The Timaru Herald MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1904. A DEADLY CONFLICT.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXXI, Issue 12475, 12 September 1904, Page 2

The Timaru Herald MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1904. A DEADLY CONFLICT.

The cabled extracts from the London " Times " correspondent's description of the sanguinary fighting round Liao-yang make oue lament again the untimely death of the late G. W. Steevens in Ladysmith. The dauntless courage of the Japanese in their repeated assaults on the Russian positions would have furnished splendid material for the matchless pen of the man who gave us the brilliant pen-pictures of OmdurnMii. In some respects, Steeveus would have found a striking -similarity between the Japanese who, undismayed by the annihilation of successive battalions, returned again and again to the attack until they shook the iron nerve of even Skobeloff's intrepid pupil, and the dervishes who. were mown down by Kitchener's guns in the desert of the Soudan. Both tha Japanese and the dervish had that strange attitude towards death which is so foreign to Western habits of thought, but which makes men possessed by it such fearless fighters and such dangerous enemies. The European soldier, brave as lie may be, does not go into battle with the idea that death is more glorious than victory itself, and he is not spurred on by an almost religious fervour for his country and his chief. Steevens, in the most powerful of modern descriptions of battle, tells us how the dervishes of Omdurman charged down on the British lines, utterly tegardless of the merciless storm of lead that was poured out from modern rifles and quick-firing guns, and how, when only one. of them was left, he waved defiance at a whole army until he too fell mortally wounded beneath the Madhi's flag. Had the dervishes possessed Shimosi shells and magazine rifles, the bones of Kitchener's army might have been bleaching beside the Nile to-day. Their spirit, aided by modern weapons, enabled the Japanese to hurl themse'ves against what the war correspondent of the "Times" describes as five Gibraltars, and when attack after attack had failed, to renew their assaults until the Russians gave way and began their retrsit to the north. Englishmen vill appreciate the courage of the Japanese at Liao-yang when.they remember the gloom with which our Empire heard of the Highland Brigade's disaster at Mogersfontein. The two ' positions seem comparable, both in configuration and in the nature of the defences with which they were strengthened, only that Mngersfontein was a very small edition of Liao-yang. Tn both the defenders were strongly posted en locky eminences, sheltered in trenches and protected in front by elaborate wire entanglemerts. To the Boer prepara•ions, the Russians had added mine fields, ?ome adaptation of a familiar marine deuce which appears to have served its purnose with deadly effect. Yet in spite of all tha odds against them, the Japanese commanders form?d up their reinforcements, and when one a>sauit had faihd, ordered on fresh troops to make another attempt. The morale of the army is shown by the determination with which the successive attacks were delivered. Three crushing repulses, in which whole lines were swept away by the devastating fire from the Russian trenches, might veil have cowed the courage of any troops, but if General Kuropatkin had not decided to retire, probably the whole of the Japanese troops would have spent their lives against the cruel rocks that faced them. A peculiar feature in the engagements is the ultimate withdrawal of the Russians to the third line of entrenchments in the mud flats surrounding Liao'-yang. It seems a Quixotic move for a commander to shift his troops from the natural fortresses that Kuropatl:in held, to trenches in a level plain. It must be renumbered, however, that the Russians ore bred in country singularly devoid of hills, and that their fighting instincts have been nurtured on the flat. Competent critics have predicted that they would be more dangerous in level open country than in mountain ranges, and have explained by the natural genius of the Muscovite for flat lands their otherwise inexplicable withdrawal from the Motien-Hng Pass and other hilly country between the Yalu and Liao-yang. It may be that both the general and his troops were more at home in their third line of entrenchments than even in the Gibraltar-like rocks which ♦he Japanese found so disastrous to their storming parties. The flat" open stretch over which the Japanese had to advanc would at least give the defenders of the trenches in the mud-flat an enormous advantage, for magazine rifles make it practically impossible to deliver an attack over open country. The actual result of the fighting is rather difficult to arrive at. It does not appear that the Russians were actually Jorced out of their positions at the point ft! th« bayonet, but that th»? wer«

compelled to seek safety in retreat owing to Kiiirki getting round their flank, nnd threatening their communication)!. That, the battles exhausted the. attcckcrs nunc than the defenders Lb only natural, and ii shown by the fact that the' Japanese were unable to show their usual enterprise in instituting a pursuit that would hare decimated the retiring army. As usual, "the reports of the casualties arc conflicting, but the Japanese must necessarily have sustained heavier losses than their enemy suffered. But the "butchers' bill," even of the Japanese, is remarkably light considering the desperate nature of the conflicts. They must have had fully 200,000 men engaged, only 10,000 of whom were placed hois de combat. Over ninety years ago, at Leipsic, where 400,000 men were in action, the total losses amounted to 80,000, and at Koniggratz, out of the same number of combatants, the casualties reached the same appalling total. The lighter losses in modern battles is due to (he facts that the troops fight in open order (at Liaoyang the Japanese used groups of 12 men), and that the opposing forces seldom come to close quarters.