ally knows of their work at first
hand, not as it is to be found in extreme cases, but as ordinarily
carried on, should do otherwise than eulogize it."

Seoul, Korea.

{70}

VIII

MANCHURIA--FAIR AND FERTILE

"Uneasily sleeps Mukden to-night"--I remember yet how one of the
dispatches began which brought so vividly to my mind the meaning of
the great death-grapple here between the Japanese and Russian hosts in
1905.

[Footnote: "Uneasily sleeps Mukden to-night. In the main street
lamps burn dimly. Along dark roads in heavy dust are marching
columns. The cool night is full of the low rustle of movement. Near
the station, in over-filled hospitals, are heard low groans. The
wounded arrive in a never-ceasing stream of carts, and another
stream of ambulances moves northward, for the place must be cleared
for to-day's victims. The eternal pines whisper above the Tombs of
Chinese Emperors. In the fields watch fires are burning stores and
evacuated villages----" And the correspondent goes on to tell of the
wearied forces gathering for further fighting with the coming of
dawn--men footsore and weak for want of food and water and rest. For
forty-eight hours the Japanese had not eaten.]

The story in a nutshell is this:

"After the capitulation of Port Arthur, Oyama pressed toward Mukden,
where Kuropatkin had established his headquarters, and there from
February 24 to March 12 occurred probably the most desperate battle
in modern history, if not in all history. About eight hundred
thousand men were engaged. Again Oyama won, and Kuropatkin retreated
in fairly good order about a hundred miles north of Mukden."

So runs the historian's brief record of the titanic struggle five
years ago in the ancient Manchurian city to which I have come. What
Gettysburg was in our Civil War, that Mukden was in the first great
contest between the white race and the Mongolian. Here covetous Death
for once was satisfied, his gruesome garnering seen at each wintry
nightfall in the {71} windrows of bloody and mangled bodies strewn along
miles of snowy trenches.

I have heard all sorts of war traditions in Mukden: that at one time
the Japanese thought themselves beaten in the battle and had ordered a
retreat, when, a Russian force giving way, they turned quickly to
press the advantage and snatched victory from what they had thought
was ruin. There are many stories, too, of the inefficiency of the