the whole of the country between Chang-tan and Hsinmin-ting. This being realised, it is difficult to understand how Nogi's army was able to reach the railway terminus without being opposed. If ever there was a doubt as to the efficiency of Mishchenko's cavalry and his vaunted Cossacks, it stood confirmed by the successful occupation of Hsin-min-ting by the Port Arthur army. For if, in the whole area of operations, there ever was a terrain that was suited to the movements of an independent cavalry division, it was in this particular section. But, and here the inherent cunningness and military acumen of the Japanese is demonstrated, two events had taken place before Nogi was launched on his dash for Hsinmin-ting, which were calculated to clear the road for him. The first was the advance of Kawamura and Kuroki in the mountains against the Russian left. The second was the arrival of three squadrons of cavalry 160 miles north of Mukden. The Japanese staff knew his Russian well. He knew that if three squadrons arrived unexpectedly

the railway communications, the numbers of the force would be exaggerated out of all proportion, and that in the general dismay felt for the possible destruction of the railway, which was the main and only artery for the gigantic force collected at Mukden, any menace to its safety would be almost certain to cause the withdrawal of Mishchenko's Cossacks to clear up the situation on the line of communi

cations. And there seems no doubt that this manoeuvre had the desired result, for, as will be subsequently shown, Nogi arrived at Hsin-min-ting practically unopposed.

We have not access to the same information concerning the Russian dispositions as we have with regard to our allies, but although there has been. a general tendency throughout the whole campaign, a tendency which the Japanese have not thought it worth while to contradict,-to overstate the Russian numbers, yet we believe that actually at the battle of Mukden the Russian army had reached its highest total. Lord Brooke estimates the Russian strength as being well over 350,000. These numbers to some extent are borne out by the Russian order of battle, compiled by the Japanese from the evidence of their prisoners after the battle of Mukden. This estimate, according to 'The Times' correspondent, was as follows: The Russians had three armies, the first under Linievitch, the second under Kulbars, and the third under Bilderling. Under Linievitch were three army corps-the 2nd, 3rd and 4thwith Rennenkampf's independent corps of Cossacks, making a total of 100 battalions of infantry, 30 batteries of artillery, and 48 sotnias of cavalry. Kulbars had four army corps : the 1st Siberian, the 5th, the 8th, and the 10th, together with the Division of Rifles. His army mustered 144 battalions of infantry, and 38 batteries of artillery. Bilderling's command comprised the

1st, the 6th, and the 17th corps, in all 96 battalions of infantry, and 35 batteries of artillery. Then there was a general reserve, consisting of the 16th army corps-32 battalions of infantry, and 12 batteries of artillery. There was Mishchenko's cavalry division, consisting of 96 sotnias and 4 battalions of Za-Amur Border infantry; there were 34 sotnias of Ussuri cavalry, Amur Cossacks, and Orenburg cavalry; and there were finally 36 battalions of horse artillery, mountain-guns, field howitzers, siege-guns, and unattached artillery. The grand total stood: 376 battalions of infantry, 171 batteries of artillery, and 178 sotnias of cavalry, -making numerically about 300,800 rifles, 34,000 gunners (with 1368 guns), and 26,700 sabres, or a grand aggregate of 361,500 of all arms. Of the disposal of this huge force we have as yet only the broad outline. We know, however, the main division of the three army corps. Bilderling had taken over from Gripenberg and was responsible for the Russian right; Kulbars maintained the centre; and Linievitch opposed Kawamura and Kuroki in the mountains in the east. Rennenkampf prolonged Linievitch's line to the left; and Mishchenko, as we have already shown, was responsible for the open alluvial plains of the Liau-ho and the Hun-ho. We have, therefore, in this action the extraordinary spectacle of very nearly a million of men in action, since we may safely estimate that the Japanese numbers were 25 per

cent in advance of those of their opponents.

The first object of the Japanese staff was to confirm Kuropatkin in his belief that the Japanese soldier was not comparable with the Russian in the low country. On February 19 the Japanese army of the extreme right, that is Kawamura's army, all veterans from the Chinese War, broke up its standing camp and threw out two advance guards to cover the two roads leading directly upon the Russian fortified positions in the Ta-ling range. The thaw had commenced, but it was not the warm comfortable change of temperature that we know in our temperate zone. It was a thaw that was slow to beat the efforts of the frost, and as miserable a season for campaigning almost as the dead of winter. But the start had to be made or the ice over the rivers would not hold; and if the ice gave completely, it would be weeks before the surface of the soil would have allowed the pontoon waggons to arrive. On the 20th and 21st of February, Kawamura's advance guards drove in the Russian outposts. Then the great serried triple line of works which topped the still snow-driven ridges of Ta-ling stood out grisly and forbidding in front of Kawamura's veterans. As on all previous occasions the Russian engineers had spared no pains in making their intrenchments as impregnable as the art and science of military engineering would allow. There were the same areas of barbed wire en

tanglements, the endless rows of spiked pitfalls, and the many open patches which carried the suspicion of contact mine and other diabolic contrivance. But, grisly as they were, these works had to be carried; and it is curious that so young a nation should have been able to produce an infantry so dogged, so steadfast, and so persevering, that it was able, by sheer recuperative insistence, to carry obstacles such as infantry had never before been called upon to face.

From February 22 to the end of February 24 Kawamura's veterans were hurling themselves against this triple line of defences. On the 23rd and 24th, to add to the miseries of these desperate soldiers, a blinding blizzard blew down the valley. Even though this almost irresistible force of nature was sweeping in their faces, this inimitable infantry managed, in the midst of desperate carnage, to seize one foothold in the Ta-ling Pass, from which they were able to lever their stubborn, yet less active, enemy. The fighting was Homeric. We have on record the description of one of these assaults which will stand for nearly every Japanese success. This spectator had the good fortune to be present within a thousand yards of one of these desperate struggles for a hill crest,—a struggle which lasted without intermission for forty-eight hours. Although in the description it may lose much of the fire and animation of the actual event, yet it gives a curiously vivid impression of

a class of combat which we ourselves two years ago believed to have become obsolete. The Japanese were advancing in full daylight to the assault of one of these Ta-ling ridges. Every section of the battalion as it advanced stood out clearly defined, since the bliz zard, of which we have spoken, had just covered the ground with a thin fresh veneer of snow. Even though the powdery flakes were still beating in the faces of this intrepid infantry, yet this conspiracy of nature was not altogether an unmixed evil. The carpet of white which swept up the slope they had to face left exposed the triple row of deathtraps which the Russian sappers had sunk in the hillside. For a thousand yards there was little cover for the advance. Until it could get well under the slope of the position, where in places the rocks shelved perpendicularly, the assault was absolutely exposed. But experience, the bitter experience of eighteen months' war, had taught these men to take their cover with them. Each man had a sandbag on his shoulder, and as each section faced the blaze of infantry fire which opened as they unmasked from cover, they threw the sandbags as a wall in front of them and grovelled behind them for such scant shelter as as they gave. And all the while the razoredge of the position was swept by a hail of shrapnel which seemed ceaseless in its continuity. By these means, on the first day, considerable progress was made, and by four in the

afternoon the residue of the leading battalion had struggled as far as the wire chevauxde-frise, and had prised and levered the supporting poles of these entanglements from their sockets. This end accomplished, and the leading battalion had run its course. But the sandbags and the dead bodies of the bearers that it had left behind served as stepping stones for the next battalion, and by evening this support made good the open as far as the perpendicular rocks and the last forty yards rise before the actual position. It was here that the assault was to stick. Three times during the night were reinforcements pushed up and an endeavour made to rush the summit. The return of daylight disclosed the countless little heaps of brown bodies half covered with snow, grim evidence of the ease and completeness with which the Russian defenders had defeated every effort. As bees hang on a honeycomb so the little Japanese infantry clung to the face of the perpendicular which gave them cover from the merciless riflefire which swept down upon them from above. As the watcher lay with his glass glued on the sky-line, he could see the Russian infantrymen raise themselves over the parapet and fire down the slope in front of them. Even the pitiless rain of shrapnel did not seem to disconcert them. Their persistence in defence seemed to be as great as that of their enemy in attack. Presently another section of little fur-clad Japanese would

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leave the cover of the cliff and gallantly climb upwards. The Russians would rise to meet them, and before half the ascent was made those of the assaulters left standing would face about, break, and rush pell-mell down the hillside. If one such an attack were made that forenoon, twenty sections must have essayed the attempt and failed. Then, at last, when the whole thing seemed useless, suddenly a corporal and four men made good the ascent to the parapet, and appeared upon the sky-line. The Russians rose to meet them, and there, silhouetted against the winter sky, bayonet crossed bayonet. The long taper weapon of the Muscovite drove the Japanese back, but the interlude of Homeric combat had served its purpose. the little fur-clad infantrymen sank back with steel-pierced bodies, another section was supporting them. Saved from that pitiless rifle-fire, these latter in their turn appeared upon the sky-line. Section after section. poured in behind them. For ten minutes, or perhaps fifteen, the figures bobbed and fluctuated on that crest-line. impossible to apportion success or failure. Instinctively, as it were, there was a lull in the shell-fire. In the immediate vicinity both armies seemed spell-bound by the issue being struggled for on that single hill. Then, suddenly, the puffs of shrapnel began to burst again, and the watchers could see the black backs of men firing down the reverse slope of the hill. The Russians had given way. The Ta-ling heights were won by just a

It was