1th March.
"Prince, on the day when, by and Your draggled war hounds homeward slink, If you should ask and they reply—hat will your General Stéscel think Nearly thirty-five years ago occur-the great disaster of Sedan wherein a great part of the French armies was virtually annihilated, Japan was then just beginning to adopt the civilisation of the West, the Restoration having taken plac: three years before. She was beginning to organise her army and her navy on Western lines, and it was the general belief of foreigners in the East that her zeal for reform was only a flash in the pan, and that there would sven "be a reaction. Thirty-four years afterwards she aballenged the greatest military Power in Europe to single combat, and' within, eleven months she re= peated at Port Arthur the capitulation of Metz, and at, Mukden the of Nepoteon If, which was rotten collapse of Sedan. It was the Empire
at the core, not the French people, which was defeated by the Germans in 1870; it is the bureaucracy of Nicholas I, also rotten at the core, not the Eussian peop! " Which his been defeated by the Japanese. But the battle of Mukden far outranks the capitulation of Sedan. The ison that surrendered to the mans numbered 4,000 offic: rs, 14,000 wounded, and 83,000 fighting men. On the Russian might and centre, no details having been yet received from the Russian left, the Japanese report finding 26,500 Rnssinn dead, over 40,000 prisoners, and 90,000 other Russian casualties more than half Kuropatkin's force at the beginning of the battle.
This terrible blow, the practic: l annihilation of Russia's. great Manchurian army, has been pre-Byam, while his troops were lyi ring for months by Mars josotive in winter quarters chind The combination was an elaborate séia's ces. one. Port Arthur had to fall, and The blow that Japan has dealt her, General Nogi and his army to be with the evident incompetence of her brought up unseen and uvhea: d-of administration and the discontent of to the west of Mukden, thus lengthen-her people, lias rhO&t Seriously injured ing and strengthening the Japanese her credit in Europe. France; hither-lof. Some day, no doubt, we shall are told, to unloose her purse-strings to her. unfailing resource, refuses, we know how this waa don; bow: all its impediments, was taken in the whole army corps, with its guns again until.the war is over; she can get. no help in London or Vienna, depth of winter from Port Arthur to and there is a limit to the assistance Hsinmiotuo, a distance of nearly Berlin can give her. She will, of three hundred miles, without any course, repudiate any idea of making word of its progress reaching the out-peace until it is on the point of being side world, There are rumours that made. But one thing that is cortaie another Japanese force was brought is that Japan will insist on Russia up to lengthen and strengthen the treating with her direct, not through Japanese right, and indeed it seems any intermediaries, and Japan will difficult to believe that Kurok: could careful that the terms she makes are have bad men enough ta reach out such that it will be a peace and not to Hsinking on the east, and yet a truce. It will be natural for Russia keep touch with Nozu in the centre; today the flattering unction to her for it must be remembered that soul that she is only making a truce, Kuropatkin, the' most able Russian an that she will reopen hostilities General of the day, had the advan-and crush her enemy as soon as she tage of being in the centre of the has had time to reorganise her army Japanese semi-circular position; and and navy; but, the sacrifices that Oyama had to keep his whole line of Japan has made are too great to over a hundred miles strong enough allow her to consent. for a moment to to prevent either his right or left any terms thit will not make it flank being turned, or his centre humanly impossible to Russia to broken through, But. what these begin fighting her again for at least Japanese reinforcements ai' their twenty years; and well within that extreme right were, or whence and period we may hope to sco a govern-how they appeared at the right moment in Russia that will realise that ment opposite Hsinking in time to her true prosperity lie in developing ce-operate in the general advance, is her internal resources and raising the not yet known. The strai of lot, of her peasants and workmen, Oyama at the battle of Mukden will instead of wasting contributions be for years a subject of study at the wrung from her people in distant military schools of the world, But adventures for the benefit of a what will General Stéssel think? If} corrupt oligarchy. he had held out another month or so, Oyama's great plan would have been delayed until the thaw broke up the Manchurian roads and made them im ble.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.