General Stoessel.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume xxii, Issue 6457, 29 December 1904, Page 2

General Stoessel.

Port Arthur's Valiant Defender.

It is the bad luck of tho Russians (says the "Daily Chrouic'e") that during tho three great military crises which TRey-,—.-^ have had to face ducidg tho last half-cen-tury they hava had to rely on men of foreign name and foreign blood to pull them through with credit. It was Todleben, a man of German origin, who held the Southern Port Arthur, Sevastopol, against four nations for a year of unparalleled hoiror. It was the same German, Todleben, who ringed round Plevna with an irrefm jable circle of stone and steel, after oven tho human whirlwind, Skobeleff, had failed to break in; and it is a man of the same race, the " German " ( Stoeasel, who has held Port Arthur throughout the awful agony of all these ra;-nth3.

Yet Anatole Mikhailovitoh Stoessel though.tha bearer o£ a German name, has • probably assimilated as much of the Slav as it is possible for a German to do. His , family traditions are inseparably bound up with Russia and Russia's army. His grandfather, General Ivan Stoessel, fought against Napoleon and governed Tsarskoe Selo; his father, Mikhail Stoes3el, joined the Orthodox Church.and served in the liinperor's Uhlan Guards; and he himself, born fifty yearß ago, ssrved not without distinction in the Russo-Turkish War. Vet as late as 1900 Stoessel was known, only as commander of a Siberian Rifle Regiment; and his chance did not come until the Boxer rising, when he was the first commander to enter Tientsin, and rose to the rank of major-general for dash displayed in the attack on the Chinese capital.

Stoessel is essentially an engineer, " Stoessel is a bdd soldier," said his own commander, Kuropatkin. " Put him with equal forces against a Q-ourko or a Skobeleff, and you'll find him tricked out and cut to pieces in twenty-four hours. But stick him behind one of his own earthworks, where there's no question of manoeuvring, and aH the forces of eirth and hell'will not prevail against him." So whsn the war broke out, and the Tsar's counsellors tried to appoint the clever soldier Linevitch to command Port Arthur, Kuroparkin stood firm that Stoessel was the man, and gained his point. Since then Stoessel'a career ia a matter of history. It confirms what the be3t Russian authorities anticipated—that he was a stern fighter and a first-rate enginfler, bub an indiffarent general in the field. The comparative ease with which thu Japanese took Nanshan and the outlying forts at Port Arthur, the desperate resistance they met with when they came to face with the German general behind the essential defences of the town, prove that Kuropatkin was right, Stoessel lacks most oi the ordinary physical and mental attributes of the successful soldier. Podgy, undistinguished, with, sleepy eyes, and trim-bearded, somewhat commonplace face—he is the antithesis of the dashing and somewhat vain Muscovite warrior. In St. Petersburg it used to be said that " Stoessel rose rapidly through his solemn manners anl his dingy uniform/ and there was probably some truth in the sneer, for"Anatole Mikhailovitoh" had the style and manners of the Swiss militia soldier, and the vivacious and immaculate Russian staff could not help suspecting depth boneath the studious officer's undazzling exterior.

Those who dislike Stoesßel—and they are many—declare that he ha 3no feelings. Certainly he never shows any. Stolid, taciturn, and absolutely devoid of humour, Stoesael is a typical Teuton, totally out of touch with the somewhat hysterical sentimentality of his adopted nation. His discipline is ( as tough as his fortifications, and as sharp as his bayonets. " The man is remorseless," wrote a Russian officer, shortly after the Japanese landing at Pitsewo, who had seen a nineteen-year-old soldier shot and cast into a dishonoured grave- for a breach of duty in which there was more" stupidity than negleot. Carry out the sentence. It saves lives in the end," is Stoessel's grim retort to any. court-martial that sends in recommendations of mercy. And the drunkard, the sleeping sentry, the culprit in some trivial act of insubordination, is flogged, oj shot, or even hanged without mercy, bacause, with his Teutonic arithmetic and cold-blooded reasoning, Port Arthur's defender has worked it out that shooting one man for a breach of duty may some way indirectly " save the li?e3 " of a whole battalion in the day of battle.

That such a mau could be " pqpular " in fche usual sense of that misused word is not to b9 expected. Popularity among a popu? laca is woo by " panemet circansea," and not with the whip and the scaffold. Before the fighting Stoessel's officers dreaded his rigid justice, which spared nobody, and his men having no experience of his prowess as a fighter, and knowing only that by origin he belonged to the hated "Niemtsi" (Germans), regarded him without enthusiasm. Things have changed sin^e then. The few messages that have come thraugh from the beleaguered fortress speak almost gushingly of the adoration which the garrison feel for their commander. Both have come to know one another on the field of battle;and the Russians have realised once more that it ii an "alien" who has again kept their flag from dishonour in face -o£ the most tremendous tragedy in their history.