THE LESSONS OF THE WAR IN MANCHURIA.* THEIR decision to

take the public into their confidence, and print for general circulation the valuable series of official Reports sent home by the officers who represented our Army in Manchuria, is one upon which the authorities are sincerely to be congratulated. It is not so very long ago that the practice in the War Office was to treat all Reports such as these as a nuisance, give them to a few Staff officers at Head- quarters to read over, and then pigeonhole them for ever.

It is, therefore, with all the greater satisfaction that we recognise how carefully the Reports which are now published have been studied by those who are in a position not only to make recommendations on points of tactics and organisa- tion, but to insist upon their being carried out. Indeed, any one who has seen anything of our Army during the past

two years will realise, when he reads them, the very consider- able extent to which they have already modified the tactical training, and even the organisation, of our troops. It is no

exaggeration to say that the Manchurian Campaign marks an epoch in the history of war, and has given a definite answer to many crucial questions of tactics upon which finality could not be reached until they were put to the test of actual war,—war, that is to say, waged under modern European conditions, and not merely, as in South Africa or Cuba, with

modern arms of precision, but after colonial methods and on colonial terrain.

When, therefore, the ordinary citizen hears of important changes in our Army, greater exertions on manoeuvres, continuous night-work, laborious entrenching, a higher standard of achievement for the cavalry, and so on, in- volving-, it may be, increased expenditure, and, as we hope, eventually the higher pay for our officers to which the harder work entitles them, it is just as well that be should be able to satisfy himself from the perusal of official volumes such as these of the reason for the changes that are taking place. Nor are only tactical lessons to be learnt from the plain unvarnished tale of our representatives. Although it is no unexpurgated edition of the official despatches which has gone out to the public, the condemnation of silence on military faults is quite clear enough, and no amount of expurgation can disguise the bitter truth. On page after page we read of the dangers of unpreparedness, of officers appointed to high commands for any reason except their fitness for such command, of strategy made to oscillate in sympathy with politics, of jealous want of co-operation among generals, and so on. Faults such as these spell disaster in war, and, however much it may have been desirable, as it obviously was, to abstain from criticism which might be mistaken for partiality, it has been impossible to conceal the contrast afforded with the one set and steadfast purpose of Japan—to achieve victory—to which end the whole resources and energies of the country, both human and material, were unhesitatingly devoted from the moment

when the first transports sailed till the last shot was fired eighteen months later. Passages like the following, taken from Colonel Haldane's introduction to the Reports on the battle of Mukden, and certainly not originally written with a

view to publication, are full of warning, not to soldiers alone, but also, if not principally, to every British citizen of either sex :—

"To lie in the open under a deadly fire for perhaps twelve hours or more, and in consequence to be cut off from any means of procuring water in addition to what is carried on the person, imposes a severe strain upon troops, and one which careful train- ing in time of peace can alone prepare them to undergo success- fully. Men who are accustomed to smoke on the line of march— and not alone at halts—a proceeding which gives rise to thirst ; who are allowed to empty their water-bottles at will, who on service will frequently consume their emergency rations, and, in peacetime, are accompanied on the ground by sutlers selling

refreshments cannot be said to be well equipped to

undergo the trials of a long engagement Besides self-

control, another factor which has brought success to the Japanese is their strong sense of subordination to authority. The whole nation—unlike Great Britain—is well disciplined, and it is recognised that it is the bounden duty of every self-respecting citizen, not to pay some one else to serve for him, but to be prepared to take up arms when required to do so. The tempta- tion of a bribe five times greater -than the pay of the regular

* The Busso-Japanese War : Reports from British Officers Attached to the Japanese and Bussmn Armies in the Feld. 3 cols., with 2 eases of Maps. Published by Authority. London: Wyman'. [21a. net.]

army is not necessary in Japan. Her citizens, like General Nogi, who refuses to partake of luxuries in wartime not granted to the soldier, would feel themselves insulted if asked to serve at rates of pay other than those deemod sufficient for the army. It is this spirit of self-effacement for the public weal, mingled with fervent patriotism, which has won for Japan her long series of victories on sea and land."

Apart from reflections, such as the above, treating of the wider problems of war, with which Colonel Haldane's classical phrases and Sir Ian Hamilton's light touch and facile pen supply us in abundance—and these are undoubtedly the two contributors who rivet the attention most—the three green volumes are packed with matter which sheds light on every military question of the day. At the same time, though almost every one of the sixteen hundred closely printed pages

is of value, it cannot honestly be said that, taken as a whole, they are easy reading. As might be expected, the accounts of battles which lasted for days and covered many miles of front cannot be read in an armchair, but demand close application. Not only must they be compared the one with the other, but they must also be followed systematically and step by step on the admirable maps with which the reader is so liberally provided, while the exhaustive Reports on the tactics of each of the three armies by different writers require the most careful collation and digestion. At the first blush, it seems curious that the General Staff should not have attempted in any way to bind together and make a consistent whole of the disconnected and occasionally inharmonious letters. Even the writers of these letters themselves have not, as we understand, been afforded any opportunity for revising what they wrote, so to speak, on a drumhead on the day after battle. The result is that we have here the raw material of military

history rather than a military history,—the official history itself is still in course of preparation, though Parts I. and II. have already made their appearance. This decision to publish the " documents " first and the text afterwards, though

certainly original, is, we think, to be commended,—the British officer as a rule is too prone as it is to take his opinions ready made. In India, Sir Ian tells us, "it used to be the case that even divisional commanders used to be taught that anything not specially allowed by regulations or superior authority must be wrong." That day is obviously past and gone ; but the tradition which forms such a contrast to the Japanese practice still remains. Consequently it is decidedly an advantage that while no British officer who is keen about his profession can possibly pass the Reports by, the manner of their presentation absolutely compels thought.

The military student will profit all the more by the official history when it does reach him, if before seeing what is the view of the General Staff he has been able to read and collate first-hand authorities and arrive at his own conclusions.

To pass to the book itself, the Reports in Vol. I. deal with the disembarkation in Korea—that marvel of complete preparedness and comprehensive foresight—the battle of the Yalu, and the northward advance of the Japanese First Army —already told, indeed, in the Staff Officer's Scrap-Book, but

well worth reading again, with the interesting, though some- what pungent, criticisms of General Nicholson on some of the theories put forward by Sir Ian—and so down to and including the battle of the Sha-Ho. Of particular interest are the accounts of the night attack of the 10th Division at that battle, and Captain Vincent's and Colonel Haldane's observations on the employment of artillery, its co- operation with the infantry, and on the movements of the latter arm under artillery fire. Cavalrymen will also

read with profit and elation Captain Jardine's account of the manner in which the 2nd Cavalry Brigade under

Prince Kanin seized and profited by one of those rare opportunities for which the cavalry leader should always be reserving himself, as the foxhunter saves his horse for the long-delayed run of the season.

Vol. II. opens with an exceedingly interesting account of the defensive lines in which the opposing armies on the Sha-Ho faced each other for months on end, in many places not more than eighty yards apart,—" those of the Russians built solely for defence, their many lines encouraging the inclination to retire; those of the Japanese mere footholds whence to spring forward when the moment came." The failure of Mischenko's raid, which is next dealt with, should be compared with the success of two daring patrols of .Japanese cavalry before the battle of Blukden, and show in a nutshell the wrong way and the right in which to carry out this duty. Passing over the account of the groat battle of Mukden, which is replete with interest, but would demand a special notice to itself, and the letters on the now hackneyed subject of Port Arthur, we must call attention to the six-and-twenty admirable miscellaneous essays on points of tactics with which the second volume ends, and which together form a tactical treatise of the very highest practical utility.

The third volume, which is much shorter than the first two, deals briefly with the lugubrious story of the war as told by those of our officers who were attached to the Russian armies, and closes with an exhaustive General Report on " The Experiences of the War," by Colonel Waters and Major Horne, under no less than sixty-one heads, all of which are of the greatest possible value.

Space precludes us from anything more than this brief summary of contents. Like the Historical Section of the General Staff, we can only call attention to the immense importance of this series of direct statements of fact from the British officers who were privileged to be present in a struggle which, as already remarked, forms an epoch in military science. We should add that we were singularly fortunate in the officers to whose happy lot it fell to represent this country at the seat of war, since the character of their work far surpasses both in observation and deduction, as well as in literary merit, anything which has yet emanated from the Staff of our Army.

In conclusion, while it cannot be denied that these volumes are stiff reading, requiring many months, if not years, of close study, we would urge upon all officers, whether Regular or Territorial, the great desirability of making the effort and mastering their contents. For the latter, indeed, the Reports will be invaluable if they do nothing more than impress them with the realities of war. They will teach them as nothing else can the extreme importance, even in a second-line army—. if, in the brief periods which are available to them from their civil avocations for preparation and training, they are really to make themselves capable of entering upon a struggle in which to be second best is to be destroyed—of maintaining the highest possible standard of endeavour, and sternly suppress- ing, both in officers and men, anything which tends in the slightest degree towards luxury or unreality.