"OUR MILITARY CORRESPONDENT." [To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR * 9
SIR,—The unhappy fortunes of the wax correspondent sup- posed to to be " with " the armies of Russia or Japan, of which you speak in an article in your issue of September 24th, are a subject for condolence to him and perhaps to us. But we civilians, who are used to being condemned in both worlds whenever in the presence of "the cloth "we venture an opinion on any military question, cannot, I imagine, if we are human, mourn beyond consolation over the voluntary mischances of his brother, "Our Military Correspondent" at home ;
he, I mean, who has been supposed to keep us au courant with the significance of the war news as it filtered hither- wards. "Our Military Correspondent" has not, of course, spoken with a single voice. But in the vast majority of cases, and in the journals which claim to be the most leading, he has been almost uniformly misleading. It would be unkind to remind him now how many months ago it is since, by his showing, Kuropatkin had let his last chance slip of avoiding an Ulm-capitulation at the best, another Sedan at the worst. It was no less time—that is to say, very nearly four months— since for him the reduction of Port Arthur was only a question
of days.
Time may no doubt bring in a certain revenge for him, and
he laughs best who laughs last." Before this letter is in print, Port Arthur, it seems probable, or more than probable, will have fallen—at last. But this will not vindicate the foresight of "Our Military Correspondent" in the eyes of folk who judge otherwise than by results. For an element which he could not possibly calculate upon has worked on his side: I mean the extra- ordinary fighting qualities of the Japanese common soldier, which are, I submit, not only beyond anything which he or we were entitled to expect, but beyond anything which recent history has given us example of. Here "Our Military Correspondent' has profited by his ignorance; but in other cases he has often allowed his ignorance to lead him by the nose to the utmost extent con- ceivable. Long before it was possible to gauge the abilities of the commanders on one side or the other, he (for the most part) rarely let slip an opportunity of sneering at the Russian General- issimo, of speaking almost with adulation of the Japanese generals, notably of General Km.oki. And to take up such a tone so early, when all was still so uncertain, when the dispositions of the respective forces, the state of preparedness on either side, were so much matters of conjecture, this was surely to fly in the face of Providence and defy the fates,—unless, indeed, this attitude sprang from a mere feeling of benevolence in our mentor, who would rather sacrifice his own reputation than disappoint the majority of his readers of reading that which they desired to read.
As a civilian, I for my part speak as a fooL But I suggest that on the military (not the naval) side, at all events, and saving for that one incalculable element above referred to, the fighting qualities of the ordinary Japanese soldier, there had been no such wonderful disparity between the two forces that we were per- petnally told of at the outset of the war. To-day, indeed, at the eleventh hour, the military correspondent has in many instances revised his earlier judgment. It is evidently not for us to throw stones at a people that grossly underestimated the opposition they were likely to encounter. In the ease of Russia that under- estimate was (in the most important particular) inevitable, seeing that the rest of the world was in like case. But take other matters. Has there, for instance, been any noticeable superiority in the Japanese generalship? It is a rule of war' which even the poor civilian can understand, that you should frarrper fort et frapper site at your enemy's main and strongest force. In this case the trite has certainly not been attained; and no one has yet explained the reason of the five-and-forty days' delay at Peng- hwang-cheng. Then for the fort: that has till now clearly not been strong enough: a fact pretty obviously referable to the division of forces between Port Arthur and Liao-yang. Nor, again, if we may trust the Times war correspondent, was there any extraordinary tactical skill shown by the Japanese at the latter place. In that regard, I imagine the honours would now by universal consent be awarded to General Kuropatkin. There are other points of view beside those of the student of military history, that, for example, of the student of human nature and (in a humble way) of ordinary human history. And though (I imagine) such a one would be as fearful of treading the road of prophecy as the military student has often of late been rash, he might see that there are certain psychological questions which are in this war as germane to the subject as any military ones can be. This extraordinary battle-fury of the ordinary Japanese soldier is one of the problems. What does it signify ? Where will it end ? It cannot be seriously maintained that now the existence of the Japanese nation is at stake. Was it ever? Or is this berserk fury of theirs (like the old Viking one) quite independent of utilitarian considerations? That question is what people have in mind when they talk of the "yellow danger." Such explosions of stored energy are common to all epochs of history, but characteristic most of all, not indeed of the yellow race (as yet), but of their kinsfolk the Turkic or Tartar peoples, those that used to be called the Turanian folk.
On the other hand (and for my part I think this quite as likely), there may be in the Japanese, alongside of all their energy, an element of childish unreason which leads them to miscalculate their own powers and staying capacity. In mental forces, as in physical, there is certainly a law of the conservation of energy which makes it inevitable that people should pay in one way or another for what one may call an unnatural out- burst. It does not seem on the face of it probable that this new folk, the Japanese, is such a magazine of all the virtues as its well-wishers pretend. So it is quite on the cards that their outbreak of valour and energy will be passing. I read the other day that a leading Japanese statesman had explained (I think it was to President Roosevelt) that if the Japanese were undersized to-day, it was only because during the last few generations they had sacrificed their bodily development to their mental. Now that they had caught up with Western civilisation, they would— the speaker said—turn their attention to their neglected stature, and restore that to its normal height, which was of more cubits, as I understood, than the average height in Europe. Such an utterance, if it was seriously made, gives quite as much food for reflection as any valorous charge at Kin-chau or Liao-yang.
—I am, Sir, &c., K.
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