railways, have inclined to the belief that, except on the continent of Europe, the lack of facilities for transport and supply would of itself render the maintenance and movement of large armies impossible, forgetting that the most valuable portions of Asia, although imperfectly railed and roaded, support as large populations as the wealthiest regions of the West.

As has frequently happened in the case of material obstacles outside the influence of the enemy, administrative vigour has once more upset the calculations of experts accustomed to work under conditions of lower tension. The Trans-Siberian Railway, according to Russian official statements, has forwarded to the front no fewer than 750,000 men in the first year of the war; and the Japanese, in spite of the obstacles presented by the climatic and topographical conditions of Manchuria, have managed to place 400,000 men in the fighting-line at a distance of several hundred miles from their sea bases. The value of these vast numbers on the field of combat has been equally apparent. In Manchuria, if anywhere, the conditions might seem well calculated to illustrate the theory of 'the few and fit.' The Japanese soldier appears to possess all those qualities which students of the South African war teach us to regard as the essential virtues of the modern warrior. Intelligent, light, wiry, active, a small feeder, remarkably enduring, gifted with a contempt for death and a love of hand-to-hand fighting which European troops can only envy, and led by officers who possess, in addition to his own qualities, a high degree of military training, it might have been expected that he would have proved equal to twice as many of his reputedly stupid, cumbrous, and ill-led opponents. The results of the different engagements do not warrant such a conclusion. That the Jap is the better man of the two cannot, indeed, be doubted; it would otherwise be difficult to account for a record of victory which, under all circumstances and in spite of the mistakes that the leaders, being mortal, must frequently have committed, has still remained undimmed by any substantial reverse. But it is pretty clear that, in spite of adverse circumstances, the grand qualities of the Russian soldier have more nearly counterbalanced those of his indomitable and fiery opponent than might have been supposed; and the unbroken progress of the Japanese is no doubt largely attributable to the fact that from first to last their generals have striven their hardest to imitate Napoleon and to secure to themselves a numerical superiority on every field of battle. Thus, at the Yalu Kuroki brought some three divisions

to bear upon one; at the Kinchau isthmus the Japanese probably had 50,000 men upon the ground against less than half that number of Russians; at Telissu they employed more than three divisions against Stackelberg's two; and they probably outnumbered in the same proportion Zorubaieff at Tashihchiao, and Keller in front of Fengwhangcheng. At Liau-yang, for the first time, the numbers were practically equal; and the difference was obvious at once. For on the last day of the fight all the Japanese reserves were thrown in; and the support afforded by the town and its defences to his southern front, together with his central position astride of the Taitse, almost enabled Kuropatkin to turn defeat into victory. On the Shaho the strength of the two sides is uncertain. Probably in this instance the Japanese were slightly in the minority; but the attack on their right proved a failure, and the Russian right and centre, this time unprotected by works of a quality similar to those at Liau-yang, were crushed by the great counter-attack before Kuropatkin could recover from his abortive thrust at Kuroki. Yet the general result was not a decisive Japanese success; nor was such a victory gained until Oyama, having secured a numerical superiority of eight as against six or seven, and having fortified the central sections of his line so as to enable them to be held by a small force, massed four out of his five armies against the Russian flanks, and at a cost of over 50,000 men shattered his opponent's power of resistance and drove him in headlong retreat to the northward.

It is impossible, we think, to find in history troops better than the Japanese, more fierce and obstinate in attack, more grimly tenacious in defence, more simple in their requirements, more unflinchingly patient under hardships, more unconquerable in the face of obstacles. It may be that the French under Napoleon were better marchers; though even on this score the performances of the Japanese during the movement to the west of Mukden warrant considerable scepticism as to the accuracy of depreciatory criticism on this score. But, so far as our present information extends, no infantry, from the time of Cæsar to the present day, has ever shown so complete a disregard for all the dangers and difficulties of war, or has carried more serenely to its logical conclusion the theory that annihilation is better than defeat. Yet even these amazing soldiers have not been able to dispense with the advantage of numerical superiority! How, then, can any State whose manhood is nurtured under ideals of life and conduct far different from those which animate

the Japanese safely forgo the resource of numbers? That small bodies of men well handled have produced, and will continue to produce, great local effect on a field of battle may be freely admitted; but that any soldier or statesman, cognisant of the infinite chances of war and of the varied play of national character, would willingly stake his country's existence on the hypothesis that her soldiers will on all occasions prove themselves superior to those of a wellarmed and well-disciplined enemy appears to us, in face of the experiences of the present campaign, inconceivable.

If the first great factor of the Japanese victories, in spite of the astonishing fighting power of their troops, has been numerical superiority, the second has been the tenacious grasp of the tactical and strategical initiative, which has enabled them to use that superiority to the best advantage. We need not recapitulate in detail the earlier history of the campaign up to the first grand collision at Liau-yang: it is only necessary to remark that on every important occasion up to the month of October last-we do not include Keller's abortive attack on Kuroki at the Motienling, which was at best that worst of all forms of tactics, a reconnaissance in force, and was marked by the half-hearted execution and the speedy punishment which are the usual features of that kind of operation-the Japanese dictated the law to their adversary. The lamentable position in which the Russian Government placed Kuropatkin in ordering him to march to the relief of Port Arthur is best realised by observing that Stackelberg, who was entrusted with the mission, found himself obliged to fight at Telissu on the defensive; and that an operation which ought to have been a sudden irruption into the midst of the Japanese armies moving up from the coast, was met by the opponents in superior force, and welcomed as affording a convenient opportunity of destroying an isolated body of the enemy. Only at the Shaho, and later at Sandepu, did the Japanese stand on the defensive; and on the latter occasion it was perhaps fortunate for them that Kuropatkin refused to further Gripenberg's initial success by supporting him with the bulk of the army. Here, for a moment at any rate, the Japanese seem to have been caught napping. An offensive-defensive battle, if the enemy's strength and intentions are correctly judged, has, in view of the great obstacles which the assailants have in the first instance to meet and the terrible losses and exhaustion which the surmounting of them costs, unquestionable advantages; but, as Kuropatkin found at Liau-yang and

Mukden, this ascertaining of the enemy's dispositions is a very difficult matter, especially when the depth and length of the battle front are so great, and an error of judgment in place or time becomes disastrous to the defender. Thus, at the very moment when, at Königgrätz, Benedek was about to order a great counter-attack upon the first Prussian army, a volley that killed and wounded several of his staff told him that the second army was already on his flank. Thus, at Mukden, Kuropatkin was engaged in a furious attack upon Oku when the news of Nogi's advance to the west and north of the town put an end to all thoughts of the offensive, and obliged him to hurry his reserves from one end to the other of that vast line of battle in order to meet the force that was threatening The only instance in Manchuria of a counter-attack on a scale sufficient to justify the preliminary adoption of the defensive was that of the Japanese at the battle of the Shaho. At present we know nothing of the details of what M. Recouly, the correspondent for the Temps' with the Russian headquarters, justly calls 'la contre-attaque, énergique, foudroyante,' carried out by the armies of Nodzu and Oku; but perhaps, when the history of this mighty struggle is finally written, that magnificent stroke of generalship will be accorded the proudest place in the roll of victory. In the annals of modern war we cannot recall an instance of a counter-attack so well timed, so resolute, and on so grand a scale. It may be remarked in passing, as a proof of the skill with which the Japanese had chosen their defensive position before the battle of the Shaho, that Kuropatkin, who, to judge from the account lately published in the Times' of the battle of Mukden, would have preferred to fight his offensive battle on the comparatively flat country on and west of the railway, seems to have regarded the adoption of this plan as too risky so long as Kuroki threatened his left flank along the mountain road running from Penhsihu to Mukden. He appears to have felt himself compelled to drive that dangerous antagonist across the Taitse before he could deal with the Japanese left and centre, and consequently to engage the pick of his army in the very country which he knew to be favourable to his opponent. Probably, too, it was this same cramping fear for his left that prevented him from reinforcing Gripenberg when, four months later, that general drove in the Japanese left upon Sandepu. This dread of 'le mouvement tournant de Kuroki, ce fameux mouvement dont on a tant parlé,' to quote M. Recouly, was perhaps the most important strategic factor in the campaign.

The momentary loss of the initiative had proved less serious to the Japanese than might have been expected; and for this, apart from the question of their superior generalship, they had probably to thank the excellence of their Intelligence Department. Their opponents were in far different case. The frightful handicap of a defensive attitude unenlightened by full and accurate information was fatal to the Russian command after the retirement from the disastrous offensive of October. Kuropatkin could fortify positions behind the Shaho, could reorganise his troops and collect reinforcements, but he could not tear aside the impenetrable veil of secrecy with which the Japanese had again managed to shroud their plans. Port Arthur fell, and the direction in which Nogi's 100,000 men would be employed became a question which it was essential to answer correctly. Yet neither Mistchenko's cavalry raid upon Niuchwang and Haicheng at the beginning of January, nor Gripenberg's attack on the Japanese left between the Liau and the Hun at the end of that month-an essentially half-hearted movement, as we have already said-threw any positive light on the situation; and the non-appearance of Nogi's army during those operations could only prompt the conclusion that it was being moved up to reinforce Kuroki in the mountains on the eastern flank. The news that Kawamura's army, part of which, in the phrase of the 'Times' correspondent, disappeared from Japan at some time towards the close of January,' was in some region south-east of Mukden strengthened Kuropatkin's conviction that his enemy's gods were gods of the hills, and that the next attack would be made, as at Liau-yang, against his left flank, through the mountains by way of Penhsihu and Chinghocheng. Hence the extension of his left to the south and south-east of Fushun; hence the massing of troops about Machuntun and Tita, and the despatch of his trusted lieutenant, Linievitch, to the same quarter. The falseness of the conception was not demonstrated until on March 7, after fighting had been in progress for over a fortnight, the report arrived of the advance of large hostile forces to the north-west of Mukden. It would be most unreasonable, in the present state of our information, to lay the entire blame of this culminating miscalculation on Kuropatkin's shoulders. The obtaining of good information, always an uncertain business, had become a matter of quite extraordinary difficulty. For the collection of intelligence he had to rely on his cavalry, on his spies, and on information in the shape of newspapers and telegrams. The part played by the