Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, FRIDAY, MARCH 10, 1905.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 10303, 10 March 1905, Page 2

Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, FRIDAY, MARCH 10, 1905.

THE JAPANESE VICTORY. ,

Though it. will probably be several days before authoritative fact* come to handi which will enable au accurate estimate to be formed as to the results of the ten days' battle at MHikcPen, there is already sufficient information before us to satisfy tho belitef that the Japanese have won a great and brilliant victory. The Russians have been, evicted' from their stronghold at Mukden, and are described as being xa full retreat m various directions, pursued! by the Japanese. It remains to be seen whether General Kuropatkin will succeed m extricating the major portion of his army from the encircling lines of Ills enemy m anything like order, or whether his great army of 300,000 men has gone to pieces, its ranks decimated and' its morale shattered. Present indications are tliat about one-sixth of the Russian force has been destroyed, but it is obvious that the full talc of casualties cannot be reckoned until the flying battalions have got beyond reach of their pursuers, and something like order is again restored! upon the blood-stained plains of Mukden. Nor is it possible yet to judge whether the Russian commander-in-chief has done wisely to order or countenance a precipitate ivtreat, rather tluiu to remain 1 m his, entrenched positions and subsequently, if need: be, to fight hiis way out. This much, however, is evidtent, that it must have been a brilliant strategic achievement to have brought the Japanese army into such positions enveloping the Russian garrison that thcj r were compelled to decamp. The Japanese, operating against a force equal, if not .superior, m numbers, li/ad to maintain a circular battle front of 80 andl 100 miles. Not alone the strategy and' activity of the generals has won the day, but the magnificent fighting qualities of the men. That they have had 1 again to face the severest ordeals is proved by the fact that the Japanese authorities admit an equal number of casuiilti.es to those of the Russians — namely, 50,000. One hundred, thousand killed and wounded m a single battle ! The mind cannot conceive the misery and' suffering entailed by such a saturnalia of slaughter. Our only hope is that tho cruel experience they have undergone will have so shaken the stamina of the Russian troops that the leaders of the army and the nation will see the necessity of immediately suing for peace, and 1 that the war may a s tlie result of the Battle of Mukden be speedily brought to an. end. It will not have been fought m vain if that is the> result, and 1 if as a further consequence the world is. so shocked by the butchery whiich has been perpetrated that nations may be constrain, ed to think more about peace. In this connection an interesting article was recently published m the Spectator, which expresses our feelings. The writer says : No war has ever produced! such a mixture of admiration and' horror. Tlie orators and' penmen alike can scarcely find M'ord-s to eulogise, sufficiently the courage both of Russians and Japanese, yet most of them end their paeans with a sort of prayer tliat m some way — usually an impossible way— these "horrors" shall be stopped. The thumbs of the spectators m the arena, all turn down. The feeling indicated m that fact is not confined 1 to any classes. Officers governed! by their military pride will not acknowledge it, but all Russia is shaken by the cry bidding the Emperor "stop the Avar," and 1 by the resistance of the reservists to an order which tlrey, with much jusdee, regard as " a sentence of death." The electors of France, surely among the bravest of the brave, are, it is stated', manifesting a new determination not to be drawn into so awful a struggle ; and though the feeling is less pronounced both m this country and) m Germany, it exists, audi is operative. Many will deny this angrily ; but- we would 1 just ask any impartial Englishman what the effect : on British opinion would be if telegrams were pouring ki daily reporting the loss, not of a- few hundred! men m an Indian frontier battle, but of entire brigades of our countrymen, swept away m circumstances which suggested that, as Russian soldiers- saidl m the last week of the siege of Port Arthur, "wounds were welcome as affording a refuge from the tension, but the dead 1 were happiest of all." The war, m fact, deny it if you. please, has alarmedl as well as startled not merely the fighting classes, but all who depend on them, and whose opinion, though they dk> not fight, still tells heavily. The writer goes 011 to speak of the deadliness of modlern armaments. A ship, built like a castle, is no longer slowly pounded into submission, after hours of combat, 'but is blown up or sunk suddenly with all 011 board, even, those wretched 1 stokers , who have no chance either of defending themselves or of inflicting vengeance. The rifles carry so far that m the Boer war assailing regiments seemed to be mown down by invisible hands. Men m front of a Maxim fall m swathes, till no troops can abide unshaken m face of tlie streaming death. Every day artillery ils improved, and the. new high explosives, till the defenders of Port Arthur — nwto of iron, nerves if ever such men existed 1 — confessed to their captors that it was the llin guns throwing shells which blew whole companies to pieces that extinguished the capacity of Port Arthur to resist. The accounts of the effect of the hand! grenades, loaded with high explosives and thrown at close quarters, sicken the most experienced! or callous generals. The fate of tlie wounded, often three to one of the killed, is attended with new horrors. It was always liard* enough if bones were shattered, but now the wounded) are so numerous, and) the artillery fire so continuous, that the arrangements which modern humanity, at once merciful andl wise, has inadb for their relief all break down- simultaneously. The ambulances are insufficient, the supply of doctors is insufficient, the medicines and medical comforts — one of them bedding — are insufficient. "Surgeons," said> a skilled l operator who luid been at. Sadowa to the writer, "we had surgeons, though not enough, but -with that multitude of the sliattered conservative surgery was simply impossible. We kept 011 cutting." Since Sadowa all the conditions, where large numbers are concerned, have steadily become worse. These new additions to the horrors of war have occurredl just when the masses of Europe have become conscious, when all- the working classes are demanding more humane treatment, and. when, throughout the West a- new thirst for physical comfort, for healthier life, and for security is becoming one of the most marked of the social forces. The Spectator will not admit that courage h diminishing, or that realisation, of its terrors will prevent war. The jealousies of the. nations, exasperated l as they are by the new and sordddl craving for more monej-, the appetite for glory, the just •pride of patriotism, are all too deeply rooted for -that. But it thinks there will be a new caution, m going to war, a new sense of its inevitable consequences, a. decline of the feeling that it is a stirring drama, will spread slowly but perceptibly among the more cultivated nations, and will, as it spreadls, affecfi their rulers. The latter do not want to quarrel with the masses. Ruling Russians talk glibly of sending another two hundred thousand men to Manchuria, and it is impossible, if their real motive is patriotism, not to respect . their persistence and their pride; bub if the conscripts displayed before/ reaching the barracks the feeling betrayed by the re : seryists who have lived- m barracks, even ruling Russians would hesitate. They would fear the hatred of the classes by whose toil they live, and who are saying already that the conscript gains nothing m war but -shattered' limbs, while the officer, even if defeated, returns home to comfort. In three great countries even now the Socialists protest against the conscription, and ask whether the alternative, the Swiss system of defence, has m any way enfeebled the character or iinpairedi the courage of the Switzers. The usual 'response, that that system is fatal to empire, is clearly not a complete one, for the British Empire is as wide as any, and it has been built without conscription. /Ihe impatience of the masses at the 'sacrifices asked of them will ..not prevent ■• , war, but it will, we conceive, greatly increase the reluctance already left by ruling men, for economic reasons, to undertake it.