sary. Port Arthur was the first grand disappoint ment. The main advance of the three Japanese armies against the Russian base at Liaoyang had meanwhile come to a standstill. After Count Keller's abortive attack on the Motienling, and Kuropatkin's minor efforts to break the chain of armed men which was being slowly drawn around him, the Japanese generals had contented themselves with some weeks of apparently absolute inactivity. With their divisions now joining hands in a vast semi-circle from a point to the north of the Motienling to a point west of Haicheng, the Japanese lines were but thirty miles from Liaoyang. Plainly they were waiting for something. That something was the news that Port Arthur had succumbed to Nogi's attacks. the 24th August the Japanese Commander-in-Chief, Field-Marshal Oyama, knew that it was useless for him to expect Nogi's divisions to reinforce the First, Second, and Fourth Armies; that heavy Russian reinforcements had been despatched from Russia and were already arriving at Harbin at the rate of several thousand men a day; and that further delay would convert Liaoyang into an impregnable Russian Plevna and duplicate the position at Port Arthur. These considerations made an immediate attack on Liaoyang imperative. On On the night of the 24th the general Japanese advance against the Russian base began. Whilst Oku and Nodzu advanced resolutely from the south and the south-east, Kuroki stole farther and farther north in a cunning attempt to push his men between Kuropatkin and his line of retreat. Beginning with these operations, it was not long before one hundred and eighty thousand Japanese were wrestling in a death-struggle with a like number of Russians. The conflict, begun on the 24th August, lasted ten days, until the 4th September, and ended in a questionable Japanese victory. The Russians were driven from their reputed impregnable Liaoyang lines by Oku's fierce attacks; but the fear that Kuroki would get between him and the north induced Kuropatkin to draw off and concentrate an immense force in a line running north by east and to leave an ever-diminishing number of men in the huge and powerful line of field fortifications against which the Japanese flung their tremendous frontal attacks. By the 4th September the battle was at an end. Kuropatkin had withdrawn thirty miles to the north, the Japanese had occupied Liaoyang, and each force, completely exhausted by its efforts and a loss of some twenty thousand men, was breathing hard and thankful for the pause. Although there can be no question that the Japanese showed themselves incomparable to their enemies as fighting men in this conflict, it must be confessed that each side could look with almost equal satisfaction on the actual results. The Japanese had forced the Russians to retreat from a series of positions which would, with the completion of the field works and the addition of 100,000 men, have become impregnable; whilst the Russians had saved their forces from the trap prepared for them at a trifling cost. All September the European corps which had been fast assembling in Harbin were entraining for Moukden, and by the beginning of October Kuropatkin had received reinforcements which must have amounted to some eighty or ninety thousand men. On the 2nd October, conscious of a strength which exceeded a quarter of a million men, he issued his famous Order of the Day-the most fatal step he had made during the whole course of the warin which he bombastically announced that the Russian Army of Manchuria had become strong enough to take the offensive. On the 10th October, advancing his huge forces in a vast line, he attacked the Japanese with the utmost fierceness for three consecutive days. Entrenched everywhere, and themselves fully prepared to take the offensive, the Japanese not only drove off the attack but rolled the enemy far back towards Moukden, capturing a quantity of guns and supplies, yet on their side losing three batteries owing to the rashness of a brigade commander. Once more there was a huge casualty roll. The Russians left thirteen thousand dead on the battlefields, and acknowledged a total loss of some fifty thousand men; whilst the Japanese escaped with some seventeen thousand killed and wounded. Again both armies were paralysed by their efforts, and with the exhaustion of their ammunition reserves, and the bitter Manchurian winter already showing itself, it was clear that |