N OTHING has happened during the week at Port Arthur, except,
indeed, more slaughter, some of the details of which are very horrible, the mines literally blowing the assailants into fragments ; but great events have occurred around Liao-yang. General Kuropatkin has not been able to defend that place, which, with all its elaborate fortifications, has been carried after a series of engagements in which the Japanese have triumphed. The account of the battle by the Times correspondent in Friday's issue shows it to have been the most desperate engagement since the American Civil War. The Russian defeat so far has been severe and disastrous; but the Japanese have not been able to surround their enemies as they hoped, or to prevent them crossing the river Tai-tse on the roan to Mukden. General Kuropatkin, once convinced that Liao-yang was untenable, sent the greater portion of his army —say one hundred and twenty thousand men—to the north towards Mukden, covering the retreat by a series of engage- ments, in which his rearguard suffered frightfully, as well as the Japanese. The slaughter, indeed, has been prodigious, so much so that neither side will acknowledge the full truth. It is probable that at least fifty thousand men have fallen within twenty square miles, the Japanese attacking "with ferocious courage," and the Russians resisting them with their historical endurance. General Kuroki, who is also across the Tai-tse, is endeavouring, by a rapid march towards Mukden, to arrest the Russian retreat ; but his men are exhausted by eight days' fighting, and the roads are hardly passable for artillery. On Friday morning he was reported twenty-seven miles east of Kuropatkin, while Oku's army was twenty miles to the west. This looks as if the Japanese were preparing for enveloping operations at Mukden similar to those at Liao-yang.
