But even if, as seems likely, the Japanese are able
to deal the Russians a blow of terrible severity at Mukden, one fact will remain, and a fact of immense importance. It is that in' General Kuropatkin. the Russians possess a General of the highest and rarest order of military genius. In the great battle round Liao-yang, and in the opera- tions of the two months preceding it, he showed qualities of generalship which, when they are properly under- stood, will, we believe, call forth universal admiration. Consider what the task before General Kuropatkin was when he took up his command. In the first place, he did not come on the scene till the war was well begun, and so the conditions of action had been dictated for him. The disposition of the forces, naval and military, and all the arrangements for supply, had been made, not by him or under his orders, but by the Viceroy, Admiral Alexeieff, who, whatever else he may be, is not a strategist of the first class. General Kuropatkin found himself, that is, called on to carry out "another man's job," and a job which had been ill begun and worse planned. Though it may be too much to say that all was confusion and indecision at the front, it is certainly not too much to say that his first business when he arrived in Manchuria was to rearrange the disposition of his forces, to make provision for their safety and efficient supply, and to hold in check an enemy whom he was unable to attack owing to that enemy's military superiority. He had, in fact, to stand on the defensive,—always the most difficult operation in war. And, difficult as defensive war- fare always is, Kuropatkin chose its most arduous form. He did not, that is, retreat at once, gathering his forces while the operation could still be unopposed, to some strong position, but fell back gradually, disputing the ground as he went. For example, his first act was to send a force south, which was apparently intended to try to relieve Port Arthur, but which was far more probably meant to delay and hamper the Japanese advance, and so prolong as far as possible the initial stages of the war. It may be that he was ordered by the Czar to undertake the impossible task of relieving Port Arthur ; but if he did receive that order, he used it so skilfully that instead of producing a disaster, as a real attempt at relief would have done, it enabled him to gain time for preparing a defensive position of immense strength at Liao-yang. When the tide of Japanese advance swept over this first bulwark, and his troops were driven out of Newchwang, the military situation had, from his point of view, distinctly improved. It is true that he was unable to hold the lines round Liao-yang as Wellington held the lines at Torres Vedras ; but before he evacuated his prepared position he forced the Japanese to dash themselves against it in a twelve days' action, which inflicted, at any rate, as great a loss on the assailants as on the defenders. It was, however, in his retreat from Liao-yang, even more than in the battles round it, that General Kuropatkin showed his military genius. He managed to withdraw his army in the face of the enemy's fierce assaults, and of their desperate attempts to turn his flanks, and also in spite of a difficult country, and of roads deep in mud. And this he did without any loss in guns or prisoners that is worth con- sidering. It is officially stated by the Japanese that only thirteen prisoners were taken. If this is indeed the full tale, it is without parallel in the history of war. An army retreating under attack, even when its morale is undisturbed, almost expects to lose prisoners, owing to the fact that detached bodies have necessarily to be left behind to delay the enemy. The general in retreat usually counts upon having pieces snipped off the " fringes " of his force. That Kuropatkin suffered no such loss is a sign of the masterly way in which the retreat was con- ducted.
In our view, then, the Russians have a great " asset " in General Kuropatkin, for in him they possess a soldier who knows how to retreat in the face of the enemy without being destroyed, or even suffering any serious demoralisation. After all, that is the Russian tradition. The men who retreated before Napoleon in 1812 were always being beaten in the field and always falling back, and yet never suffered the sort of disaster and the dispersion of their force that the French expected. It was the same when Russia appeared to yield before the impetuous onslaughts of Charles XII. The Russians were always beaten and always in retreat till Pultowa,. We do not, 'however, mean by this parallel to suggest that the Japanese are in the least likely to meet with a Pultowa. Nothing, indeed, is further from our thought, for the Japanese Generalissimo is not an inspired madman like the Royal Swede, while all the other conditions are totally different, and the difference is against, and not in favour of, the Russians. We merely quote the example of the Pultowa campaign to show that Kuropatkin is carrying on the Russian military tradition in the matter of retreat. It is clear also that the Russians possess another asset of great value in the fidelity and " dour " courage of the ordinary Russian soldier. The Russian soldier is still what he has been throughout historv,—a man without dash or initiative, or the fine frenzy of 'battle, but at the same time a man who will stand where he is told to stand till he is killed, and who is not panic-stricken by disaster or awed into submission by the superior skill or courage or numbers of the enemy. He does not know when he is beaten, and if he does not expect victory, is equally unex- pectant of defeat. He plods on in a sort of dumb in- difference to his fate. Once more let us say that we do not expect either the special and peculiar genius of Kuropatkin for war, or the stolidity of the Russian soldier, to give victory over the Japanese. It does, how- ever, look as if these two national assets may be available to extract Russia from the worst form of disaster, and so prevent that complete de'bdcle which the earlier stages of the war seemed to promise. The Japanese, expecting to break a bar of iron by hard blows, may find that they are in reality pounding a huge mass of indiarubber.
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