or Manchuria, or Port Arthur, where pride, military pride, if ever, would be admissible, one word of boasting and one little Jap said at Port Arthur, “The Russians need never be ashamed of Port Arthur. To the everlasting disgrace be it of a nation which will punish men for doing as well as they could.”
To view this remarkable place which will be in time one of the great tourist points of the East, one need count no fatigue too great.
No trip in Europe offers more grandeur both in natural setting and historic significance.
Marathon, salute thy peers. The years have taken much, but left us men,Men of thy stature, O, Sophocles, who asked the fairest boon,To die like heroes, even if to taste life were still denied,Thinking with scorn of late, or soon, the now, or then.Empires may lose their monarchs and renown,But never to be forgotten is this hill, dyed in the purple of man’s supreme nobility,For here the Hand which balances each crown,Placed forevermore a diadem of heroes, on brothers death mowed down.
(Written on “203 Metres Hill”)