mised us we would be allowed to do something we wanted to do, they did
not keep their promise; but that when they said we would not be allowed
to do something we wanted to do, they spoke the truth. Consequently,
when General Oku declared the correspondents would be held four miles in
the rear, we believed he would keep his word. And, as we now know, he
did, the only men who saw the fighting that later ensued being those who
disobeyed his orders and escaped from their keepers. Those who had been
ordered by their papers to strictly obey the regulations of the Japanese,
and the military attaches, were kept by Oku nearly six miles in the rear.

[Picture: War correspondents in Manchuria. From a photograph by Guy
Scull. R. H. Davis (Collier's), W. H. Lewis (New York Herald), John Fox,
Jr. (Scribner's), W. H. Brill (Associated Press)]

On the receipt of Oku's answer to the correspondents, Mr. John Fox, Jr.,
of _Scribner's Magazine_, Mr. Milton Prior, of the London _Illustrated
News_, Mr. George Lynch, of the London _Morning Chronicle_, and myself
left the army. We were very sorry to go. Apart from the fact that we
had not been allowed to see anything of the military operations, we were
enjoying ourselves immensely. Personally, I never went on a campaign in
a more delightful country nor with better companions than the men acting
as correspondents with the Second Army. For the sake of such good
company, and to see more of Manchuria, I personally wanted to keep on.
But I was not being paid to go camping with a set of good fellows.
Already the Japanese had wasted six months of my time and six months of
Mr. Collier's money, Mr. Fox had been bottled up for a period of equal
length, while Mr. Prior and Mr. Lynch had been prisoners in Tokio for
even four months longer. And now that Okabe assured us that Liao-Yang
was already taken, and Oku told us if there were any fighting we would
not be allowed to witness it, it seemed a good time to quit.

Other correspondents would have quit then, as most of them did ten days
later, but that their work and ours in a slight degree differed. As we
were not working for daily papers, we used the cable but seldom, while
they used it every day. Each evening Okabe brought them the official
account of battles and of the movements of the troops, which news of
events which they had not witnessed they sent to their separate papers.
But for our purposes it was necessary we should s