A GREAT BATTLE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIII, Issue XXIV, 10 December 1904, Page 28

A GREAT BATTLE.

GRAPHIC ACCOUNT FIGHT AT LIAO-YANG.

By

FREDERICK PALMER.

I Mr. Palmer has been with the Japanese First Army, under General Kuroki, ever since it landed in Corea last spring, lie was present at the battle of the Yalu. ami at all the subsequent engagements fought by this command, and was an eye-witness to the battle of Liao-Yang, which he characterises as “the greatest battle since Gettysburg.”]

For live months the First Army had not seen the sea. a plain, or a railroad train. When we fought, it was over hills and ridges; when we eamped, it was in twisting valleys. On August 24 we were still at Tiensuitien. which is twenty miles from Liao-Yang. Before we might fight in the great bittie we

must fight two battles of our own. Before Kuroki could swing into line with Oku and Nodzu, and the three converging columns should form an intact force, we must take a chain of majestic heights on either side of the armpit-deep Tang River In that advance, the Second Division

—the men of Sendai and northern Japan—formed the centre, the Imperial Guards our left, and the Twelfth our right. On the night of the 25th, when, a week’s rations in my saddlebag, 1 spread my blanket under a tree, the Thirtieth Regiment was resting on a road nearby. 1 knew the Thirtieth of

old. Its commander, Colonal Baba, stepped out of a twelfth century Japanese screen into a modern uniform. Two of his companies repulsed the first Russian approach on Motion Pass, and then pursued twice their numbers. Again, on July 30, one of his lieutenants, scouting a hilltop, came back yelling in boyish glee: “Slip your packs and hurryup! The whole Russian army- is in the valley on the other side.”

PUNISHED FOR LOOTING. The Japanese are sharp with thieves. This looter was caught in the act in LiaoYang, and were strung up for two hours as an example. The Sendai men wanted nothing better than that. They did hurry—like mad. Gasping from their climb, they snuggled down to work with their rifles. Vainly the Russians deployed and three times vainly charged. When the Sendai men came to count dead and prisoners there were more than a thousand —not to mention the shelter- tents and other spoils of a whole regiment. The commander of the battalion of the Thirtieth, which was engaged, doubtless apologised. Japanese fashion, for not getting more. On the threshold of the first desperate charge—beginning an orgy of danger and of physical and mental strain without precedent—these veterans sat ehatting softly- and smoking cigarettes. Each had a white band around his arm, a barge to prevent fatal mistakes in a dash on a pass in the dark. And I was lulled to sleep by the murmur of their talk. and awoke with the sound of guns, to learn that their night attack had succeeded. As ever in the First Army’s career, we were in the valley- and the Russians were on the hills which we must take. Northeast by southwest ran one long and intact ridge of the height of a thousand feet or more. One end of this we had won in the dark: that was the key. My favourite mountain battery, also a famous night worker, had here burrowed emplacements for its guns on the flank of the Russian trenches. Its ponies and ammunition train wore well sheltered in a gully. Part way up the hillside in dips, where the enemy could not see them, was our infantry- getting into position for the attack. Our movement was to sweep to the west, and thus wheel upon the whole length of the crest which the Russian infantry held. The Japanese Advance. On one of the ribs of the ridge which descended to the valley. I could see the smoke of the volleys of a detached Russian trench. The long summit above, with its boulders clear against the skyline, had three cones. Now the men who were advancing toward these by single file in three columns were not firinm Each had the cover of some rib that rose above the line of the general slope, and was more or less at an angle with the line of the crest. The man at the head of each column carried a little Japanese flag, and all had their rifles swung at ease. The manner of their advance seemed to “We’re quite used to this now. You’ll catch a few of us, we know, but we’ll take the hill—and that’s What we were sent to do.”

They were the men with the ball. Their “interference” was the incessant rifle-fire poured over their heads by detachments posted at high points. Meanwhile, the little red-centred flags were steadily waved, so that the “interference” should never mistake friend for foe. These flags seemed animate, as if they were sweating and stumbling and righting themselves again as they picked their way over the rough, steep ground.

The most western column was advancing underneath, and in a line paral-

lei to that of the Russian trench on the rib. The top of this trench was scraped by a sheet of flying lead, which some of my friends of the Thirtieth Regiment were weaving from a rib about a thousand yards away; and that is why the Russians could not take advantage of a mark fairly under the muzzles of their rifles. Some did not even realise their danger in time. When the head of the column swept over the parapet, a dozen figures sprang up as abruptly as so many jacks-in-the-box. The surprise was as sudden as the meeting of two

men with umbrellas lowered at a street corner. Only the Russians were not at all embarrassed as to the proper thing to do. Their hands went up at the same time as their heads. The Storming of a Trench. Having cut the car out at the siding, the train went on. Only half a dozen Japanese had entered the trench. They left one of their number to guard the prisoners. Then they rejoined the line, which, without seeming curious or in terested. passed underneath the trench

—according to programme. The incident was significant of the mind and the method of the Japanese army. Five hundred yards from the summit the three columns took their final breathing spell and came together in three groups for the assault, while the little flags fluttered in the bushes that gave them cover. The mountain bat tery which had been quiet now realised the psychological moment for which it had been prepared by hours of

night work. Any shut in line found the target—that is, the main Russian trench. The storming parties had a breathing space and girded themselves for their final effort. Now they climbed upward as if death were at their heels instead of ahead of them. They did not fire; the “interference” could not without too much risk. The only thing was to reach the top. and before they could some must die, as every man of them knew. The flag of the centre column was waved triumphantly on its appointed cone a minute before the other two. Then we saw the figures on the skyline rushing to any point of vantage where, by sending bullets in pursuit of the Hying enemy, they could score losses which should balance thenown side of the ledger. The reserves might now go forward safely over the zone which had been fire-swept tea minutes before. Fighting by Day, Working by Night Thus the day’s fighting was finished, but not the day’s work, nor the day’s drudgery, nor "the day’s misery. The wounded were yet to be brought in, and the dead and the fuel to burn them collected by weary limbs. The plunging fire of the Russians against the foe, struggling through the rough fields and over rougher, untilled slopes, had cost the division six hundred casualties, including the death of a colonel. Late in the afternoon a deluge of rain washed the blood off the grass. The flood of water turned dry beds into dashing rivulets. The Hood of slaughter, also settling towards the valley, passed on by the single hospital tent —already congested at daybreak from the night attack—into the village, whose population was crowded into a few houses in order that the wounded might be crowded into others. Through every doorway you caught a glimpse of prostrate figures and of white bandages with round red spots which made them like wrapped flags of Japan. Dripping hospital corps men brought in dripping burdens covered with blankets or with the matting in which the rice and horse fodder of the army are transported. When darkness came, the lanterns of the searchers twinkled in and out on the hillside. Dawn found them still at work collecting stray Russian wounded, who had lain suffering all night in the rain, for a dollar ami 50 cents a year and the glory which the Czar's service brings them. Tn the bushes, in the declivities between the rocks of many square acres —could every fallen man be gathered? How many cries coming faintly from feverishly dry lips and finally dying into a swoon were unanswered? At some future time , when a Chinese peasant stumbles over a set of bones, the World will not be the wiser. In a room 10ft. by 10ft, in which were 20 Chinese, T had slept on a chest about 4ft Tong, ami awakened in the night to find my wet feet insisting that my head should take a turn at hanging over the skle. In the morning, a mist which thickened at times into rain shrouded hill and valley alike. Mingled with it was the smoke of crematory piles, where layers of bodies were consumed between layers of wet wood. Riding bark up the ridge, I passed sixty dead Jnpafiese placed in a row under the dripping trees of a Chinese garden. Bitrial was to be their lot. There was not time to burn them.

Our division's losses were greater than nt the Yalit. By this standard and by the physical effort expended as well, wo should have rested. But we were only beginning. Our halt was due solely to the mist, which would not permit us to fulfil our programme to advance Ft the break of day. The infantry remained on the slippery hillsides, where they had raised their slight sheltertents and placed wet cornstalks on the damp, spongy earth for beds. On the •pest of the ridge, while the bod es of the Russisws who had fallen in the trenches there yesterday were being buried, the staff stood helplessly looking out on the grey awning that hid the next valley and prolonged for a few hours the life of more than one fated big soldier of Russia and little soldier of Japan. Quick as General Ninshi was to attack by night, snmem critical point, with definite features, he hesitated to

make a general advance in the fog, which eventually rose as quickly as a drop-curtain. Tie Enemy Retreats. Instantly we knew not only the scene, but also the plot of the play. The deep cutting revealed at our feet, opened into a valley which led westward to the Tangho, with its fertile bottoms. The town of Anping was hidden by the projecting base of a bluff. We knew its location by a pontoon bridge thick with Russian wagons going in the same telltale direction. The waggons crossed stolidly. There was no precipitation in the lowering of the tents of the camp on the other side. That first clear view of our position quickened every pulse at thought of catching a rearguard straddle of a stream. The mist had favoured the Russians. It had made our advance cautious and given them cover for retreat. Over the ridge, our infantry, breaking their way through the kowliang, made new paths over slopes where probably no array had ever passed before. After them went the mountain battery, sliding and plunging horses jerking the leaders off then- feet. With the bridge as a centre, our division was pressing in on the retreat from one Hank and the Twelfth from the other. We trusted that the Twelfth was nearer than ourselves. The Russian cavalry was moving back and forth on our side of the river; the Russian infantry stretched across the mouth of the valley, while far over the hills the infantry and gun-fire of the Twelfth pressed closer toward the pontoon. An hour before dark remained. As detachments drew off. the line of Russian infantry became thinner. Some cavalry forded the stream, and then some infantry, too, did not wait on the bridge. “We are going to make them scramble for it,” everybody thought, “and there will be sharp work down there in a few minutes.”

“No, we’re not,” we know a moment later, when one flash and seven more in succession spoke from the other side of the river to the left of the bridge. No shrapnel came in reply. The entry of the battery into the game settled it. The rest had no more dramatic interest than the last half of the ninth inning to the victorious “outs.

On the 28th the God of Battle rewarded us with a parterre box, where we could see the spectacle as a whole and in detail as well. At this point the Tang-ho bends sharply. By Anping it runs for a time due north; a mile from Anping it runs almost due east. From a high peak we looked down upon the bluffs in the stream - inclosed angle which concealed the waiting enemy, with irregular slopes mounting to a high ridge at his back. Far to the west, on some rocky summit, I eould see the glitter of a heliograph sending messages to and from all parts of the Russian line, which must fall back systematically lest some fraction or ether find itself surrounded. We did not know then that the heliograph was ou the hill of Cliusan, which was the centre of the actual frontal defence of Liao-Yang itself. We named it “Kjwopatkin’s eye,” and we were glad to be so near to the gentleman himself; so near to a decisive battle.

In the kowliaug of the river bottom, on the opposite side from the Russian position, snuggled the Japanese infantry. Welcome was the hot August sun to dry clothes that had been wet for two days — welcome until ten in the morning. By noon it was hell, and the uniforms were wet again, not from rain or mist, but from perspiration. Overnight, while the infantry inarched to its place, the gnus had buried themselves in positions on the high ground nearest the river. My favourite mountain battery was set to look after a trench on the opposite bluff. In live minutes it had emptied that trench of a company of infantry. These big Russians had a good mile to go in the range of •shrapnel - fire. They wore being kicked upstairs instead of downstairs, which is harder, especially on a hot day. Wheu for a moment the mountain battery left them alone, they would bunch together at one side or the other, where the ascent was easier. Thus they made a good target again, and bang went a shrapnel over their heads, arid wearily they spread out again under the commands of their gesticulating officers. Just when they thought that they had passed out of range, a burst of' blue

smoke, with scattering fragments, hurried them on like the crack of a slavedriver’s whip. It was a man ehnse, nothing more or less, with the gunners standing as easily to their guns as -peetators to their glasses. 11. The expiring range flings westward a few detached ridges and hills, which are to the vast plain what rocky island outcroppings of a precipitous coast are to the adjacent sea. Between them gleams the steel track that caused the war; that marks the course of t he main armies and is the first premiss in all their strategy. Flowing eastward at right angles to the railway is the Taitse River, which makes a break in the range. The old Peking Road runs beside it. On the southern bank is a typical Chinese provincial capital. There the Russians had many storehouses and sidings. The last of the heights forms a barrier of defence to the east and south-east. These things made Liao-Yang a battleground—these things and a fortress at the terminus of the railway which must still cling to a hope of relief. As from a promontory you might see a naval battle beneath, so we saw the artillery duel of August 30 and 31. The town itself waited and held its breath The only sign of action there was the military balloon, a yellow ball that rose higher than the old pagoda tower. To the southward you saw the movement of hospital and ammunition trains, and under the shade of groves and farmhouses the waiting units whose aspect said that the army was engaged. Tire Flan of Attack. All these were, set like pattern-work within a fence of fire presently as safe from wounds and death as a library nook from a driving storm. l-urther on along the railroad is a camel’s hump of roek, Cliusan —which we of the Second Division had named “Kuropatkin's eve,” from the heliograjih we Had seen there during the tight of the 28th. In a semicircle, of which that was the midway point, and the Taitse River was the dianicter, lay the Russian line of defence. The Second Army, which had fought its way along the railroad, was to extend over the plain to the left of the - eye” and enter Liao Yiuig from that side. Eastward from the "eye” run the hills -and detached ridges which mcr the hills and detached lidg.'s whi.ii nifige into the range at right angles. Here in t he “coiner” among a chaos of heights, the Fourth Army, which had mastered the passes on the road from Takushan, came into position. On its right was the I'irst Army, which had elbowed its way with many flanking movements through the mountains, until at last it saw the plain. Shoulder to shoulder on the day the masters had sei, all the problems each had had to solve became significantly past history. That old question which we had ever asked in the months of our waiting in camp on our way from the Yalu —“Will Kuropatkin stand at Liao-Yang’”—was answered for the trouble of climbing to the top of a ridge by the flashing of five hundred guns, like the sparks from wood when a red-hot iron is drawn across it. Thai scene of armed strength, the most magnificent since the Germans were before Sedan, did not turn my thoughts to Kuropatkin, but to another general, the head of the Russian railroad system. One sweeping glance told you that. Prince Hilkoff had “made good” with his single-track railroad. It was strange to find the first great battle with modern arms in the suburbs of a Manchurian town, and strange to find here on this day a tribute Io a Russian nobleman because he had learned railroading over vast expanses from bureau to locomotive in America; strange, too, and Oriental, that a correspondent attached to the Japanese army should see the operations of the Russian better than those of the Japanese side. For a group of foreigners had taken the place of Kuroki’s army. They occupied the right end of the line resting on the Taitso. On the afternoon of the 2!*th. the Second Division hail swung into position here very demonstratively, and on the night of the 21X11 it fell L.uA is iiet quietest kind of n w.ty, anil, crossing the Taitso to join the Twelfth in Kuroki's flanking movement, left, cones(xmdeuts and attaelies with tlieir mentors io choose a place where they eouW see the plain for 90 miles aronnd. In this relief map the only reduction to •eale was the Unlit* «f our field-glasses.

No heliograph was being used ou »lie bill of Chusan on that day. you may be sure. It was an island in a fog of shrapnel smoke. Along the spurs and as far past it as we could see. there ran literally a line of fire. In the dip between the "eye" and lite spur the Russian guns were two tier deep. There we saw the game with weapons that hurled sixteen pounds of steel jacket inclosing two hundred odd bullets, played in much the same way that hoys wage battle botween snow forts. The triek is to lira when the other side is exposed, and to keep down when the other side replies. Every Russian battery, except those lost in the haze beyond the eye," was visible; but we could not see a single Hash from a Japanese gun. \\ e could sr only the results of the Japanese me. while the results of the Russian fire we could determine in the "earner” alone. In your cars always was a roar which, nt times, was as thick as that of a cataract. If there were intervals free of any report, it brought you the speech of infantry so continuous that it purred like a rubber tire over a freshly macadamised road. This reminded you again that the guns were only the brasses and the drums of this international orchestra. On the last of the hills be yond the Russian batteries lay the Russian soldiery, and still beyond them, in front of the Japanese guns, the Japanese . Charges and Counter-Charges. hat charges were being made and what charges were failing we could not tell. We only knew that any successful advance must, send back the Russian guns. The infantry of the Fourth Army we knew were moving forward. We heard the cheers of a position taken, but saw not one of the Japanese soldiers who had taken it. Then we saw the Russians going over the ridge in a coun-ter-charge. and we heard their cheers when they recovered what they had lost. Like every other part of the Russian line, they were put in position to resist to the death. They had been surprised. but they had kept the faith with the counter charge. These cheers called the spectator. X wanted to be nearer to the infantry- line and to fell the pulse of that arm which is the bene and sinew of battle. Rut I knew. too. that [ should miss that whole which had the fascination of a fortune at. hazard on a throw. At any moment the line might break, and the confusion of many regiments and many guns would be under our eye. We watched its length feverishly for the first sign of weakness. Facing the heights on which we sat were the Russians awaiting the attack on our right. The battery on the ridge directly between us and ilie town had us in easy range. One of the attaches chivalrously reasoned that it- commander recognised through his telescope that we were only sightseers. More likely, having in mind the attaches and correspondents on the Russian side. he was not likely to waste his ammunition doing his enemy a favour. And the Russian gunners lav in the shade, and the Russian infantry looked over the near ridges for our coming. I wondered that Sheridan and Stuart did not turn in their graves. Toward noon of the 30th. the clear sky of the early morning became overcast. Clouds hung above the smoky mist of the shrapnel. Nature was in no mood tor ram; bur the thunders of the guns literally shook it out of the heavens. the gusts of moisture came down angrily and niggardly. Tiiev were thickest where the lire was thickest. But none of the guns of either side stopped. As night came on, the flashes of the muzzles and of the shrapnel bursts put points of flame in a lowering mantle ot darkness. When I fell asleep, 1 still heard some firing. It was the gunners' blind effort to dismay the infantry which lay grimly waiting on one side and grimly ambitious on the other. The Dawning of Another Day of Battle. The morning of the 31»t was a« fair a* that of the 30th. Silver streak of stream and dust streak of road, and line of shrapnel smoke and gun flashes. dtsap|ieared into the haze of an August day fit f »r the ripening of kowliug ami corn. Liao-Yang lay still, a patch of silence on the plain. It* five bridges. Including that of the railroad, were still undid ted spans across the stream. The white and drab houses of the native city merged with the green of their gardens. The military lavlloon was making its first morning ascension. Ims ide of the fence of fire the uni la of

The army’s rear seemed in the same position as yesterday. There was no lull in the thunders which had begun at daybreak. The last twenty-four hours seemed like a month. This artillery duel had become an institution. But. yes, a closer look showed a change—a little change. The bursts of the Japanese shrapnel were now carried far to the other side of "Kuropatkin’s eye” towards the town, and they played continuously over a Russian battery in a position further to the rear than any held before. By ham! the men of Oku's army had dragged all the way from Nanslian, where they were' captured, these five-inch Canets whose bite was worthy of their bark. The artillerists, too, who bad struggled with them over bad roads, had their reward. Now, for the first time in this war. except at Port Arthur, the gunners of the victorious Japanese could stand out of range of the Russian guns which were his target. There is no joy sweeter to an artillerist's heart than that. Then, too, in that “corner” of congested hills and congested artillery fire, it was evident that some of the Russian guns had fallen back a little; but that might have been only to rectify the line.

The infantry supporting the battery on the ridges directly opposite the correspondents’ citadel of observation, tramped heavily, Russian fashion, into the gully and up on to the ridge near us, and looked over the top of that and stopped there for a time. Past- the battery on the bank of the Taitse-lto four guns trotted out leisurely in reeonnoissance behind infantry and cavalry that had gone ahead. They were fairly in line with the rear of the Fourth Army. After a few shots in our direction.' which met with no response, they went back, and so did the infantry on the ridges in front of the correspondents, without even sending us to cover with a volley or two. We felt most insignificant and unworthy. Now. Kuropatkin, in his report, tells us that his plan was to let Kuroki isolate his army and then destroy it in detail. On the morning of the 31st. he says, he learned —presumably from this roeonnoissance —of the- broad gap in our lines; but he was being crowded so hard in other directions that he had no troops to spare for the opportunity. The daring of Japanese strategy had iaken the nature of its enemy into account and had reckoned well. By his own confession. Kuropatkin had not discovered the gap until thirty-six hours after it existed. A half-dozen good American scouts would have informed him soon after sun up on the 29th; these men would have been worth more to the Russians than any half-dozen of their colonels.

When I first looked out on the plain and saw the two armies engaged, I was of the mind to see an epochal contest decided in a day or two. as Waterloo or Antietam wore. The ammunition expended in a forenoon was more than that expended in the whole batt’e of Gettysburg. Long-range weapon* and railways mean only that the railways have more to carry, and by sparring with guns and rifles while the infantry creeps forward, the openings for critical assaults develop themselves but slowly and grudgingly. Five hundred guns in line, with the shrapnel of as many breaking over them, doubtless presents the most stupendous spectacle ever brought into the vista of the human eye. Yet the most magnificent storm at sea would scarcely keep the most ardent admirer of nature’s wonders from iosing his sleep. Field-glasses that had scarcely left their owners’ eyes on the 30th now had long intervals of rest. We were in the presence of a gigantic tug of war. where the two teams seemed to lio'd each other steady, with never a flutter of the ribbon to one side or the other. The effect of that vast play of force hypnotically kept us in our places. To go nearer was to see only one of a thousand parts that I had already seen: that I was to sec on the morrow; and so 1 remained. Even Battles Grow Monotonous. Beyond the river, to the north, we saw- the breaking of Russian -shells on the hills, which told ns that Kuroki bad made his lodgment on the flank, although he did not yet threaten the railroad. Far out on the plain to the west of the town we saw the fires which told of unexpected pressure there and the destruction by the Russians of any possible cover for the advance of the Jajianesc left. In that direction, too, wa saw the movement of Russian rein-

forcing -columns. Nearer, on the sidings just- beyond the Thissi. n qhartcr,’ the smoke of a dozen locomotives spoke of departure . for the wounded and if necessary. for the vital ammunition which should maim more. Liao Yang itself stilt wailed and watched on another lease of power for the old master, or the entry ot the new. The bridges still unoccupied only meant that the way was clear when the time came to go-

There was no diminution in the volume of artillery fire. A second lime, almost at the same hour, the sky grown ugly purple shed reluctantly the moisture which the sun had extracted from earth and stream. The drops hissing on hot batrels were at the same time cooling to the intent facts of the fighters. The flashes were plainer, while the blue curls of the smoke cf th J shrapnel merged with the mist. A second time, the sky having yielded its all. the atmosphere cleared, as varicoloured shadows passed over the sea of yellowing corn. Silencing the Russian Guns. The Japanese shells had crept still further past "Kuropatkin’s eye.” In the "corner’’ there was no question but the Russian infantry had fallen back, for the Russian guns were shifting their position to the rear. But between the last of the hills and the town, all obscured by the high kowliang, were the redoubts, the pits with stakes at their bottoms, ami the barbed wire entanglements of the last line which was still to be taken by assault er commanded in flank. When, with the gathering of darkness, I left the scene, my last glimpse was of a battery between the “eye” and a neighbouring spur. It was under a veil of shrapnel smoke, illuminated by lightnings, which quickly, stitch by stitch, the Japanese had woven. “Can they stand that and fire again?” you asked. Beneath the mantle of smoke, like diamonds on a bride’s head, the Russian gunners who had kept- cover during the fusillade flashed their response as rapid as the spicks of a parlour match struck on the wall. Yet the bursts significantly outnumbered the flashes. Something said tint the battery would not be there at daybreak. The Japanese infantry had found the points in the wall of human flesh and smokeless powder that were weak. They had crowded so close that retreat was death, and advance their only salvation. That night they broke through with the bayonet. 111. We had seen the battle and the field of operations as a whole. Now we were to see and feel a part—-the intimate, trying part —-when veterans used to victories, locking arms with superior numbers, should make the effort cf two divisions the universe of our hopes and fears for three days of blood and heat. On the night of the 31st. I rode on in the track of the flanking force, which had crossed the uiifordable laitse in face of a napping enemy. This was a bv-road between the high hills, Where, in the darkness, the torches and esuu>pfires of the commissariat lighted the maze of Japanese carts, Chinese carts, pack ponies. Korean and Chinese coolies, and all rhe plodding tiesh, human er animal, which could bear or draw supplies. At the river I met old friends in an unexpected place —the pontoons that we had used at the Yalu. They had not come with Nishi from Feng-Wang-Cheng along the old Peking Rood; so they must have gone with the Twelfth, bv mountain paths and over mountain passes. Luck is with these pontoons. Thus far they have caused the dismissal of two Russian generals; and well may the little engineers bail them out and repaint them in the hope of favours to come on other stream* that lie on the wav to Harbin. At the Yalu, Zassulitch concluded that the Japanese were going to cross at Antung. and awakened to find tiie bridge of his disgrace spanning an unprotected flank. Orloff evidently laboured under the same fulness of theory and lack of scouting practice. His wound at Yentai did not save him from public humiliation by hia Emperor. The Climax of Strategy. Till we crossed the Taitse-ho, the war for the First Army had been the march of a pattern plan. Whatever the casualties, when night had fallen the day's work had been finished according

to programme. This masterly trick with the pontoons, the nerre that bad left a gap of live miles in an army’s line and -thrown a wing into the air, ■was the climax of our strategy hern. Beyond the Taitsc-ho the conflict became such as painters paint aud writers write. On a level three miles across and ten miles from east to west, parallel with the railroad, the Second Division had its position. Its flank was in touch with the Twelfth; Inouye’s Twelfth that had marched from Seoul, that had .been first at Ping-Yang, first at the Yalu, first at Feng-Wang-Cheng, and now was the exposed end of an army of one hundred aud fifty thousand men.

The task before us, to the eye comprehending only field and slope, was such as more than once before had occupied us for only a few hours’ time. To the left was an irregular mountain, called No. 131 on the map. which, rising knuckle-like, formed a rampart buttressing the defence of Liao-Yang from the north-cast. Across a narrow gap from its base there is a “little hill.” Hayentai, not more than two hundred feet high at it* highest point and scarcely four hundred yards long, but to many soldiers of Ixitli armies bigger than Mont Blanc. Across another level of a mile or more were two series of ridges, which the spectators called Four Finger and Five Finger. Their Chinese names, which I have since learned, mean nothing to me. I slick to those by which we knew them through three days, when every burst of rifle-tire and every salvo of shrapnel brought us some message of how the hazard was going. The "little hill” the Russians had not properly fortified. It was quite neglected until the battle began. Elsewhere, but not here, the Russians had cut the kowliang over the approaches to liieir defences. That high millet, which is like field corn with a slightly thinner stalk, and two or three feet taller, overspread the plain. The Russian and the Jap Way. The Russian battery commander stays in his battery, his sight obscured by the smoke and dust; his perspective affected by the action immediately around him. This is one of the Russian prejudices. Every army has its prejudices, the product of national mind and habit, which are against the best approved thought of its own specialists, who are helpless to overcome them. The Japanese, conning the textbooks of the world, finding all modern progress new, are without prejudices; and the textbook* way for a battery commander, though he does not seem so gallant for picture purposes, aud risks bis life even more, is to stand at one side of the battery, where he can keep his eye out for the target and for the effect of his shells. Thus, really he centres his mind on the game and plays his gun as a winning pitcher plays his curves in basebail. For two days I watched a Japanese battalion which lay in close order behind a slight rise. Half a dozen times the Russian guns seemed to have found it, and eurls of smoke broke out at- the right angle of height and distance. Thera were flutters in the mass of khaki, like that of the kowliang in a breeze; the movement to assist the wounded. But the battalion gave no such corroboration of Russian suspicion of its presence as to deploy. It was needed where it was; there was no better cover to be had. Stoically it held ou. Directly the Russian, all oblivious of his fortune, turned the stream elsewhere, evidently determined to wet all the ground impartially’.

The Japanese guns poured shrapnel into the village at the base of the "little hill,” and ploughed the crest with howitzers. If a Russian gun had tried to swing into position there, it would literally have been blown off. The “little hill” was no place for guns. It was no place even for infantry to tarry long after taking it by storm, as later events proved. We caught- glimpses of Russian infantry there early in the fight, but to remain was simply to set themselves up for slaughter. Their departure did not mean that the hill was ours. Left and right they could bring fire on any force that tried to storm it. Rush by rush, however, our troops made their way through the kowliang. At nightfall we were in the village at the base of Hayentai. As the sun went down, our shells were still bursting on the crest, and the Russian shells were bursting over our- guns and over the field at random. From the direction of

■ Liao-Ya ng we had heard no sound of fr- • ®g all day. The tired Russians there ■ were settling themselves in their aeeond of delenee. and the Japanese bringing forward their artillery so that it should command the town. When I fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, Hayentai was outlined by flashes of riflefire. In the pale moonlight, the Japanese crept out of the little village, and. foot by foot, in face of the flashes, with bayonet in hand, in overwhelming nunibers at two a.m. they swept over the erest and bore the enemy back. A Hot Morning's Work. .Yet there was no rest for them. They had to make their squatters’ rights • good—to improve their holdings instantly- More Russian guns and more Russian infantry had come np overnight. As the Russian line before Liao-Yang contracted. it yielded spare divisions for the protection of the flank. With the first streaks of dawn a mist of shrapnel smoke hung over the “little hill.’’ The work of the spade in the blue, moist earth came after the work of the bayonet in the flesh. Like prairie dcgs. the little men, who were to hold Hayentai for the long day before them, burrowed for their lives. While a few on the crest watched from cover there, the others dug deeper in their holes 'with the scream of shrapnel in their ears. If the infantry of the enemy came, then the enemy's guns must abate their fire as the charge approached, and the bombproofs would empty their guests over the crest to meet the onslaught For the value of the “little hill ’ was not “in firing from it . but in )lavi the o fellow off it.” Sc,me of our guns had gone forward: others held the position of the. previous day. Jhe possess!-n of Hayentai gave the purchase to * press °i n Finl ° n Fii ’ ger and e, O ur columns of the Tweltth attacking them in front were making progress. Optimism ran high , for the moment. Once we had the Russians wlj flanked it seemed to the eye studying the ground roughly, without staff knowao. ’ 11x1 lnou ntain to the left No. 131, would fail to us of its own weight. Elit the staff.wanted that immed'ate'v. "*}* as I<Hlr finger and Five Finger. • . Im Periai Guards, which was the . third div.sion in Kuroki’s r.rmv. were still on the other side of the Taitse-ho They were sent forward in demonstra- . tion on the rlv r bottom toward No. 131; and on the river bottom they lay for hours. The gravel under their bodies v.as as hot as a stove lid. The shrapnel scattered it as the first raindrops do the dust of the road. Rut the Guards were too tired to mind thit. They felt as if < they had been fighting and arch ng sine; the world began: and they fell asleep, ; despite death and heat. Meanwhile, the real charge broke out. . of the kowliar.g to the southeast of - the little hill.. It ran around the b**se of a. slope and; dodging and dashingdv . rushes, swept upward, with' dead and . wounded in its track. The Russians , exine out of their rover, and. silhouetting themselves rgaiust the sky, fired at will, patronislnsdy. Ihe charge was as hopeless as trying to scale a rope ladder , with.your heads tied behind you ij a heavy sea. Its remnants cima back in the night. Kuroki Meets Twice His Numbers. A schoolboy canid have realised that Hayentai was vital to the Russians. It was to either commanding general's plans what a bridge ov. r a streim is to a roadstead. There were Russian troops without (nd now at thr call of the “little hill.” They were e-iuuig over the bridge iii retreat from Liao Yang, skilled by experience; they were pressing down from Mirktlen fresh from Europe. Kuroki, with two divisions and an extra brigade, making a total of n little over 30 000 men, was trying to drive back twice his own force.

Now, you can place only a cert '.in number of men within a given length of trench. Tile Russian ofliec-r who e mmanded on the “little hill” doubtless told his superior officer that be could hold it against any number, lie was right in theory, but wrong in practice against the Japanese. Liao-Yang brought a new feature into modern warfare—the night attack. The Russian officer in command of the “little hill” could not help himself. Tie was in the position of the resident of Johnstown who was correct in thinking that . h’s drainage system was all right uuiil the flood came.

But one thing we have noted, stage.by stage from the Yalu, and that is that the Russian is learning, as the British learned in South Africa. He is taking notes out of the Japanese book and applying them as far as the limited intelligence of the average Russian soldier will permit; and the Russian soldier who has been under tire several times has had a most enlivening if not liberal education.

So the enemy, in turn, undertook a night attack. Again the shrapnel bursts flashed over Hayentai after the sun went down, while the rifles blazed out from the crest which had been a dead grey against the sky during the day. Report says that this effort cost the Russians fifteen hundred casualties. 1 know that two hundred bodies were left on a slope covering scarcely two acres in all. A gully approaching Hayentai was thick with dead, whose faces were upturned like those of people hastening up a gangway. A Siberian regiment and a regiment fresh from Russia -—the old to steady the new under the first staggering blast and the newbringing ingenuous faith in his invincibility—came with drums—drums in the night. I There was no artifice. The heavy Slav, like sonic mad giant, rushed upon skill with the rage of brute force. A terrent of men swept up Hayentai. They engulfed the Japanese who were there as the Japanese had engulfed the Russians the night before. Then the real struggle in the dark brg.tn. For the Japan.’se fought their way back before dawn and made Hayentai theirs for good and all. Brute Courage ’Wins. In this age of high organisation, seine officers who sit in routine facing rows of pigeon-holes will tell you that war is entirely made with brains nowadays. AU such should have seen Hayentai. There they would have learned that the taking of critical points, which are essential to academic plans, still depends upon brute butchery and brute courage. The visitor would hare slipped in blood instead of dew. Like round figures on a carpet, the dots were set off on the earth where the grass was matted and worn away by struggle. It needed mincing steps to touch every one if you walked in a straight line. In a clenen places 1 saw red paths where wounded men -had dragged themselves away into the kowliang. Following one of these. I came to the coagulation ’which told the story of the death agony. The marvellous thing was that, at one period of the struggle, if a wounded man could only take himself ten feet to the rear, he was safe. Where the rounding erest dipped on either side, twenty feet apart, for a time the Russian and the Japanese line had lain in the dark firing; at- the flashes of each other's rifles. Slipping down the hillside with the -bullets wliistMng overhead like a gale through the rigging you were as much but of the danger zone temporarily as if you had been!in Mukden. The positions were - clearly marked by the systematic arrangement of the blood clots.

Wasn’t there ugly work? Was quarter always given? 1 have been asked. My answer is that all was lig-y work. Anyone who does not palliate *it. in ord- r to lx- consistent, must let a burglar in his own house shoot at him without firin'* in response. In such a situation’, soldiers are not waiting cn injunctions from a court to restrain the enemy’s violence. Their articulations became less like human speech than like savage cries. They-rre the g'lcsts cf the individuals who lired up on p.nr.td -; ghosts trying to fight their wav cut of he'll. The big mad thrust at every Utile man, and the little man thru-t at every big man, and tl e big in n u ed his bayonet in powerful lunges as the bull do’s his horns: the little man as a panther uses his- claws. The Japanese officers, disregarding the sword <f Eurepr— that decadent product cf social functions carried their samurai blades, winch are made for killing at eio-se quarters. When-I visited the military s bool in Tokio in 1901, as I watched the e.ul- ls fencing, according to Japim-sc fishiin. 1 remarked: “That must le splendid training for the eye, and gn. nd exercise.” “And extremely useful,” an ollie; r replied. Bullets and Bayonets. It was about this time Hint Herr Bloch, got his name frequently printed in all Hie pajiers oh account of his book, which held that ur>de:u a.m- ul pr-

vision would -not allow armies to approach each other. ..Mid Hayentai and L'husan were only three years away. The prostrate man might still •* living, and he might still reach, the bowels of an adversary with a thrust. Discrimination might be as fatal to yourself as throwing your oar overboard in a rapid. Men were shot into eternity and slashed into eternity; perhaps some were scared into eternity. Rut these were not the veterans. I s|>oke with one of the veterans, a Sendai man.

“You want to use your bayonet with your arms, not your body.” (He spoke as cook wou’d say, “The whites of two eggs well beaten,” etc.). “The Roskc uses his bayonet with his body. He sticks his head down and rushes at you. If he catches yen you are spitted for good. He is sueli a bg fellow tbit he lifts you fairly off your feet. If you are quick on your legs, thing'), you can step to one side, and then you have him; the only way with little men with shert arms is to get in close. “The first time I went into a night attack I kept thinking cf all that my officer told me. I felt like I did when I went in as a recruit, ami the surgeon felt me all over.” “Stage fright,” I suggested. But a country bov from Sc dai, though, he had stndi'd his English primer well, mil tried to improve himself so as to rise in th? world, did not understand that. At least, I did not think he did. by the operation cf hie Jamncse smile. “The first t ine I struck a Ku sian I could feel my b yonet grate oi bi’ bone,” he went on. “I did not thick of it at the time, but when I thought of it afterward it seemed vejy awiu’. had seen h'm ecmirg like a big black shadow, and I had j ast time to dodge and 1 felt his bayonet go bv my cheek like a razor does over your face. ‘ I pulled my bayonet out and sunk it in his neck before lie had time to strike me. If 1 had not killed h.ni he would have killed me. It is that way always.” Russian shrapnel continued to piny over Haventai on the morning of the 3rd, while the Russian dead lay where tliev fell. Kuropatkin was now falling hick oijt of Liao-Yang with his whole armv. Against it was Kuroki alone; for the Second Army was without bridges, cf' course. The mass of the Russian force pressing back bore with all its weight on that flanking army of ours. If the' enemy had known how mmh we were doing on . nerve and how little on numbers, he would surely have tried to crush us. Though you could not see the increasing numbers of the Russians, you felt their overpowering effect, as yon know by the draught that a door is opened ,in a dark room. We lay hugging what we had gained in a weariness that begot stubbornness. We had fought for ten days. For three days most of the Second Division had Inin in the sweat-box of the kowliqng eating unboiled rice, with the stench of crematory piles and of the dead in their nostrils. Completely Fagged Out. As division after division appeared against us, we called for the reinforcement of the Guards. They-crossed the river, such as did not fall asleep in

-their tracks, .with stones fur their pillows. It was a strange thing to see stragglers in the Japanese army; but it was stranger still that the army had strength enough left to move at all. Then our communications with both the Second and the Fourth Armies were cut. This had happened ouee before—but. when the Russians were not apparently advancing upon the Twelfth with a view to envelopment. That staff which 1 had watched on many fields did not forget its text books when it gave the orders for retreat. .Systematically the corps wires twitched with the orders for withdrawal, which were no sooner given than the pressure from the Russians eased. Kuropatkin was only making his departure safe; he was only striking :i blow as be went. Now the brave word followed the cautious word to the ends of the corps. Supplies were to ba hurried forward; pursuit was to begin. But reaction nowgripped out weary force. No stimulant of Imperial amb'.tion, of clan loyalty; no ancestral faith could put more strength into th:- legs of this army. We had won a victory; but that did ijot mean so nr.:ch to us as the fact that we had won the right to rest. - From “Collier’s Weekly.”