RUSSC -JAPANESE WAR.

Otago Witness, Issue 2652, 11 January 1905, Page 18

RUSSC -JAPANESE WAR.

JTCE FALL OF PORT ARTHUR. A' PROLONGED SIEGE. The fall of Port Arthur will probably alter the- whole complexion of the war, both pn land and sea. The Russian fortifications frill no doubt be repaired, and, if necessary, the harbour will be used as a base by the "Japanese fleet. Probably some 40,000- to 60,000 men, with numerous 6iege guns, iwill be set free to attack Vladivostoek, and nearly the. whole of the Japanese warshipsjvill be available to meet the Baltic Fleet, if the latter proceeds to the Far East. On February 8, and almost simultaneously with th© outbreak of war, came the announcement that _the Fleet m j Port Arthur Harbour had been attacked by ■ Ifche Japanese with the- most formidable results. More than Jialf of the best ships of fche Russian navy had been put. out of action .mt one- fell swoop. - On February 25, the Japanese made their first t atfcempt~ to block the harbour by means of merchant vessels «unk- in the roadstead. The -attempt was cnly -.partially successful. TJb« Russianspractically evacuated Dalny on February K7, and on. 'March T'the 1 Japanese heavily, (bombarded Port Arthur and right on j jthrough that month the Japanese war ships kept the garrison employed. On March. 22' under a terrible fire the Japanese steered eeyen merchant ships into t-ne mouth of the j (harbour, but were unable to effect their i owing to the work- of the Russian j {guns. An attempt to surprise Port Arthur on April' lo was discovered by the Russians and-^rustrated. On- the following day AdSniralJtfakaroff reported that the fleet was mble to get out of the harbour "at will, and had cruised far out to 'sea. As an Ironical sequel there occurred next day one of the most sensational incidents of the I /war — the blowing up of the Russian battle- ! ship Petropavlovsk, together with Admiral j Makaroff himself and £" crew 'of 900 men. j tuTwo Russian cruisers, the' Bayan and the «A.skold, were also damaged, and a Russian 'destroyer was sunk: It was not until May 2 I that Port Arthur was- sealed, and on May 6 the Japanese effected a landing on the ojiao-tung On May 15 the ! Japanese met with disaster by the blowing j lip of the magnificent battleship, the Eatjßuse, with a loss~ef 600 lives, and the rambling and sinking in a fog of the cruiser ] Kasuga by the Japanese protected cruiser | SToshino, involving a further loss of 270 Jives. The historio batfle of Kin-ehau was Fougfit on May 23, and once and for all peoured the position of th© Japanese in their attack on Port Arthur. On May 26 Jhe Japanese inaugurated serious land operations- initial to -the land investment of Port JArtEur by eight successive attacks on the Ituss'ian positions si Kifi-oLau. £*£? I>*lcy. \A± least they succeeded in repulsing ins enemy, though with enormous loss, estimated at the lowest at 4200 men. Four pays later the Japanese occupied Dalny, giving them a new base for the final operations igainst Port Arthur. ,A detailed account of the bombardments, Stacks, and counter-attacks gathered from jhe oahlfi news would be tedious. On Juno

23 the Russian squadron made a sortie, and was by the Japanese, with the loss 'of a battleship and a cruiser and damage to another cruiser. The exact circumstances of this Russian disaster have never been fully cleared. The first great capture of heights overlooking Port Arthur was made on June 25, when three forts were captured after a severe artillery duel.* The , Russian lines -.were virtually turned, the casualties on their side numbering some 1500. Two further positions were captured on June 30, when an effective bombardment was maintained from land and sea. On, July ♦ it was announced that the Japanese now held the key to the position, and on the following day it was stated that they had landed 100 Bin guns for the siege of the town. The key to the position may have been correct, but the Japanese had to fight many a battle before they finally gained positions which made a- Russian defence impossible. The siege ,of Port. Arthur has lasted 328 ; days. » The longest siege- in the nineteenth j century, as was pointed out in a paragraph we recently published^ - occurred^ in the American- Civil War, when the Confederates defended the town of > Richmond " for 148S days, ' or just over four years. " Sevastopol, in the Crimean' war, held out for 11 months, ' while General Gordon - defended Khartoum against the Soudanese for 300 days. Fifteen thousand" men held- the fortress of ■J£ara during the Crimean war for 163 days against a force^ of 50,000, and then only surrendered through hunger. In the Franco-German war Paris was besieged for' 131 days, Belfort for 105 days, and Metz for j7O days. The sieges of Ladysmith, Kimi berley, and Mafeking, in the South African ' war, lasted 120, 123, and 261 days respectively. THE HISTORY OF PORT ARTHUR. Little more than a generation ago Port Arthur, from a strategical point of view, was no more than a possibility. Nature had done much, the engineer nothing. It was S Li Hung Chang who first recognised its importance to China, and made it one of the world's great fortresses. Huge sums of money were epsnt on these objects. The fortifications were designed and carried out by a German artillery officer, and to such purpose, and when in 1884- a rupture occurred between France and China over j Tonking, and the French Government suggested to Admiral Courbet the advisability of taking Port Arthur, he declined k> incur the risk unless he was provided with a more powerful squadron and had at his command an army of at least 20,000 men. In a very early stage of the development of Japan, .the astute Li. Hung 1 Chang saw .in its increasing power and ambition a se-rious menace to China, and he continued to strengthen the naval base at the point of the Liao-tung Peninsula, in anticipation of the attack- which he believed would surely come-. And yet, as the late- British Consul ■ -at K&gas&M jiointe-d out :-r: -r ike- yinoi-esnth Oenttiry, though the fortress w*s so much more formidable than when. 16 3-ears before, the French Admiral preferred to let it alone, " it fell before the Japanese in 1894- within •31 days from the time they first landed on the peninsula, 95 miles to the north, and was taken by storm, without even a preliminary bombardment, in one morning." At the conclusion of the war there fell to

Japan by the treaty of peace the Liao-tung Peninsula, including Port Arthur, and thecoastline of Manchuria as far as the boundary of Korea, and extending some 30 miles inland on the north bank of the Yalu. The ' terms of the treaty were known to all the Powers a fortnight before the ratification. ' But no sooner was this accomplished than i Russia, France, and Germany conspired to rob Japan of every territorial concession, j in the interests of the lasting peace "of j . the East." At the time Japan was powerless to resist, and she had to swallow the ! wrong and humiliation. She merely asked j for a guarantee that the retroceded tevri- J tory should not be allowed to fall into the ' hands of any other foreign Powers. Even this was refused. Japan instantly measured the situation, and from that moment she flung herself, in a white heat of national ardour, into the most elaborate and complete preparations for a struggle to the death. Meanwhile, all went well between j ; Russia and Li Humg Chang, who at that | j time was tho predominant influence in j China. A loan, of 15 millions sterling from St. Petersburg enabled China to meet the j ;first; instalment of the war indemnity. ; Moreover,- Russia had saved China from the humiliation of ceding territory to 1 Japan. So the way was smoothed for Prussian designs, and five months after the conclusion of the peace The Times an- j nounced the conclusion of a private j treaty between China and Russia, which conceded the right of anchorage to the Russian fleet at Port Arthur, and of a Russian railway to Port Arthur and Vla-di- . vostoek. The next two years saw the Russians virtually -established in Manchuria. In 1898 two British cruisers ventured into Port Arthur, but their withdrawal was demanded by the Russian Ambassador in London, and the Foreign Office meekly acquiesced. So Russia was tacitly installed in possession of Port Arthur. Within a short time she had made secure her footing in Manchuria, and was venturing an excursion into Northern Korea., under the " timbercutting concession" pretext, when Japan coi eluded that things bad gone far enough. "If Port Arthur again falls into the hands of the Japanese," said a recent authority, " it may be taken for granted that it will require some stronger force than diplomatic representations to dislodge them." CAMPAIGNING WITH THE RUSSIANS. Mr Douglas Story has got in first with his book on the war in the Far East. No other war correspondent with the Russian armies has yet put out a record of the momentous events of the past 10 months. Mr Story is enthusiastically pro-Russian. In his pages the Japanese are me-rcly highlyeducated barbarians, while the Russian officeT is a courteous hero and the Russian private a lion-hearted, simple-minded fellow, who asks for nothing better than to die for the Czar. The record is light and sketchy. When the author at !»&<■ gets to Manchuria his narrative becomes direct, and as ho has ' a tersely effective style he conveys a very fair picturo_of some aspects of the war from the onlooker's point of \iew. In a book of this kind wo do not expect to get more than glimps-es of the fringe of war. When Oku, Nodzu, and Kuroki wer© tightening j their grip on Kourapatkin's army the opera- j tioas covered a vast area, and the history j^

of those operations has yet to be written. But Mr Story gives us a few personal irn- . pressions which enable us to realise something of the conditions under which the operations w-ere- conducted. For instance, ' he describes the scene of the battle of Wa-fang-ho on June 15, as witnessed from the ! summit of the highest mountain of the I Tsien-ehau. where he stood with a Russian heliograph party on the night before the battle, and v/atched the signal flashes that j tcld of the preparations the coming fight. And he mentions that fronx hills on > which no Russian signal stations had been j •established a constant succession of signal • flares in an unknown code puzzled the Rus- j sian operators. These were Chinese signals • to tho Japanese forces in th& field, and Mr Story says that days later he learned that i dn that night began the combined move- ; ment northward and westward of the Japa- j neso from Wa-fang-ho to Tsau-matse. Those ' signals on the hilltops gave the explanation • of its wonderful Earmony of execution. The } author put forward this signalling by Chinese spies as one more proof of his view that " this 19 no war of Japanese upon Russian, but of the yellow man upon the white- man, of the East upon, the West." Mr Story's narrative cont-ains no hint of the j scenes of revelling and demoralisation with i which other correspondents have oredit-P'l ■ the Russian officers. On the contrary; he ' has nothing but prabe for their patriotism, j coolness, and bravery. The description of | the death of General K-eller, when lie was ] holding the pass of Yang-tse-ling against the enemy, is a case in point. General j Keller, a conspicuous figure all in white, ! with the Cross of St. George upon his j bi-fast moved out to examine the a-lv-uved positions, and to animate ihis troops by his presense in the exposed spots, despite the warnings of his officers and the ; concern of aides-de-camp. While he was directing the operation of changing a battery's position the- Japanese saw him, and burst a shrapnel over his head. Count ; Keller fell with " two fragments in his j head, three ugly pieoes of jagged iron in j his chest, and 32 shrapnel bullet wounds j in other parts of the body." And the loss of Count Keller was the loss of the battle of Yang-tse-ling. In dealing with the great t battle of Liao-yang, which culminated on < August 31, Mr Story shows succinctly how ] the battle was lost. Kuroki had endeavoured i to force Kourapatkin's left rear, and so to | obtain the mastery of the railway lino and I the way of retreat to Mukden, hoping thus . +r> in-ii-o f-h-n- bsttlf a veriiible Sedan, j General Orloff, who lay at Yen-tai with j itn.ie than an jrnir corps of men. bioke before tlie attack, and lest General Kourapatkin his entire tactical advantage. When his left gave way Kourapatkin had to withdraw troops to secure his line of retreat, j Then the armies' of Oku and Nodzu were j able to break down the defence, but General Grekov, by a stubborn and desperate rearguard action, And Gen?rr.l M^trl'pnl-o, by ! relieving the pcslrlrn tnul OrlofF had let. ' kept the line of retreat open, and saved ; Kourapatkin's army- A day or two after- I wards we know from other source* that. Orloff's trorips were paraded, and Orloff himself publicly disgraced and dismissed from the army. Mr St.orv acS&uscs the i Japane? troops of " barbarism " at Liao- ' yaiis- He says that "although hundreds }

of Russians* were trapped in the town and in the trenches, the Japanese took only 13 prisoners, of whom six were captured in the significant presence of foreign correspondents and military attaches." He -adds that " the same barbarism which enabled" the yellow men to carry the trenches after five days' fighting accounted for the looting of Liao-yang, the absence^ of quarter, and the brutal assault upon the kindly Scots missionary, Dr TVestwater." This author points out very truly that Liao-yang was a barren victory for the Japanese. It wag said to have cost them 50,000 men, and yet a fortnight later Kourapatkin was at Mukden with a larger and bettor disciplined army than he ever had before. Mr Story quotes figures to show that th.c total Russian force in Mukden on September 15 amounted to 258,000 men. He goes on to give the substance of conversations w_ith» Alexeieff and other high official personages, all of whom refused to admit the possibility of Russian failure, or to listen to the suggestion that Russia- might accept intervention from any foreign Power or group of Powers.