Tieling, whatever reinforcements are on the way, could be no
more than a temporary shelter to an army reduced by half, with a victorious and scarcely diminished foe bearing down on it from every side. Meanwhile during the early part of the week the forsaken Russian wings were struggling desperately northward. South and south-east of Tieling is a belt of hilly country through which, or alongside of which, the retreating forces must pass. Into this inhospitable ground Oku and Knroki on different sides shepherded the Russian remnant, and though the larger part seems to have got through, there. were an immense number of surrenders. The reported Russian losses are fifty thousand prisoners, twenty- six thousand five hundred killed, and ninety thousand other casualties. If the latter items are reduced, the first will probably be greatly increased, and we may take it that the battle bas wiped out almost one-half of the Russian army. The total loss to Japan has been under fifty thousand. The
condition of the survivors of the Russian army must have been pitiful, for they were short of supplies of all kinds, and they had suffered a defeat which would have shaken the nerve of the finest veterans. One result of the fight has been to compel the world to revise its ideas of Japanese strategy. At Liao- yang the strategical honours were with Kuropatkin : at Mukden they were overwhelmingly with Oyama. No more bold and complex scheme, perfectly elaborated and brilliantly carried out, has been seen since Napoleon.
