japanese views. general fock's memorandum on fortress defence

the october assaults had been repulsed. the third obstinate attempt to get possession of arthur had been a complete failure, and had cost the enemy more than 10,000 killed and wounded. we breathed freely again. though tired and utterly worn out, the success instilled fresh life and energy into the whole garrison, and revived their hopes. after all, the japanese were only human beings, and they must eventually become tired out and have to confess that arthur was too much for them. the long months of bombardment, the anxious days of assault, the death and the suffering of thousands of our nearest and dearest, as well as that of the enemy, had somehow made us feel attached to these inhospitable mountains and the mournful ocean which silently lapped against the shores of the kwantun peninsula. arthur had become near and dear to us, almost as if it were our native land, in which we had passed our lives. it was painful to think that perhaps the time would come when the japanese might break in and become masters of it all. each of us felt in greater or less degree that he was taking part in a historic drama; he realized that the whole world—civilized and uncivilized—was keenly watching every phase of this bloody struggle, and was impatiently waiting the conclusion: for whatever the end[pg 223] was to be, it would have an influence, not only on the future of russia, but on the future of the world.

but to continue with our chronological narrative: on october 31 the enemy on the eastern front were making preparations to assault fort erh-lung-shan and the intermediate works near. they were repulsed in their assault on chi-kuan-shan, but that fort was in a most critical condition. on the west their assault on fortification no. 3 was beaten back, with a loss of nearly four companies to them from our gun-fire. on november 1 st?ssel excited much indignation by accusing a most excellent officer—colonel murman—against whom he had a grudge, of malingering. he appointed a special medical board to examine him, but similar publicity was not given to the finding of this board—an acquittal—as was given to the accusation. on november 2 the following entry was made by the late colonel raschevsky in his diary:

'it is interesting to spend a night in fort chi-kuan-shan. here we are all in good spirits, though rifle-fire never for a moment ceases. in the darkness of night, broken only by the detonation of a pyroxyline grenade, the flare of a rocket, or the flash of shrapnel, the dark figures of soldiers doing their best to repair the damage caused by the bombardment of october 30 can be seen swarming about. wood fires are kept burning in the ditch of the caponier, in order to prevent the enemy breaking through unseen along the ditch towards the gorge. we are waiting to be attacked to-morrow, the mikado's birthday. it is a strange coincidence that to-morrow is also the anniversary of the tsar's accession to the throne.'

raschevsky mentioned wood fires. in properly built forts in western europe a number of well-protected electric lights are arranged in the wall of the counter-scarp to light up the whole of the outer ditch of the work. of course, such a luxury was not to be expected in arthur,[pg 224] where the fortress was defended by primitive means and all was left to the bravery and inventiveness of individuals. in many ways the defence suggested medi?val days, when human life was of little value. the japanese, heroically throwing away their lives in front of arthur, strewing the ground with their bodies as if they were sacks of earth, showed that we had to deal with enlightened barbarians, inspired by great patriotism and a deep conviction that a victorious campaign, in particular the conquest of arthur, would give them a permanent economic position on the continent of asia. i know that i shall be told that i am wrong, but, still, i venture to express my opinion that the japanese are savages, but enlightened savages, for they knew that they could by their blood relieve an economic crisis in their country. in japan before the war i often talked with one of the best educated of japanese. on my asking if japan really meant to fight us (i was then under the delusion that arthur was ready and that our war office was capable), he thought deeply in an apparent effort to answer me. the question was a serious one, one which every japanese invariably tried to avoid. i had long intended to put it, but had refrained, knowing from experience that i should only receive the kind of reply of which every japanese is a past-master—a reply—but not an answer. he thought for five minutes and then said: 'our nation works differently to the way you work in europe. our poor do not know what it is to rest. they are thrifty and sober; they have little to eat, and that little is bad; yet most of them are fairly educated. machinery is beginning to be largely used everywhere, so that small industries are failing, and the proletariat is increasing daily. our nation is fond of its country and of the mikado, and wishes much to eat, drink and read, to multiply and to educate their children, etc.—in fact, to live under conditions of certain refinement.'[pg 225] (he was quite right. i have travelled much, and, with the exception of among the english, i have never seen such refinement and culture in domestic life as with the japanese. japan is called the 'country of the rising sun'; i think i should not be far from the truth if i called it the 'country of children that never cry.') 'politics have taken a serious turn. we have begun to negotiate with europe. we commenced to watch, to listen to and to learn from europe: now we have learnt all that there was to teach. on all our ships and in our factories english engineers have for several years gradually been replaced by our own, and we are running these things ourselves; but what we want is land for our growing population and markets for our industries. in tokio they have been doing their best that the masses should hate the russians for taking arthur, and they have been working on the national pride. the school-teacher and the priest have educated and are educating the nation to this end, and every japanese knows his own national history well, and knows, for instance, that in olden days korea belonged to japan, and that one of our empresses had of her own free-will given it up.'

i listened attentively, and said that japan would never succeed if she tried a fall with russia, for that colossus would crush her. in a couple of months the clamour of war was heard. having arrived in arthur, i, like others, at first believed in a happy issue of the campaign. i was convinced that japan would be annihilated, and i was sorry for her.

the day before the anniversary of the capture[31] of arthur, colonel tirtoff, who was in charge of the novy kry till artemieff's arrival, had asked me to write a leading article. i took one to him the same day, out of which he cut everything unpleasant that i had put in about the english.[pg 226] (i used then to write against them very strongly.) 'admiral makharoff is opposed to attacking the english in the press until the war is over. he does not doubt how things will end, but till that time he wishes to be polite; and in petersburg they are of the same opinion. we must not commit ourselves,' was the advice of colonel tirtoff, as he handed back my corrected ms.

the following extract from order no. 780 issued by general st?ssel, published at this time, will not be without interest to the reader:

(1) 'the detachments in each fort and battery will be told off in three reliefs. the first will be on duty and ready for any emergency, being relieved every two hours, between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. if there are two officers, each will take half the night. additional to officers commanding sections of the defence, the following officers will be responsible that this order is carried out, and will take steps accordingly: generals nickitin, tserpitsky; colonels reuss, savitsky, khvostoff and nekrashevitch-poklad. general nickitin, being the senior, will arrange for the tours of duty, and will indicate the sections to be visited and the hours for visits.'

notwithstanding the fairly heavy losses we had suffered during the bombardments and assaults, especially in the last one, smirnoff had not abandoned a single important work of the main line. with the exception of nos. 1 and 2 redoubts we had held our ground. yet general fock continually endeavoured to convince general st?ssel and the garrison that smirnoff did not know how to conduct the defence of the fortress, and what could have been more subversive of discipline than the following memorandum published at the time by him?—

[pg 227]

memorandum, dated port arthur, november 3, 1904.

'a besieged fortress can be compared to a man suffering from gangrene. in the same way that he must sooner or later succumb, so, too, must a fortress fall. the doctor and the commandant should realize this fact from the very first day that the former is summoned to the bedside of the patient, and the latter placed in command of the fortress. this, however, does not prevent the former believing in miracles, or the latter hoping for a happy issue by external relief. and this belief is more necessary for the latter than the former, provided it is not so great as to make him careless. gangrene attacks a man in his extremities—i.e., in the toes—and it is the doctor's duty to separate the part affected. his task consists in prolonging the patient's life, and the commandant's in postponing the date of the fortress's fall. the doctor must not allow the patient suddenly to die, any more than the commandant must allow the fortress to fall suddenly through some unforeseen circumstance. the patient should succumb gradually, beginning with the extremities, and so should the fall of the fortress be gradual, beginning with its outworks. successes with the first, as with the second, will depend upon the extent to which the infected member is in time removed, or the attacked position is abandoned. this task is no easy one; the doctor must be a skilled professional to be able to fix the moment when the diseased organ is more harmful than useful; but this alone is insufficient, for the patient must first be persuaded to agree to amputation, as without his consent the operation will be impossible. who cares to lose a leg or an eye? some would prefer to die, and the doctor must be able to persuade the invalid that it is possible to get about without a leg, that an american artificial leg will enable him to dance. nor is it easy for the commandant, who must have a thorough grasp of the situation, to be able to know when an attacked position has inflicted all the loss that it can inflict on the attacker, and to recognize the moment when the balance of superiority passes to the enemy. the skill consists in being able to abandon a position before the final blow is delivered, and at the same time to sell the enemy his success dearly. it must be borne in mind that fortress warfare resembles rear-guard fighting, a fact which does not seem to be appreciated by everyone. but besides eyes the commandant must have character,[pg 228] for commonsense and conscience will call out "retire!" while sentiment and anger will cry "hold on!" he does not know what he can get—like the artificial leg—in place of what he loses. with the doctor it is different, because his medical store contains false limbs, the commandant's does not. the doctor amputates the infected organs so as not unnecessarily to waste the life's blood, keeping it for the heart. the commandant abandons by degrees the enceinte of the fortress so as to preserve strength for the keep. the length of a defensive line should correspond to the strength of the garrison. no doctor would torture a patient by attempting to reunite the amputated organs, even though it be a tooth taken out by mistake. and, similarly, no commandant should waste his men in an attempt to recapture a position once yielded to the enemy, even though it were abandoned through carelessness. at sevastopol we held firmly on to what we had, but we did not once attempt to retake a position; the redoubts komchatsky, selenginsky and volinsky are good examples. osman pasha, the celebrated defender of plevna, never attempted to retake a position; on losing one he hastened to hold out another to our blows. thus, when we seized grivitsa redoubt, he got ready another for us which he named grivitsa redoubt no. 2, with which he checked our onslaughts. would he have held out long if he had attempted with his army of 40,000 to retake the redoubts from us? he was careful of his men, and they served him with their spades. a doctor to perform his task successfully must have more than a true hand and eye; he must make his assistants conform strictly to his requirements, and must also know in detail all their work, and be able to direct them while doing that work. who could perform a good operation if his assistants did not know how to help him, or through stupidity were to pull the thread or the wool out of a wound? to that there would usually be but one end—death. and so for a commandant, it is not sufficient for him merely to select the site of positions and indicate the style of fortification. what use is a fortified position if its loop-holes are unsuitable for firing, or, instead of giving the firer cover, expose him? the germans assert that with modern rifles a flying sap cannot approach closer than to within 800 metres, etc., etc.'

this is a sufficiently long quotation to show in which[pg 229] direction fock's mind was working, and how he took smirnoff's disinclination to surrender anything. it was poison—slow—but certain poison, which even in october had begun to demoralize the garrison, which was beginning to suffer from scurvy, induced by bad food. the commandant knew that this memorandum was known to the whole garrison, for copies had been lithographed and freely distributed. but how could he deal with this enemy of the fortress? he had done everything that was in his power; he had already removed him from duty, and could do no more. the reader must not forget that general fock had great influence over st?ssel, that what he said at this time he said 'by order.' there was only one thing to do, namely, to arrest both of them. why did smirnoff not do this? may be asked. because the garrison was already demoralized. it was tired, it was morally and physically worn out; and if he had arrested st?ssel—the tsar's ambassador,' as fock called him—he would not have had the full sympathy of the garrison, but would only have created more dissension and scandal. for what would these partisans of st?ssel—the all-powerful—have said in arthur, if they had found out that he had been arrested by the hated smirnoff? for he was then literally omnipotent, and the future hopes of many depended on him. when he arrived in russia, instead of going into confinement as a prisoner of war, hundreds of his friends thought that he was the hero and smirnoff the intriguer. read their evidence before the committee of inquiry, and you will be amazed to see to what extent men can lie to save their own worthless skins. therefore, keenly as smirnoff felt the baneful influence of this effusion of fock's, he was powerless. to have such a spirit fostered in the fortress was truly an alarming symptom.

on november 3 there was a heavy bombardment,[pg 230] which resulted in a tremendous fire in the oil stores, covering the surrounding country in dense black smoke.

the following are some entries in raschevsky's diary:

november 9.—'to-day the japanese succeeded in blowing up the magazine on zaredoubt battery with their 11-inch shells. the explosion was awful, but luckily our shells were not damaged. on b battery two casemates have again been penetrated by an 11-inch shell which burst in the lower floor.'

november 10.—'to-day we fired from fortification no. 3, with the mortar improvised by lieutenant podgursky, a pyroxyline bomb weighing about 40 pounds. this mortar is very convenient: it makes hardly any noise in firing, but it is difficult to regulate. in any case the effect of the bomb is very great, and with luck should cause the enemy much damage. they have for quite a long time fired at us in the forts from similar guns, and this is the first time that we have retaliated in kind.'

november 12.—'the japanese seem to be doing nothing. in places where formerly we could not show ourselves without being fired on we can now pass with impunity. this gives rise to the hope that they are in a bad way, and will leave arthur.'

it was not only colonel raschevsky who thought this. many buoyed themselves up with a firm belief in a speedy relief. unfortunately these hopes were not destined to be fulfilled.

november 14.—'chi-kuan-shan fort, kuropatkin lunette, and b battery are in a most critical state. the latter has been broken down and so battered by 11-inch shells as to be useless. the masonry of the casemates is all crumbling away, and the commandant of the battery is asking that it may be tied together by a wire hawser! i daily get similar original suggestions.'

pic

b battery.

on november 18 the following telegram from lieu[pg 231]tenant-general sakharoff to st?ssel was published in orders:

'admiral alexeieff is leaving for petersburg. general kuropatkin is appointed commander-in-chief of the army and fleet. from the troops in the theatre of war and the corps which are now arriving three armies will be formed. the following are appointed to command them: first, linevitch; second, gripenberg; third, kaulbars. the baltic fleet has passed the spanish coast. the manchurian army commencing to advance on october 5 compelled the enemy to fall back; but, afterwards, having met considerable opposition, and after a series of obstinate battles from october 9 till 17, took up its position on the bank of liao-ho, in very close touch with the enemy. all three japanese armies are in front of us in fortified positions. the commander-in-chief hopes to attack the enemy and advance, and he is confident that the gallant troops in arthur will hold out.'

and so the viceroy went away, and arthur had to work out its own salvation. his departure from the army added to the depression produced by sakharoff's telegram. in the garrison it was no secret that between him and kuropatkin strained relations had for a long time existed, but it was thought that from the date of the retirement at liao-yang they had assumed a better character. it was well known in the fortress that liao-yang had been splendidly fortified, and as regards preparation conceded little to arthur. it was known that in front of liao-yang we had 25,000 more men than the enemy, and that alexeieff had asked for, or insisted on, a forward movement whatever it might cost, in order that the fortress might be relieved. the viceroy had strained every nerve towards arthur, as he well knew that, as well as attracting the attention of a large army, it was a sanctuary for the fleet, which would be a decisive factor in the campaign. he feared the destruction of the fleet in arthur, for in that he read a bad ending to the war. he knew that upon the fall of the fortress[pg 232] the fleet would be destroyed, and that once it was destroyed the campaign would be lost, for we should never obtain command of the sea. so long as the sea was not ours, so long as the japanese could feed their armies from japan without hindrance, it was useless to think of a successful issue. he realized all this, but whatever the cause his wishes were not accomplished.