RUSSIA AT WAR.*

IF we are still far from an intelligent understanding of the great campaign in the East, we are beginning to realise some- thing of its horrible magnificence. The scale is so gigantic that the episodic is, perhaps, the best form of narrative, and we gain more illumination from " 0.'s " remarkable sketches than from a more elaborate history which must necessarily be confused and incomplete. " 0." has his story to tell of each phase of the war by land or sea, and he tells it in chapters which are not only brilliant and moving pieces of writing, but studies of character and policy, full of a far subtler criticism than any of the avowed military analyses. He may be right or wrong, but he has seen and reflected, where most others of his craft have only heard and repeated. The merely literary merits of his book are great. He has something of the intense and accurate observation of the late G. W. Steevens, and, like him, be manages to link his episodes to the cardinal facts of life, and give to a photograph the deeper significance of a picture. He deals with the psychological moment, the act which is characteristic and revealing, the man who stands for a whole race and creed. Most of the book can only be described as lurid; and yet the author writes simply, is never rhetorical, and clearly labours to be temperate and exact. But he is mastered by his material, and the cumulative effect of his faithful description is far beyond melodrama and not very distant from tragedy. He has caught and compelled us to realise a new war impression, the awful mechanical bleak- ness of a great scientific fight,—like a smoky foundry-yard in the grip of an earthquake. Chapters such as " The Blocking of Port Arthur," " The Forlorn Hope at Kinchau,"

The Naval Sub-Lieutenant's Story," and the terrible

• (1) The Yellow War. By " O." London : W. Blackwood and Sons. [66.] —(2) A Modern Campaign. By David Fraser. London : Methuen and Co. [65.1—(3) A Secret Agent in Port Arthur. By William Greener. London: 1. Constable and Co. 6s. —(4) Port Arthur: Three Months with the Besiegers. By Frederic Villiers. London: Longman and Co. [7s. 6d. net.] —(5) With the Russians in Peace and War. By Colonel the Mon. F. A. Wellesley. London: E. Nash. 112s. ed.]

are in a high degree artistic, but in matter almost too awful for art. There is much besides,—little pictures of Japanese life like " The Last Service" and " Of an Officer's Patrol " ; admirable sketches of Oyama and Kodama; a story called " Champions," in which for a moment the old chivalry of war returns ; and the grim and humorous tale of "The Blockade- Runner." One chapter we would specially mention, called "The Path in the East is Strange." It suggests a theory of

the Japanese character and aims, and particularly of the far- famed Bushiclo, which may be remote from the truth—we do not know—but is at any rate curiously logical and arresting.

From the last chapter we take this passage on one of the Port Arthur assaults :-

" Who shall say that the day of the bayonet is past, that the brutal grips of men in war are obsolete ? Could sceptics have hovered about that trench-head and seen tho shimmer of the steel as it gave back the white glare of the star-shell ; could they have heard the sickening thud of bayonet driven home, the grate of steel on backbone, the despairing sob of stricken man,—they would never have preached their fallacies to a confiding world. Although there was not a breech that had not its cartridge in the chamber, the men, roused to the limit of their animal fury, over- looked the mechanical appliances which make war easy. They thirsted to come to grips, and to grips they came: hardly a shot was fired. The hand grasped firm on the small of the butt, when the mind means killing, forgets its cunning, and fails to operate the trigger. But it had to end. The old colonel had fought his way through his own men to the very point of the struggle. He stood on the parapet, and his rich voice for a second curbed the fury of the wild creatures struggling beside him. 'Throw your- selves on their bayonets, honourable comrades !' he shouted; those who come behind will do the rest !' His men heard him, his officers heard him. Eight stalwarts dropped their rifles, held their hands above their heads, and flung themselves against the traverse. Before the Russian defenders could extricate the bayonets from their bodies, the whole pack of the war-dogs had surged over them. The trench was won."

The book is not impartial, sometimes it is palpably unfair, and now and then it is impossibly fantastic. But at its best it comes nearer a kind of genius than any war correspondence we remember.

After " 0.'s " strong meat other fare is a little insipid. But Mr. Fraser has much interesting and novel information,

and he gives it with humour and spirit. He was the pioneer of wireless telegraphy, and had charge of the installation at

Wei-hai-wei. His troubles with his great mast make excellent reading, and scarcely less amusing is his account of the early cruises of the Times steamer, the Haimun,' before he joined

Kuroki's advance. Mr. Fraser has a roving eye for the comedies of life, and the Far East, even in war, is no bad place for such a traveller. His narrative of the battles of the Yalu, the Motien Pass, and Liao-yang is the work of a man who understands military operations, and, though hampered by defective information, could yet see enough to make his reports of value. Kuroki's passivity after the Yalu, which has been variously explained, is set down by Mr. Fraser to profound reasons of policy. His quiescence, he thinks, compelled Kuropatkin to show his hand, and enabled the Russians to mature a strategical plan, which could give the Japanese a chance of striking a great blow. We would specially recommend Mr. Fraser's instructive remarks in his first chapter on British railway policy in China, and his analysis in the latter part of the book, based on South African and Manchurian experience, of the meaning of artillery in modern war. Of Mr. Greener's work we can only say that there is no obvious reason for its production. Its grandiose

title is a misnomer, for he learned nothing of value in the short time he remained in Port Arthur after a siege became imminent. The book is almost wholly a record of minor incidents that befell the author, which are neither instructive

nor amusing. When he does condescend to write of the war he makes grave blunders, and his gossip and personal references are generally in the worst taste. He was in Newchwang while the Japanese were busy occupying the neck of the peninsula, and a good account of operations from that side would have come in most opportunely to fill up certain gaps in our know- ledge. But we get nothing from Mr. Greener except a great deal of dubious tattle expressed in very dubious English. It

is a pleasure, on the other hand, to be able to congratulate a veteran among war correspondents on the fruit of his last adventure. Mr. Frederic Villiers spent three months with. General Nogi during the attack on Port Arthur, and left about the middle of November, when the elaborate sapping operations began. His accounts of some of the night attacks are graphic in the extreme, and we have read no more interesting story than that of the capture of the Ban-n-san Fort on August 22nd. There are good character sketches of Nogi and Kodama, and the narrative throughout is written with a cheerful good feeling and fairness which command respect. Mr. Villiers is jealous for the honour of his profes- sion, and to such a war correspondent no commanding officer is ever unfriendly.

We have included Colonel Wellesley's book in our list, for it gives a picture of Russia in an earlier war, and forms a most instructive commentary upon current events. Colonel Wellesley was Military Attache at our Embassy in St. Petersburg from 1871 to 1878, and he was with the Russian forces during the whole of the Russo-Turkish War. Knowing Russian life from the inside, he has written a full and interesting book, discreet, friendly, and well balanced; but the admissions of a friendly critic are more damning than the accusations of an enemy. For what he has to tell of the Army and the Navy is ,the same story as we have heard from the Far East. Gallant men, incompetent officers, bad discipline, omnipresent corruption, and inefficiency are the keynotes of the report, and the impression left is to us far more gloomy than even the horrors of the present war. For it shows a social organism rotten at the top, and the canker spreading fast through the other parts. We would recommend to our readers Colonel Wellesley's illuminating parallel between the Far East and the campaign of 1877, and his sensible remarks upon the possibility of constitutional reform. But we would mildly expostulate with him for killing off Skobeleff "not long after his return from Turkey," when the Central Asian War and Geok Tepe were still awaiting that general.

ROGER ASCHAM.*