OCR Text |
Show JAPAN'S PROWESS. The military superiority of the Japanese generals gen-erals and admirals has awakened the admiration of the world. There are several reasons for it. Those officers at least those of the first rank, have been educated In Great Britain, France, Germany and the United States. And they have been the pick of 40,000,000 of people. They have appreciated the honor. When they left home to be educated abroad, they devoted de-voted their all to country. The result was that in school they were incessant students; so soon as they understood under-stood the rules they subjected their lives to them: their teachers report that they never made the least trouble, while as a rule, they were more given" to study and investigation than native students The result is seen in the war. They have made no mistakes; they have tried expedients never before tried In war, both by sea- and land, but the result every time has proved that the innovation in-novation was not a mere cunning experiment, but rather the demonstration on the black-board of the world, the solution of a new problem which they had worked out in secret before they ever attempted to demonstrate it In the face of an enemy. Their marching backward toward the Russians in the sand storm before Mukden, until they were near enough to wheel and charge was one; their drawing of the Russian fire as they approached Port Arthur, until from fragments pf Russian shells they could fix the location and calibre of the guns in tho Russian batteries, was another; their standing off eight miles from the Russian fleet and smashing the Russian ships by the aocuracy of thoir gunners was another. Then they are Oriental fatalists, indifferent to death and with such a foe the only way to conquer Is to kill and kill and kill until the remnant retires. If they have given the world lessons in handling armies and ships, they have given it a higher lesson. les-son. They have shown a patriotism such as has not been displayed by airy nation for two thousand thou-sand years, such as has never been seen since the Grecian mothers bade their sons to come home with or upon their shields. The Russians fought as well as any nation of Europe cquld have fought, In all the battles of the war. The awful list of their losses is pr00f of this. But they did not suspect, for it was never heard of before, that they were to face an enemy that could fight almost continuously for ten days and nights. It was a favorite practice of Napoleon to hurl his columns on the right or left or center of an enemy to mask his real design to make an overwhelming over-whelming assault upon some other portion of the enemy's line; but he never made thirteen distinct assaults upon an enemy's center, covering ten days and involving the slaughter of 40,000 of nh men, to enable other divisions of his army to en velop both wings of the enemy and make their situation untenable. This was what the Japa nese did at Mukden. It was a miracle that the Russian army got away with reasonable order, for it was clearly Oyama's intention to make another Sedan, and he would, save for the splendid fighting fight-ing and generalship of the Russians |