The suffering within Port Arthur must have been horrible, the
storm of fire from the Japanese great guns never cawing, while the men were gradually reduced to quarter-rations, and messes of rice, which, as we have found in all Indian famines, are intolerable to men accustomed to more nutritious cereals. On December 28th General Stossel reported to his Emperor in one of the despatches sent in a destroyer to Chifu that no obstacle could resist the 11 in. shells ; that scurvy had broken out; that such had been the destruction of life that many companies were commanded by Ensigns and were reduced to sixty men each; that eleven thousand men were in hospital; and that he had only ten thousand men left under arms, "all sick." Other accounts, especially one by a Captain Kartzoff, add ghastly touches to the picture. Ammunition was nearly exhausted, and the besieged scarcely returned one shot for two hundred; while, as his surviving Generals told General Stossel at the final Council of War, the men were literally too weak to obey orders, often slept standing, and could not see bayonets at their breasts. Still more tragic is the despairing telegram sent by General Stossel to the Czar on New Year's Day. "Great Sovereign ! forgive ! We have done all that was humanly possible. Judge us, but be merci- ful. Eleven months of ceaseless fighting have exhausted our
strength The men are reduced to shadows."
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