HOUGH during the week no news has reached Europe T
of fresh Russian disasters, it is clear that the Russians are still retreating, and that though the pressure of the Japanese on their rear and flanks has diminished, the pursuers are always on their tracks. Thursday's official telegrams from Tokio describe the Japanese as having reached Chang-to-fu, twenty miles north of Kai-yuan, and as finding their enemy retreating in large bodies and in disorder north-east along the railway. This sounds ominous enough, and it must be remembered also that we have lately heard nothing of large portions of the Japanese army, which may be striking at Kharbin itself by a wide flank movement. Meantime M. Dru, the St. Petersburg correspondent of the Echo de Paris, tele- graphs that the Russian army is being "reorganised," and that it now musters two hundred thousand men, of whom seventy thousand are fresh Reservists. M. Dru also gives details of certain fantastic proposals for raising a new Manchurian army of six hundred thousand men within the next four months. The movements of the Baltic Fleet remain obscure. Apparently it is not on its way home, though it has left Madagascar. Rumour has located it already in the midst of the Indian Ocean, but with no certainty. Again, its inten- tion is now stated to be to cut Japan's communications with Europe and America rather than to reach the seat of war.
