A friend of mine, who was in that war, told me the following story.  The Japanese troops were attacking one of the forts near Port Arthur with their usual desperate valour.  They cut zig-zag trenches up the hillside, and finally stormed and took a Russian trench close under the guns of the fort.  The Russians fled, leaving their dead and wounded behind.  After the melee, when night fell, five Japanese found themselves in that particular trench with seven Russians—­all pretty badly wounded—­with many others of course dead.  The riflemen in the fort were in such a nervous state, that at the slightest movement in the trench they fired, regardless of whom they might hit.  The whole party remained quiet during the night and most of the next day.  They were suffering from wounds, and without food or water, but they dared not move; they managed, however, to converse with each other a little—­especially through the Japanese lieutenant, who knew a little Russian.  On the second night the fever for water became severe.  One of the less wounded Russians volunteered to go and fetch some.  He raised himself from the ground, stood up in the darkness, but was discerned from the fort, and shot.  A second Russian did the same and was shot.  A Japanese did likewise.  Then the rest lay, quiet again.  Finally, the darkness having increased and the thirst and the wounds being intolerable, the Japanese lieutenant, who had been wounded in the legs and could not move about, said that if one of the remaining Russians would take him on his back he would guide the whole party into a place of safety in the Japanese lines.  So they did.  The Russian soldier crawled on his belly with the Japanese officer lying on his back, and the others followed, keeping close to the ground.  They reached the Japanese quarters, and were immediately, looked after and cared for.  A few days afterwards the five Russians came on board the transport on which my friend was engineer.  They were being taken as prisoners to Japan; but the Japanese crew could not do enough for them in the way of tea and cigarettes and dressing their wounds, and they made quite a jolly party all together on deck.  The Japanese officer was also on board, and he told my friend the story.

Gallantry towards the enemy has figured largely in the history of War—­sometimes as an individual impulse, sometimes as a recognized instruction.  European records afford us plenty of examples.  The Chinese, always great sticklers for politeness, used to insist in early times that a warrior should not take advantage of his enemy when the latter had emptied his quiver, but wait for him to pick up his arrows before going on with the fight.  And in one tale of old Japan, when one Daimio was besieging another, the besieged party, having run short of ammunition, requested a truce in order to fetch some more—­which the besiegers courteously granted!