[Page 186] One gunboat sought shelter at Chefoo, where I was passing my summer vacation.  The Japanese, in hot pursuit, showed no more respect to the neutrality of China than they had shown to Korea.  Boarding the fugitive vessel, they summoned the captain to surrender.  He replied by seizing the Japanese officer in his arms and throwing himself into the sea.  They were rescued; and the Japanese then carried off the boat under the guns of a Chinese admiral.  Of this incident in its main features I was an eye-witness.  I may add that we were near enough to bear witness to the fact of the siege; for, in the words of Helen Sterling: 

 “We heard the boom of guns by day
  And saw their flash by night,
  And almost thought, tho’ miles away,
  That we were in the fight.

The Chinese admiral, feeling the affront to the Dragon flag and fearing that he would be called to account, promptly tendered his resignation.  He was told to keep his place; and, by way of consoling him for his inaction, the Minister of Marine added, “You are not to blame for not firing on the Japanese.  They are fighting our battles—­we can’t do anything against them.”  So much for Chinese neutrality in theory and in practice.

Kuropatkin, like the Parthian, “most dreaded when in flight,” renouncing any further attempt to break through the cordon which the Japanese had drawn around the doomed fortress, intrenched his forces in and around Liaoyang.  His position was strong by [Page 187] nature, and he strengthened it by every device known to a military engineer; yet he was driven from it in a battle which lasted nine days.

The Japanese, though not slow to close around his outposts, were too cautious to deliver their main attack until they could be certain of success.  The combat thickened till, on August 24, cannon thundered along a line of forty miles.  Outflanked by his assailants, the Russian general, perceiving that he must secure his communications on the north or sustain a siege, abandoned his ground and fell back on Mukden.

In this, the greatest battle of the campaign thus far, 400,000 men were engaged, the Japanese, as usual, having a considerable majority.  The loss of life was appalling.  The Russian losses were reported at 22,000; and those of Japan could not have been less.  Yet Liaoyang with all its horrors was only a prelude to a more obstinate conflict on a more extended arena.

Without hope of succour by land, and without a fleet to bring relief by sea, the Russians defended their fortress with the courage of despair.  Ten years before this date the Japanese under Field-marshal Oyama had carried this same stronghold almost by assault.  Taking it in the rear, a move which the Chinese thought so contrary to the rules of war that they had neglected their landward defences, they were masters of the place on the morning of the third day.