The Japanese "enveloping movement" is still incomplete— unless we accept
the news given by a Moscow paper and pub- lished in London on Friday to the effect that; the Japanese have driven in the Russian left flank, and got between it and Mukden —but the Russians have failed in a desperate effort to recover Mo-tien-ling, the high pass from which General Kuropatkin expects the most dangerous attack. General Keller, with twenty thousand troops, made the attempt, and at first it seemed as if he might succeed, two flanking assaults being partially successful.' The attempt to storm the central position, however, failed, the Japanese being perpetually reinforced. They were never equal in numbers to their enemy, but they had the support of artillery, which the Russians had not, they fought with desperate valour, and after he had lost two thousand men in fifteen hours' fighting, General Keller gave the order for a retreat, which was effected in good order. It is believed in Tokio that the attempt will be renewed, command of the pass being of the last importance ; but the Japanese are well informed, and wait steadily with wonderful self-control until their prepara- tions for the grand attack are quite complete. It is in brain that they beat the Russians, whose soldiers die in heaps with all their old heroism, and who suffer less in morale from defeat than more mobile or better commanded troops. They are there to die for the Czar, and they do their duty with a splendid unfLinchingness which rivals that of the Japanese.
