CHAPTER XV.
After Port Arthur—Raids in Manchuria—The Battle of Sandepu—Kuropatkin Asks for Reinforcements—The North Sea Inquiry.
After Port Arthur
With the fall of Port Arthur, the Russo-Japanese War entered upon an entirely new phase. Although the situation of the gigantic armies that faced one another across the Sha-ho River remained unchanged, the strategic problems to be solved by their instrumentality were in effect transformed. The struggle for the possession of the great naval fortress had operated as a vitiating factor in the military counsels of both belligerents. Japan had sacrificed between 50,000 and 100,000 of her best soldiers in bringing the six months' siege to a triumphant issue, and in doing so had, by dividing her armies, moreover, forfeited the opportunity of dealing a crushing blow at her adversary. The magnificent infantry that broke themselves in so many vain assaults upon the fortifications of Port Arthur might have enabled Oyama to turn the Russian retreat at Liao-yang into a rout, or to drive the Russians, after the battle of the Sha-ho, back beyond Mukden. On the other hand, Kuropatkin had found himself hampered at every turn by the instructions imposed on him from St. Petersburg to attempt the relief of the beleaguered fortress, by which was symbolized so much of the pride and prestige of the Russian Empire. In the game of chess a strong player, to handicap himself against a weaker, will sometimes undertake to mate with a certain piece. If the piece is lost, the game is lost, and therefore the player's defence is awkwardly compromised by being divided in aim—between protecting his vital piece and at the same time shielding his king from checkmate. Very similar was the task imposed on the unhappy generalissimo of the Czar, who, while trying to baffle Oyama's vigorous combination, had to keep one eye always on Port Arthur. The fall of Port Arthur at least set free both combatants from a distracting preoccupation, and to that degree it was a strength to either side. But its ulterior effects were much less evenly balanced. The capture of Port Arthur at one stroke deprived Russian arms of the possibility of complete triumph, whatever issue future military operations might have; and it secured Japan from the last lingering fear of disastrous defeat. When the remnant of the once powerful Pacific Squadron fell into the hands of the Mikado's soldiers, Russia's last hope of recovering, during the present war, the command of the sea expired utterly; and without the command of the sea, Kuropatkin's boast of "settling the terms of peace at Tokio" could obviously never be fulfilled. Even if invincible armies swept Oyama out of Manchuria, out of Liao-tung Peninsula, and out of Korea itself, there would still be the impassable Straits of Korea to render the victory barren and to impose their inexorable "Thus far and no further". As a matter of fact it became evident to the whole world that, with Japan supreme by sea, the continuance of the war would only be a costly futility for Russia, in which she had everything to lose and nothing to gain—a struggle in which she was exhausting herself to no possible purpose. Her adversary had already won the odd-trick, and the only doubt that remained to be solved was how near she would get to making grand slam. But the blind arrogance and reckless folly which had precipitated Russia into a wanton war for which she was utterly unprepared, were still obdurate to conviction even by the logic of such disastrous events. Nothing is more stubborn than wounded pride, or more blind than baffled vanity. The more desperate the situation, the more perversely bent became the bureaucracy of Russia in prolonging it, and in refusing to recognize facts which impeached the competence and sagacity of the existing régime. Already the strain of maintaining the army in Manchuria had begun to have its effect at home in widespread distress and growing discontent among the peasant and industrial classes. The characteristic remedy of the governing clique was to attempt not a cure, but a diversion. Kuropatkin was ordered to renew his activity and to achieve something that could be represented as a victory at any cost.
THE BAMBOO GUN AT PORT ARTHUR.
THE BAMBOO GUN AT PORT ARTHUR.
THE BAMBOO GUN AT PORT ARTHUR.
Raids in Manchuria
Since the last great battle in October—the battle of the Sha-ho, when Kuropatkin's ill-advised offensive had been converted into a perilous retreat that almost degenerated into disaster—the two opposing armies had been practically quiescent. Before they had either recovered from the exhaustion of their last tremendous struggle—before their awful losses could be repaired and their depleted stores and supplies could be replenished—the inexorable grasp of the Manchurian winter had fallen upon them and frozen them into immobility. While the last critical acts in the siege of Port Arthur were being enacted, the troops of Oyama and Kuropatkin were occupied only in maintaining a jealous vigilance on each other, and in digging themselves into their winter quarters. In a climate that is almost Arctic in its severity, where the temperature is regularly for weeks and months together 30 and 40 degrees below freezing-point, active campaigning would be impossible, even if the deep snow under which the face of the country is buried did not make transport impossible. Each army proceeded to entrench itself securely and to construct huts or dig out shelters in the ground in which the troops could find it possible to sustain life. The sufferings of the devoted soldiers during these months of inaction must have been intense, and on both sides the roll of casualties from exposure and frost-bite was appalling. Week after week went by without any incident other than trifling affairs of outposts being recorded in the meagre dispatches given to the world by the authorities at Tokio and St. Petersburg. It has always been the Russian habit, however, to cloak failure in essentials by proclaiming success in trifles; and from General Kuropatkin came a steady trickle of trivial information about brushes between patrols and pickets, wherein the Japanese were always worsted, with the loss of a horse and rifle, or perhaps even of a cooking-stove. But on the very day that the negotiations for the surrender of Port Arthur were opened, a serious interruption to the long inactivity on the Sha-ho occurred. The Russians attempted for the first time a raid on the Japanese line of communications. It was an attempt that an enterprising enemy would have made long before; for it is to be remembered that every mile of the Japanese advance from the sea rendered them increasingly dependent on the railway which they had taken from the Russians. Their army on the Sha-ho was, roughly speaking, more than one hundred miles from the nearest sea-base, Niuchwang; and any interruption to that vulnerable line of communications must inflict much inconvenience at least on Marshal Oyama. The Russians, of course, were exposed to the same risk, and the long line between Mukden and Harbin had, in fact, frequently been cut by the Chunchuses—roving bands of fierce native horsemen, whose hatred for the Muscovite invader had proved a valuable auxiliary to the Japanese. Their activity, in many cases organized and directed by Japanese officers, compelled Kuropatkin to guard jealously every mile of the railway in his rear, and especially every bridge and culvert, and this necessity of maintaining large forces on the lines of communication seriously detracted from the effective strength of his armies in the field. The Russians' idea of giving their enemy tit-tat was at first merely tentative, however. A couple of officers, practically unattended, managed to make their way southward almost as far as Hai-cheng, which is itself some forty or fifty miles south of Liao-yang. There they succeeded in blowing up a culvert and tearing up some yards of railway line—damage which, though not serious in itself, was enough to encourage similar attempts on a larger scale. Kuropatkin knew that the bulk of the army which had been engaged in the siege of Port Arthur was about to be entrained northward, and that with these reinforcements for Oyama were to go the great siege trains which had been employed in battering the ships and fortifications of the captured fortress into submission. To cut off these reinforcements, perhaps to capture train-loads of men and destroy some of the enemy's most formidable artillery, would evidently be a great counter-stroke to the effect produced by the fall of Port Arthur; and so a great Cossack raid was authorized on the Japanese lines of communication. The scheme was admirably conceived and organized, and it achieved at least the first and most important condition of success—namely, a complete surprise. At the outbreak of the war it was predicted in many quarters that what must certainly turn the scale in favor of the Russian arms was Russia's overwhelming superiority in cavalry. The experience of the Boer War had left fresh in every mind the incalculable value of mobility. Now Russia, in her hordes of Cossack horse, possessed a cavalry which had the reputation of being unique in the world. "Other countries have infantry, artillery and cavalry; but Russia is alone in possessing Cossacks," said one distinguished general shortly after the outbreak of hostilities. But as the campaign progressed, critics began to revise their judgments. The terrible Cossack horsemen, for some reason or other, failed to play any considerable part in events. They attempted a raid in Korea from the northeast, but without any result, and in the subsequent fighting they found no opportunity for asserting themselves. The campaign was an infantry and artillery campaign entirely; and the notorious weakness of the Japanese army in cavalry was no impediment to their victorious advance. The war in Manchuria proved in fact that the conditions of the war in South Africa had been peculiar and exceptional. But at last the Cossacks were to be given an opportunity of showing their mettle. On January 8th a force of 6,000 Cossacks under General Mistchenko crossed the Hun-ho and began to march rapidly southwards. This formidable force, composed of three brigades, was accompanied by six batteries of light artillery, and in its organization everything had been done to give to it themaximumof mobility. The Hun-ho, which Mistchenko's division crossed immediately after setting out, is a tributary of the Liao River, into which it flows some forty or fifty miles above Niuchwang. While the course of the Liao is roughly due north, that of the Hun is northeast, or almost directly in the line from Mukden to Niuchwang. The severity of the weather had moderated and was most favorable for the movement of such a great body of mounted men, who swept down the vast Liao plain on a front extending for five miles. By the second night Mistchenko's three brigades had reached the confluence of the Liao and the Hun, and there they made the first contact with the enemy. A Japanese convoy was captured, but the escort succeeded in making its escape, and from that moment it was impossible to conceal knowledge of the movement from the enemy. With their characteristic thoroughness—which throughout this war has left nothing unforeseen and nothing unprovided for—the Japanese had organized a plan for giving instant warning of a raid on the line to the troops guarding all the depots and the lines of communication, in case of any surprise attack such as that devised by Mistchenko. Great beacon fires had been laid at intervals up and down the country, and the kindling of one of these—the signal of approaching danger—was sufficient to set the whole plain from Niuchwang to Liao-yang ablaze with warning flame. No sooner had the Cossacks made their first capture than a house in the village which they had entered suddenly began to emit heavy columns of black smoke, followed by leaping tongues of fire; and so well had the house been filled with combustibles, that every effort to extinguish the fire was vain. Nor had the portent been unobserved. As soon as darkness closed on the scene, the horizon north, south and east was illuminated with the answerable flash of innumerable beacons that passed on from one to another the tidings of the enemy's approach. All hope of surprise being now at an end, the only resource left was to strike swiftly before troops could be hurried down from the front to the threatened points on the railway. Mistchenko's division separated into three bodies—one moving due south towards Niuchwang, another making due east for the railway above Haicheng, and the third striking southeast towards Tashichao, where the branch-line from Niuchwang meets the main line running north and south. The third body almost immediately encountered a force of Chunchuses, 500 strong, armed with Mausers and led by Japanese officers. This force, though overwhelmingly outnumbered, fought with desperate bravery until they were cut to pieces. At another village, held by 500 Japanese infantry, the raiders again encountered a stubborn resistance which they could not overcome; but they swept on southwards, and reached Old Niuchwang at noon on January 11th. Here some 50 Japanese soldiers, the only garrison, shut themselves in a house, and, refusing to surrender, held their own. But they could not prevent the enemy from wreaking destruction on the stores which had been accumulated in the town; and many large transports were burnt. Yinkow, or the port of Niuchwang, had for many months been the principal base of supplies for Oyama's army, as being the seaport nearest to the front, and to work havoc at this vital depot was the principal purpose of Mistchenko's raid. On January 12th the Cossacks approached Yinkow Station, where army stores of enormous value had been accumulated, and opened fire with their six batteries. But the promptitude of the Japanese commanders foiled the attack at this critical point. In spite of the cutting of the line north and south of Hai-cheng, reinforcements had been got through, and the attack on Yinkow Station was resisted by 1,000 riflemen, well entrenched. Against their accurate and well-sustained fire Mistchenko's Cossacks, in spite of artillery support, could make no headway; and as the casualty list mounted up, the Russian general was obliged to draw off, lest the mobility of his retreat should be encumbered by too many wounded. Some damage was done to the station buildings, but it was trivial compared with that which the raiders had set out to effect; and from that moment the only concern of Mistchenko was how to make good his escape from the forces that were rapidly concentrating upon his line of retreat. He had failed not only to destroy the stores of the enemy, but even to inflict any serious damage on the railway line. The boast of his detachments detailed for the latter purpose that they had torn up 600 yards of line north of Hai-cheng, and had blown up the bridge at Tashichao, were obvious exaggerations; or it would not have been possible for the Japanese to move down the reinforcements that secured the repulse of the attack on Yinkow Station. With the whole country roused against him, Mistchenko, encumbered as he was with many wounded, might have found it difficult to break back over the 80 or 100 miles to be traversed before he could count himself in safety. His horses and men were both more or less exhausted with the five days' continuous marching and fighting; but an easy and convenient resource was open to him by simply invading and passing through neutral Chinese territory. On the outbreak of the war, the belligerents, at the instigation of the Powers, led by the United States, had agreed to respect absolutely the neutrality of China, and to confine military operations to the left or eastern side of the great Liao River. But necessity knows no law, and Mistchenko, finding that his road northward from Niuchwang was blocked by a strong force detached by Oku for the purpose of intercepting his retreat, promptly wheeled westward and crossed the Liao River some miles below its junction with the Hun-ho. Thenceforth his progress was easy. It was as if a football player were to run down the field behind the touch-lines in order to reach the goal. The flagrancy of the stratagem would have called for less remark if Russia had not chosen this precise moment to address representations to the Powers complaining of acts done by the Japanese in violation of China's neutrality. As it was, the casualties suffered were heavy—at least 500 all told—and though it was ostentatiously announced from St. Petersburg that such raids would in future be of frequent occurrence, this descent upon Niuchwang remained a solitary as well as a barren enterprise.
The Battle of Sandepu
But again the inactivity of the armies was to be broken before the month of January had come to an end. The second Manchurian army, the command of which had been committed to General Gripenberg, had now been brought up to strength, and almost immediately proceeded to put itself in evidence. On the 25th General Kuropatkin telegraphed to the Czar announcing briefly two facts—that the offensive had been begun against the enemy on the right (or western) flank; and that the thermometer registered 16 degrees of frost. The full significance of this message only appeared a few days later, when it was revealed that an attempt in force was being made to turn the Japanese left. The main objective of the Russian attack was the village of Sandepu, the main northwest position of the Japanese left army. It will be remembered that after the battle of Yentai or the Sha-ho, which took place in October, the Japanese were left holding a front of fifty miles or more along the south bank of the Sha-ho, a tributary to the Hun-ho, running roughly due east and west at a distance of ten or fifteen miles south of Mukden. The Russian position faced the Japanese on the other bank of the Sha-ho, and then inclined away northwest in the direction of Hsinmintun, a Chinese town on the west bank of the Liao River, from which the Russian army had for a long time been drawing large supplies, in contempt of the neutrality of China. Sandepu is over thirty miles south of Mukden, and lies in the angle made by the Hun River with the railway. It consists of some hundred houses, or farmsteads, each surrounded by high walls of sun-dried bricks, about three feet thick. Loop-holed for musketry, these walls, form an admirable defence, especially as the surrounding country is quite open and flat. But at this season of the year, the Hun-ho, which is a natural defence to the flank of an army resting on Sandepu, is frozen over to a thickness of several feet, and can be safely crossed both by men and transport. The Russians, 85,000 strong, and with no less than 350 guns, moved southwards down the right bank of the Hun-ho until they reached a point a few miles southwest of Sandepu, and there they crossed the frozen river and occupied two villages in which the Japanese had stationed outposts. On the 26th the Russians, who had at the same time crossed the Hun at Chang-tau, again advanced, encountering a steadily increasing resistance and seized after a fierce fight the village of Sha-ho-pu, a few miles northeast of Sandepu, and from that moment the action became general. The capture of Sandepu was essential to any attempt to roll up the Japanese left, and to this object the Russian forces now set themselves with fierce determination. On January 27th, after giving an account of much promiscuous fighting, General Kuropatkin announced to the Czar that "in the evening, after a desperate fight, our troops having, with the help of the sappers, surmounted all artificial obstacles entered the village of Sandepu, which is large and strongly entrenched." Unfortunately, however, for the triumph of the Russian arms, this announcement proved to be premature—or rather to be an incomplete version of the actual fact. The Russian troops entered Sandepu only to be driven back after a desperate struggle; and the indomitable Japanese infantrymen who manned the loop-holed walls of the hamlet were never dislodged from their position. This successful stand was the turning point of the battle. It checked the flank movement of the Russians and gave Oku time to bring up his reinforcements and deliver his counter-stroke. The Russian attack had been from the west and northwest, the object being to envelop the Japanese extreme left. The movement was met by an extension of the Japanese left, which in turn threatened to outflank the outflankers. On the southwest of Sandepu the Russians were driven back along the line of the Hun-ho, and soon the battle centred about the village of Heikautai, a few miles southwest of Sandepu. That this was no mere affair of outposts may be gathered from the fact that the Russian force was made up of two divisions of the Eighth Army Corps, two brigades of Russo-European Rifles, one division of the Tenth Army Corps, part of a division of reserve infantry, and part of the First Siberian Army Corps, and a large force of Cossacks under Mistchenko. On the 27th and 28th, the fighting became desperately fierce and after the Japanese had succeeded in carrying Heikautai and the surrounding positions, they were exposed to repeated night attacks before the Russians at last made up their minds to accept defeat. From Russian sources came the usually inconsistent story—a story in which a long series of unbroken successes culminated inexplicably in an admission of failure and retreat. It now appeared that far from capturing Sandepu, the Russian column that attacked that place lost twenty-four officers and 1,600 men killed and wounded by coming unexpecedly upon "a triple row of artificial obstacles" on the ground swept by artillery and machine-gun fire which the Russian gunners could not subdue. This intelligence came as a severe disappointment to the friends of Russia, who had begun to believe that the tide of war had at last begun to turn, and that Russian arms were about to secure their first victory. Eager strategists in St. Petersburg pointed out that Sandepu was only twenty or thirty miles from Liao-yang, and that its retention would be such a serious menace to the Japanese line of retreat that the evacuation of the whole position on the Sha-ho would be a necessity. Alas! while these fascinating speculations were being indulged in, the Russian Army of the right was already in full retreat, and was indeed suffering appalling losses in the effort to extricate itself from the toils of the enemy. The fighting round Heikautai lasted five days, and the issue almost to the last hung in doubt. The capture of Heikautai had become necessary to the security of the Japanese position, but repeated attacks on it had been repulsed. The spirit in which the emergency was met is revealed in the laconic words of Marshal Oyama's dispatch. "Our object had not been attained, so I encouraged all the columns to make night attacks. All the columns of the attacking parties expected annihilation. We attempted several attack movements, but suffered heavily from the enemy's artillery, and especially from the machine-guns, but all the columns continued the attack with all their might. The enemy was unable to withstand our vigorous attack, and began to retreat at half past five in the morning. Our forces charging into Heikautai, occupied the place firmly and entirely by half past nine in the morning." The net result of the battle was to give the Japanese secure possession of a line east and west of Hun-ho and south of Mukden, and to inflict on the Russians casualties which certainly exceeded 10,000, and probably reached 15,000. In war especially "the attempt and not the deed" confounds. It is not the first step but the last that costs—not the attack, but the retreat after repulse. No sooner had the failure of this big attempt on the Japanese left been fully confirmed than it became known that the movement had been directed by General Gripenberg, the commander of the Second Manchurian Army. When, after the battle of Liao-yang, the Czar sanctioned the formation of this Second Army and committed the command of it to General Gripenberg, there was a great flourish of journalistic trumpets in the Russian and French press. At last Kuropatkin would have not only an "Army worthy of the might and dignity of Russia," but would have a lieutenant worthy of himself to share the tremendous strain of directing nearly half a million of men. The two Generals exchanged cordial messages, and then Gripenberg set out for Harbin to superintend the gradual organization of his Second Army. By the end of the year its units had been completed, and then the impatience of General Gripenberg to assert himself appears to have become uncontrollable. He conceived the movement against the Japanese left—a movement that might easily have achieved substantial results if the Japanese had not been so well prepared for it—and his direct responsibility for it was made patent to the world by the angry and undignified recriminations between him and Kuropatkin that followed the repulse. General Gripenberg immediately asked to be relieved of his command, ostensibly on the ground of ill health, but really as he allowed to be perfectly manifest, in dudgeon at the treatment which he alleged had been meted out to him by his superior officer. He claimed that his flanking movement had in fact succeeded, and that he only needed reinforcements to maintain the position he had won. He complained loudly that he applied very urgently for these reinforcements, but that they were withheld, and that he was not even supported in his retreat by a diversion in other parts of the field. A great victory had been within his grasp, General Gripenberg represented, and it had been snatched from him simply by the perverse inactivity of General Kuropatkin. So strained were the relations at headquarters that General Gripenberg's request to be relieved of his command was immediately complied with, and the General set off post-haste back to St. Petersburg to lay his complaints personally before the Czar. The quarrel was conducted practically in public by the advocates of the two rivals; and General Kuropatkin's friends were not slow to put forward his side of the case. According to this account, General Gripenberg's costly defeat was caused directly by his deliberate disobedience to instructions. He had been permitted to embark on his movement against the Japanese left on the strict understanding that it was to be only in the nature of a reconnaissance in force, and that a general action was not to be forced. While nominally accepting these limitations, General Gripenberg had in his heart rebelled against them, and had not hesitated to commit his army to a pitched battle beyond the reach of support, and in conditions of weather which made the movement of troops most undesirable. Finally it was contended that General Kuropatkin had done all he could to relieve the pressure on General Gripenberg by bombarding the Japanese right and centre, and threatening an advance in those directions. The wrangle could not but be ignominious, but at least more dignity pertained to the disputant who remained at his post and strove to repair the blunder that had been committed than to the disputant that threw down his responsibilities and went home in a pet. This view of the case seems to have prevailed with the Czar himself, whose reception of General Gripenberg was not cordial. According to the reports that came from well-informed French sources, the Czar took General Kuropatkin's part very decidedly, and administered to General Gripenberg a severe rebuke for his insubordination. Whatever the character of the frequent audiences which the disappointed General had of his Sovereign, the fact remained that Kuropatkin was maintained in the supreme command of the armies in Manchuria, and that while General Gripenberg lingered in St. Petersburg, if not in disgrace, at least in inactivity, General Kaulbars was definitely appointed to the command of the Second Manchurian Army.
ON THE SLOPES OF OJIKEISHAN, BEFORE PORT ARTHUR.
ON THE SLOPES OF OJIKEISHAN, BEFORE PORT ARTHUR.
ON THE SLOPES OF OJIKEISHAN, BEFORE PORT ARTHUR.
Kuropatkin Asks for Reinforcements
If this five days' desperate fighting scarcely affected the position of the two armies, it inflicted on the Russian armies the discouragement of another defeat at the hands of a numerically inferior force, and the moral effect of adding to this unbroken series of reverses is not easily computed. With troops less dogged and devoted than those of the Czar, demoralization would have set in long before. The anxieties of Kuropatkin were now aggravated, too, by circumstances which no generalship on his part could alleviate and remove. All through the autumn reinforcements had been pouring along the Trans-Siberian Railway, the carrying capacity of which had been stretched so wonderfully by Prince Khilkoff. But even the resources of engineering genius have their limits. They cannot contrive a pint pot in such a way that it will hold a quart; and the number of trains that can be run over a single line is fixed inexorably by circumstance. Kuropatkin's urgent and incessant demands for more and more reinforcements had been met in large measure, but only at the expense of the other traffic, including the carriage of military stores. The enormous supplies required to provision and maintain at war efficiency armies numbering half a million of men may be imagined, and for these supplies Kuropatkin had become increasingly dependent on the railway. The more reinforcements he received the more mouths he had to feed; and the longer the campaign endured the less reliance was to be placed on what a devastated and exhausted countryside could provide. During the earlier months of the war, some relief to the strain on the railway could be found by drawing supplies from Vladivostock, which in turn could be fed from over-seas; but no sooner had the destruction of the Port Arthur fleet been completed, than the inexorable Japanese established a strict blockade of Vladivostock, and cut off this last resource. While the wretched troops amid all the rigors of the Manchurian winter were in need of such ordinary necessities as proper clothing, fuel, and even food, vast accumulations of stores, more than sufficient to supply all their needs, were lying rotting on the sidings of the Siberian Railway, immovable because of the congestion of traffic on the already overburdened line. To add to the anxiety of the situation came the grave dislocation caused by the riots and strikes which broke out in all the great industrial and distributive centres of Russia after the fall of Port Arthur, and which revealed an internal crisis even more menacing than the military crisis which confronted the army in Manchuria. For weeks together, just at the moment that prompt and vigorous action was demanded, the whole administrative system of Russia was paralyzed, and the energies of its directors were absorbed in staving off domestic revolution instead of in organizing the measures for conducting a foreign war. On the other hand, the Japanese generals had not only the strategic advantage of being within easy distance of several sea-bases, but they also were able to rely on a system of supply which is perhaps the most perfect that has ever been seen in war. The minute prevision with which the necessities of a campaign on such an enormous scale had been provided for is well exemplified by the organization of the Army Medical Service. In spite of all the hardships and exhaustion to which General Oku's army had been exposed, for instance, the Chief Surgeon was able to report that from the date of its landing on the Liao-tung Peninsula on May 6th to the end of January there had only occurred 40 deaths in its ranks from disease. The cases of typhoid numbered but 193, and the cases of dysentery no more than 342. The marvelous character of this record may be realized by remembering how appalling were the ravages of disease during the South African campaign. Typhoid and dysentery in that war carried off infinitely more victims than shell or bullet; and if sometimes in their assaults on fortified positions the Japanese have seemed shockingly reckless of human life, it is to be remembered that in another and not less important direction they have shown themselves infinitely more careful of it. Such were the conditions as the long winter months drew to their close, and as silently the Japanese armies girded themselves for the great stroke which was in a few weeks' time to eclipse both in magnitude and consequence everything that had hitherto marked the progress of this epoch-making campaign.
The North Sea Inquiry
Meanwhile the unhappy Baltic Fleet protracted its embarrassing sojourn in Madagascar waters. Having got so far on the road to its appointed revenge, discretion overcame heroic resolution on the part of its Admiral. The nearer Rozhdestvensky came to his task of wresting the command of the sea from Admiral Togo, the less he appeared to like it; and finally the Armada which had begun its voyage with such a sensational progress through the North Sea, decided to continue to avail itself of French hospitality until it should have received the reinforcements of the third Baltic Squadron. While the Russian fleet was thus ingloriously hung up at Diego Suarez, the International Commission appointed to inquire into the circumstances of its exploits in the North Sea met at Paris, and having heard exhaustively the evidence in support of the British and Russian cases, at length issued its report. In spite of the preliminary rumors that the conduct of the Russian Admiral had been vindicated, the event proved that the justice of the British case had been as completely sustained as it could be by any judgment which was more diplomatic than judicial in character. The Admirals of the Commission, with the exception of their Russian colleague, found that there were no hostile torpedo boats present on the Dogger Bank; that the British trawlers did nothing to provoke attack; and that the firing to which they were subjected was unjustifiable. To coat this rather unpleasant pill, the Commissioners amiably added, in contradiction of the direct implication of their own findings, that their report threw no discredit either on the military quality or the humane sentiments of Admiral Rozhdestvensky.