D URING the past week the greatest battle of modern times—perhaps
of all times, if, as we have noted else- where, the area of operations and the number of combatants are considered—has been waged near Yentai with a fierceness and stubbornness as great as even that shown in the American Civil War. The operations began on October 9th by the Russians advancing on the extreme of the Japanese left; and this advance proved to be no mere piece of tactical finesse, but the beginning of a general attack by Kuropatkin. The object of this attack has been stated to be the relief of Port Arthur, and it has been asserted that as soon as the last reinforce- ments arrived at Mukden, the Czar issued positive orders that the Japanese must be attacked. In our opinion, however, it is far more likely that General Kuropatkin, as we have said elsewhere, attacked because he was obliged to,—because he found that if he did not do so, he would be enveloped by the Japanese armies which were gradually creeping round his flanks. His alternative was another retreat; and holding, as he did, the interior lines, and noting the Japanese tendency to make the meshes of their net very wide, he may well have held that the least risk would be run by striking a hard blow at Oyama before the Japanese Marshal's encircling 'movement was fully developed.
