T HERE is a faint but perceptible change in the opinion
of Western Europe as to the probable progress of this war. The effect of the great blow struck by the Japanese in their first attack on Port Arthur has a little died away, and average men no longer expect that the islanders will win their great game by a sort of rush. Observers begin to recognise that neither Japanese nor any other generals can cross the " magnificent distances " which are the special feature of all Asiatic countries, of Korea no less than of India or Tibet, without long prepara- tion, weeks of patient marching, and ever-rc2eated waiting upon weather. Moreover, the "sealing up" of Port Arthur has proied more difficult than was expected, and the delay in that operation has postponed the debarkation of at least two of the Japanese armies. " The man in the street," too, always calculates on a debarkation as if the transport of the troops were alone required, and forgets the enormous demand upon the means of conveyance implied in the necessary despatch of mu 'tions, commissariat, and field artillery. He has, therefore, a total impression of slowness in the campaign, and impatiently remarks that the Japanese are not quite so efficient as he had fancied them to be.
All this is a little ignorant, if not ridiculous ; but there is much more solid ground for the faint hesitation which we perceive in the more sincere friends of Japan. Russia has to a certain extent waked up. It is difficult to doubt that the' men who bear rule in St. Petersburg had at first been convinced by experts 9n the spot—for Admiral Alexeieff was not alone in his optimism—that the Japanese either would shrink at the last moment, or that they'would conduct their war in the lumbering fashion which long experience has taught Europeans to expect from Asiatic generals. The smartness and daring of Admiral Togo came upon St. Petersburg as a revelation, and the great officials there, after groaning for an hour or two about " treachery " and " surprise,". set themselves resolutely to work. They picked out a fighting General and a fighting Admiral, and sent them to the front. They called out •every available Reservist in Asia, and moved heaven and earth to forward European troops over a line of 'railway which, although it will not carry the numbers they expected, still will transport, if you do not care how many • you invalid, at least a thousand men a day. These forces are accumulating on the Yalu and in front of Mtikden, and the Japanese columns, which are certainly advancing up Korea, and possibly into the peninsula of Liao-tung, will therefore find serious work cut out for them. That they can do it is probable, for we take it that the Japanese officers are the superiors of the Russian 9fficers. in 'training, while the Japanese men are just as .courageo us, and distinctly less liable to be paralysed by fatigue. But still, Russian soldiers on the defensiie are formidable fellows, and unless General Kuropatkin is misdescribed, he belongs to the school of Suwaroff and Skobeleff,—that is, he is willing, if only victory may be attained, to lose great masses of his trained men. They can, he thinks, with some justice, always be replaced. Admiral Makharoff, again, is evidently willing to run risks. His arrival has already imparted new_energy to the fleet in Port Arthur, and it 'is by no means impossible that he intends to risk losing the greater part of his fleet there if only he may destroy the Japanese naval preponderance within the Straits. A new fleet, he thinks, can be ready in the Baltic by August ; and to him, as to all Russians, who in that matter display an Asiatic quality, time is of very little moment. It begins to be certain, therefore, that the war will be a long one ; and in a long war there are many chances, and much depends upon intellectual qualities as to which the West has no clear data. We hardly know the value as a strategist of General Kuro- patkin, and we do not know anything certain about the capacity of the Japanese generals either as strategists or as tacticians. The evidence in their favour derived from the experience afforded by the rescue of the Legations is but a thin basis for judgment as to the result of a campaign which will soon be con- ducted on an almost Napoleonic scale. We look on the contest with impartial eyes ; but so looking, and with a deep distrust of military prophecy, we fail to see as yet any solid ground for confident calculation. There is none. We shall know much more when the first great battle has been fought, but the petty skirmishes which have hitherto occurred can teach us nothing. The Japanese evidently drove back the Cossacks at Anju ; but Cossacks are the froth of the wave, not the wave itself.
It is very natural that while the world is waiting it should consider the chances of grave disturbances within European Russia. Those chances always look formidable, for on the fringe of Russia there are large discontented provinces full of brave men, whom many keen observers expect to utilise the opportunity afforded by this war. Finland, Poland, the Caucasus, Armenia, and the Mussul- man khanates of Central Asia are all territories held down by force, and may possibly seize a. chance, however faint, of realising their aspirations for freedom. They are, however, very widely separated, they are held down by heavy garrisons, and they are cowed by a nearly unbroken experience of defeat. We can see no evi- dence that the true mass 'of the Russian people, which certainly exceeds one hundred and twenty millions in number, has any feeling whatever in regard to this war beyond a dull anger that a small Asiatic people should have forced it upon their Czar. There may, of course, be impulses at work in that huge mass of which no Western man has any accurate idea, and we note With a certain interest that the bureaucracy is alarmed and on the alert. But all positive evidence seems to be against the proposition that the Russians, who are very patriotic, and proud almost to lunacy of the vastness of their dominions, will seize the opportunity of a great war to thwart their Government, or even to press their claims upon it. The enormous expenditure, be it remembered, will for the moment soften, not exacerbate, their lot. We obServe the reports of discontent and read the turgid appeals of the revolutionary chiefs with' attention, but amidst the turmoil..we note one broad fact which seems to us to out- weigh them all. From St. Petersburg to Kharbin the call for the Reservists has been obeyed. Scores of thousands of men who know what Russian camp life is like have been summoned to the colours, and are going to the front in streams, unaffected, and apparently not even irritated, by the terrible conditions which, as they, who at all events know the Russian climate, must foresee, will attend their journey. We hear of hundreds left behind at every station, in- valided• from frost-bite, from insufficient food, and from excessive fatigue, but we never hear of resistance to a superior's command. In spite of wastage on every side, the broad central stream rolls on. What the result of a great defeat might be upon the Army we have no means of guessing ; but as yet there is no particle of evidence that the Nihilists, Socialists, and disaffected, whatever they are called, have had the smallest effect upon the general tone of the Army. It is not when engaged in a campaign that armies mutiny, or even display slackness in their work. Nothing of the kind has ever occurred while Russian soldiers were advancing upon an enemy. The history of the Russian Army is that its discipline survives defeat, and even remains intact while the brigades are perishing of diseases which better management would avert. The Russians are white men, but they have much of the fatalistic resignation of the East. While the Russian Army is thus coherent we are unable to believe in internal explosions,* though it is possible, as. we read Itussian history, that messages might be sent to the Czar warning him in a tone indistinguishable from menace to change a defeated general. That has occurred over and over again ; but that is popular advice, and not mutiny.
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