The Japanese, not choosing to encounter the rigours of a Manchurian winter, waited till the advent of spring.  The air was mild and the streams spanned by bridges of ice.  The manoeuvres need not be described here in detail.  After more than ten days of continuous fighting on a line of battle nearly two hundred miles long, with scarcely less than a million of men engaged (Japanese in majority as before), the great Russian strategist broke camp and retired in good order.  His army had escaped, but it had lost in killed and wounded 150,000.  The losses of Japan amounted to 50,000.

[Page 190] The greatest battle of this latest war, the Battle of Mukden was in some respects the greatest in modern history.  In length of line, in numbers engaged, and in the resulting casualties its figures are double those of Waterloo.  Once more by masterly strategy a rout was converted into a retreat; and the Russian army withdrew to the northwest.

Weary of crawfish tactics the Czar appointed General Lineivitch to the chief command; and the ablest of the Russian generals was relieved of the duty of contriving ways of “escape.”  To cover the rear of a defeated force is always reckoned a post of honour; but it is not the sort of distinction that satisfies the ambition of a great commander.

By dint of efforts and sacrifices an enormous fleet was assembled for the relief of Port Arthur.  It sailed from Cronstadt on August 11, 1905, leaving the Baltic seaports unprotected save by the benevolent neutrality of the German Kaiser, who granted passage through his ship canal, although he knew the fleet was going to wage war on one of his friends.

Part of the fleet proceeded via Suez, and part went round the Cape of Good Hope—­to them a name of mockery.  The ships moved leisurely, their commanders not doubting that Stoessel would be able to hold his ground; but scarcely had they reached a rendezvous which, by the favour of France, they had fixed in the waters adjacent to Madagascar, when they heard of the fall of Port Arthur.  Of the annihilation of the fleet attached to the fortress, and of the destruction of a squadron coming to the rescue from the north they had previously learned.  With what dismay did they [Page 191] now hear that the key of the ocean was lost.  Almost at the same moment the last of Job’s messengers arrived with the heavier tidings that Mukden, the key of the province, had been abandoned by a defeated army—­stunning intelligence for a forlorn hope!  Should they turn back or push ahead?  Anxious question this for Admiral Rozhesvenski and his officers.  Too late for Port Arthur, might they not reenforce Vladivostok and save it from a like fate?  The signal to “steam ahead” was displayed on the flagship.

Slowly and painfully, its propellers clogged by seaweed, its keels overgrown with barnacles, the grand armada crossed the Indian Ocean and headed northward for the China Sea.  On May 27, steering for the Korean channel, it fell into a snare which a blind man ought to have been able to foresee.  Togo’s fleet had the freedom of the seas.  Where could it be, if not in that very channel?  Yet on the Russians went: