ee things for ourselves.
For, contrary to the popular accusation, no matter how flattering it may
be, we could not describe events at which we were not present.

But what mainly moved us to decide, was the statements of Okabe, the
officer especially detailed by the War Office to aid and instruct us, to
act as our guide, philosopher, and friend, our only official source of
information, who told us that Liao-Yang was occupied by the Japanese and
that the Russians were in retreat. He even begged me personally to come
with him into Liao-Yang on the 29th and see how it was progressing under
the control of the Japanese authorities.

Okabe's news meant that the great battle Kuropatkin had promised at
Liao-Yang, and which we had come to see, would never take place.

Why Okabe lied I do not know. Whether Oku had lied to him, or whether it
was Baron-General Kodama or Major-General Fukushima who had instructed
him to so grossly misinform us, it is impossible to say. While in Tokio
no one ever more frequently, nor more unblushingly, made statements that
they knew were untrue than did Kodama and Fukushima, but none of their
deceptions had ever harmed us so greatly as did the lie they put into the
mouth of Okabe. Not only had the Japanese _not_ occupied Liao-Yang on
the evening of the 27th of August, but later, as everybody knows, they
had _to fight six days_ to get into it. And Kuroki, so far from being
fifty miles north toward Mukden as Okabe said he was, was twenty miles to
the east on our right preparing for the closing in movement which was
just about to begin. Three days after we had left the army, the greatest
battle since Sedan was waged for six days.

So our half year of time and money, of dreary waiting, of daily
humiliations at the hands of officers with minds diseased by suspicion,
all of which would have been made up to us by the sight of this one great
spectacle, was to the end absolutely lost to us. Perhaps we made a
mistake in judgment. As the cards fell, we certainly did. But after the
event it is easy to be wise. For the last fifteen years, had I known as
much the night before the Grand Prix was run as I did the next afternoon,
I would be passing rich.

The only proposition before us was this: There was small chance of any
immediate fighting. If there were fighting we could not see it.
Confronted with the same conditions again, I would decide in exactly the
same manner. Our misfortune lay in the fact