The Military Situation in Manchuria.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume xxii, Issue 6456, 28 December 1904, Page 4

The Military Situation in Manchuria.

(By the Military Correspondent of Ihß London " Daily Telegraph.")

Tho estimates that we have lately received from St Petersburg of th» present strength of General Kuropatkip's array tire quite inconsistent with tho uussagea from Mukden, which epeak of such reinforc<— ruents as have been received as making up, or tending to make up, tho heavy losses of tha great battle. An one analyses tho figure* it seem-* clear that th> y have been based solely en tho simple principle of reckoning every rogitnmib and other unit that is nominal'y with the Munchurian army ai its full paper strength on the hetidquartm rolls. Now, we know positively that many regiments have been reduced to a tenth ot their original totals, and that in soma of thoin ihe Hsb of dead and wounded ha-* been eveu heavier than this implies. It ia moderate assumption that, u& a con-.eq-nence of such exposure and of such sanitary neglect as have attended the campaign the sick have beon five times as numerous as the wounded. During tha Franco-Ger-man war, for instance, where the conditions were far less conducive to illness, and where the organisation of the German army was incomparably superior to that o tha Russian in this campaign, the p opor tion of sick to woundod was even higher than five to ono. One must have g'-ne cireullyinto many similar discrepancies in order to appreciate the deductions othe thun the mere lists of siok and wounded vhich subtraot from tho actual fLhting rosl of an army, before one can fully realise how little such paper statements as thosß o( tho St. Petersburg staff can be trusted., even under the mo3t favourable circumstances.

The eircuvnstancps in Manchuria are not favourable at all. First and most import ant consideration of all in this matter-, ii must be remembered that the real fighting numbers <>f an army or regiment depend enormously on what is known, almost technically, as its " interior economy." Tha phrase requires a little explanation, in order that its potent effects for good or evil may be understood. Observe, then, that this vast aggregate of human beiugr is HviDg a purely artificial life. None of the peasants who form the bulk of it have had any sort of experience or acquired any habits outside the army which adapt them to the necessities of the new existence. Everything mu&t be regulated for them in order that they may not simply perish by their own incapacity to provide for themselves, and by the injury which the importation of the free-and-easy customs of their normal mode of being would inflict upon the mass taken as Ja whole. Now an adequate code, dealing, tor tho best advantage of the whole, with every detail of each day for each man, is not easily either established or maintained. It depends absolutely for its practical working on the trained zeal, the quickness of eye, and the instincts fir sound discipline of the corps of officers. No one who ever glanced over Wellington'detail orders in the Peninsula can havn failed to notice the variety of neglectagainst which he had to guard during th ■ years when he was creating our Army. But everytime that some little light is let in upon this subject, as it affects the efficiency of the Russian forces in Manchuria, we become aware, among the great body of an indifferance to the well-being otheir men such as cannot be shaken off when this mighty host is collected togotber in the immediate preaence of an enemy.

The Russian officer, taken on the average is, perhaps, for his own class in social lite, one of the moat attractive personalities' that exista. His bonhomie, his convivial habits, his entire freedom fr^m anything that interferes with hi* being a good comrado for one whom he recognises as an ftqual, and wishea to conciliate, all those i»nd many othur genial qualities almost invariably win the regard of anyone who is thrown with him. Only for the greater number, for the consensus that constitute^ the public opinion of a profession, thore is a complete lack of nny sense of obligation. To put it bluntly, there are quite a sufficient number who are each like Esterhazy. offaniß during the Dreyfus case, "restrainpd by nothing." The misfonuna is !hat there is no 'adequate regimental p-.iblic opinion sufficiently healthy to supply for such nifia, who more or leas exist in svety army, the restraint they do not imno?e en themselvus. Towards the private? 'hey are kindly enough, and some of the same rha'-acteristics which make them nopul«r in j?nnf»ral society tend to their being liked by the men. The fatal defect is that where dull rou'ine bores them, where co^'ant vigilance becomfls wearisome, where the carrying on of duty interferes wth their ease and comfort, tiipv h«vfl no scruple in noclecting it. Obviously, it is mv' lvod in that that" interior economy " goe^ to pieces. >