PROGRESS OF THE WAR.

Evening Post, Volume LXVIII, Issue 82, 4 October 1904, Page 4

PROGRESS OF THE WAR.

The messages of to-day reporting the progress of the war are more contradictory than usual. Marshal Oyama has been careful to conceal his plan of action, and has certainly succeeded in hoodwinking tne correspondents, each hazarding a separate conjecture as to positions and plans of attack, and no two of them appear to be in agreement. As for the whereabouts of Kuroki, with the Japanese right wing, who for weeks has been credited with preparations north of the Hun for a turning movement to hamper or obstruct a Russian retreat to Thieling, we are told to-day that his vanguard is some fifteen miles south-east of Mukden, while "other columns are descending the western slopes of the Taling Range, on" the extreme right wing, menacing Mukden considerably to the eastward." Yet there is another despatch which states that there are several detachments of Japanese in the mountains eastward of Thieling. This reads as though these detachments are some forty miles northward and beyond touch of the extreme right wing commanded by Kuroki, an obvious absurdity. As for Kuropatkin, he was last heard of at Thieling, where we are now told that the next big engagement will take place — colour being given to this view by an order of the General that all the women and children should be immediately removed from the town. According to The Times correspondent, fresh returned from Kuroki's head-quarters to Tokio, the Russians have two divisions on the Hun River, four divisions at Mukden, and "the remainder of the army at Thieling. This should be good information, and seems to show that Kuropatkin lias about 130,000 men at Thieling already, practically the bulk of his main army; and as his extreme southern front is distant only thirty-five miles, and is reported to be well protected, it looks on these figures and dispositions that there must be more power behind the Japanese we%ge ere it can be driven home than is represented by th© right wing of Kuroki,' while Kuropatkin has apparently secured himself against a sue- j ceasful turning movement at any point between Mukden and Thieling. However, the one thing that seems certain is that the point and manner of attack by Oyama is at present a matter of complete uncer- • tainty to all the onlookers. The Russian naval guns mounted at Liaotishan, a hill 1498 feet high, situated about two miles from the extremity of the peninsula and some seven miles south-west of Port Arthur, and the forts along Pigeon Bay on the west, have been giving the Japanese a hot time in the forte held by them to the eastward. Reference to the Post plan of Port Arthur will chow the relative positions of these forts and their values. On the other side, it is said that the newly-mounted heavy guns of the besiegers now command almost the entire harbour. The defence now being made by the remnant of a garrison that must, one would think, be woni out with fatigue, is without parallel in modem history. The pity of it is that the military necessities of the situation will compel them to prolong the defence to the latest possible hour, when they might parch out now with all the honours of war.