China and the West

Baring, Maurice. With the Russians in Manchuria [ID D32572]. (2)
Liaoyang to Ta-shi-chiao [Dashiqiao].
I arrived at Liaoyang on the 22nd of June. Liaoyang is only fifty miles from Mukden, and the journey took nearly twelve hours. Liaoyang, as a town, resembles Mukden only it is less imposing, and perhaps even more picturesque and more dirty; the environs are certainly more beautiful. Like Mukden it is surrounded by a big wall ; only at Mukden the town has overflowed and formed large suburbs ; at Liaoyang there is only a small suburb on the east side of the town. As at Mukden, there was a collection of small brick-built government offices clustered round the railway station.
There was far more animation at Liaoyang than at Mukden ; General Kouropatkin was at Ta-shi-chiao when I arrived ; but nevertheless one felt that one was somewhere near a war. Streams of carts poured through the town, the green two-wheeled carts called dvoogolkas which the Russians use for their transport; troops frequently marched through the streets and officers arrived at the hotel on their way to or from the front.
The hotel was kept by a Greek ; it was not very comfortable and the flies gave one but little peace ; still there was an atmosphere of gaiety about Liao-yang, a constant stream of arrivals, a bustle and life which did not exist in Mukden. I spent a week at the hospital, being laid up at Dr Westwater's house, a part of which he has very kindly turned into an hospital. Dr Westwater is almost the only foreigner in Manchuria who has any prestige in the eyes of the Chinese. He has lived at Liaoyang for many years, and the Chinese, not excepting the Hun- hutzes and the Boxers, regard him as a kind of divinity. He is equally popular and respected among the Russians, and was attached to their Red Cross during the Chinese campaign. He made a part of his house into an hospital, and looked after such of the correspondents and military attaches who fell ill.
His garden was a most ideal spot, and testified to the extraordinary fertility of the soil — you sow a seed one day, and on the morrow you notice a herbaceous border. Every kind of vegetable grows there. With regard to this, strangely mistaken ideas are prevalent in England ; people used to say that it would be impossible for the Russians to carry on the war in Manchuria, as they would not be able to live on the country, whereas it is owing to the fact of Manchuria being what it is that the war was possible at all. Russia could have supported an army of a million men in Manchuria without importing a single sack of flour from Russia.
In a normal year there is a big enough export from Newchang to feed an army. Moreover, the granary of Manchuria is the district north of Mukden which up to a short time ago had been practically untouched. To talk about the Russian resources being exhausted because Liaoyang had been taken, was equivalent to saying that because London was taken the resources of an army occupying all the country north of the Trent were at an end. Practically, all the supply that the Russians import from Russia consists of bread, sugar, biscuits, and coffee.
Again, they had in Mongolia an inexhaustible supply of horses and cattle on which they could draw. If there was occasionally a shortage of food it was not owing to lack of supplies, but to lack of time, as is always the case on forced marches.
What a country for the disciples of Mr Haig and Mrs Earle ! What a delightful pot-pourri could be written from a Manchurian garden ! In connection with this, Dr Westwater told me that he performed the most serious operations on the Chinese without any rise of temperature occurring, and he attributed this to the fact that they eat no meat.
At Liaoyang my Chinese servant left me, partly because I had paid him his wages, pardy because I was going to the front, and partly because I gendy kicked him out of the room one day when he had not come near me because it was a Chinese feast He said he had lost face and must therefore leave my service.
Lord Brooke, Reuter's correspondent, and I engaged two Montenegrin servants, named respectively Georgio and Siacco, who were afterwards the source of no little trouble.
On the 13th of July we received the news that we were allowed to go to the front, and on the 15th I left with Brooke for Ta-shi-chiao, together with two Montenegrins, two mules, and five ponies which it took twelve hours to entrain. Brooke and I had been appointed to the cavalry division of the ist Siberian Army Corps, consisting of four regiments of Siberian Cossacks, a regiment of Dragoons, and the 2nd Trans- Baikal battery under the command of General Samsonoff. I stayed a day and a night at Ta-shi-chiao, and lived in the vestry of the Roman Catholic Church with MM. Nodeau and Roucouli, the correspondents of the Journal and, the Temps, General Samsonoff was himself at Ta-shi-chiao, being indisposed after months of ceaseless and exhausting work. His place was being taken by General Kossagofsky. I proceeded to join my division, which was occupying a small village south-west of that place.
I started early in the morning and found the village without much difficulty. The general was away, but I was received by two officers of the 4th Siberian Cossack Regiment who were camping in a small Chinese kitchen-garden. They gave me some excellent soup, and some chicken, and tea, followed immediately afterwards by coffee, and received me with that kind of natural simple hospitality which is more precious than rubies, and is, in fact, the real true courtesy. One thinks of the elaborate counterfeit of good manners, the studied phrases of those who, being denuded of the true gift, aim at a kind of Louis XIV. style of complicated civility, and one shudders. These Cossack officers were real Cossacks. They had spent most of their life in the wilds of I do not quite know what inaccessible region, with no fellow-companions save the soldiers under them and Chinese peasants.
During my stay in Manchuria I met almost every kind of Russian officer: guardsmen who had exchanged into cavalry regiments ; men who had been there for years ; officers from provincial Russian towns, from Siberian towns, from the Caucasus, from Moscow, from Perm, from Omsk, from the German frontier ; men who had travelled all over the world, and spoke every language; others who had lived all their life in Siberia, or the Trans-Baikal regions, or Manchuria. I found that the good qualities which distinguish the best of them were the same ; the same, in fact, which are instandy recognisable in all classes of all countries, consisting of that absence of swagger, conceit, and self-consciousness which makes a boy liked at Eton. Never have I met with more perfect examples of this type than these two wild Cossacks. There are plenty of other types who, without possessing these qualities, which are often even conspicuously absent, are nevertheless good-natured and likeable. Tolstoi in his Sebastopol sketches shows us all types of the Russian officer and soldier, with his marvellous searchlight of truth and genius. But it was not until I had lived among them that I realised how faithful his portraits were. The cavalry officers seemed to me superior to the infantry officer; but of the infantry I had practically but little experience. The officers and men of the Siberian army seemed to me superior to those of the Russian army proper : that is to say, they knew their business better. The Russian officers have been gready abused ; they are represented as incompetent drunkards, brutal, stupid, and unconscientious. Military instruction, as far as I can judge, they do seem to lack ; but I do not see that we are exacdy the people to throw stones at them on that account.
As to the question of incompetence, it seems to me that the system is more at fault than the officers. There is a general want of organisation, cohesion, and discipline in the whole army ; and the fault comes more from above than from below. With regard to the question of drunkenness, the only fact which seems to me important on the matter is that at the actual front there was no drunkenness. There was nothing to drink except tea, and occasional extremely limited doles of vodka. It is quite true that officers sometimes got drunk at Liaoyang and Mukden, but Liaoyang and Mukden were not the front. Certain facts must also be taken into consideration : when Russians drink they drink a great deal harder than we do ; they drink vodka, which is brandy — brandy for heroes, as Dr Johnson said. Secondly, that Liao-yang and, subsequendy, Mukden were, during the war, in the same relation to the front (since Kharbin was too far off to be easily accessible, it taking sometimes as much time to reach Kharbin from Mukden as it would to reach Constantinople from London) as Capetown during the South African war. Therefore, when officers arrived there for a short respite from the privations and hardships of life at the front, they felt entided to enjoy themselves. The important fact is that they were not drunk in the field, that they were not drunk when they should have been in discharge of their duties ; and that if they liked drink or not it did not
prevent them from being brave men, and dying with alacrity. I never heard any foreign witness during .the war, however critical, cast any aspersions on their courage.
Thirdly, there was an intermediate class of men who were not officers by nature, but who had come out to the war from curiosity, and wore a uniform ; this class was the most conspicuous at places like Liaoyang and Mukden, and tended to create a false impression. This was more noticeable at the beginning of the war. After two or three months General Kouropatkin weeded the army of its noxious elements with a ruthless hand. With regard to the question of general tenue, there were, it is true, some bad exceptions; but the general truth with regard to the officers who were at the front, is that they may lack instruction and may be deficient in many things, but as a rule they are brave men who do their duty.
I will give an instance to show what I mean. I was entertained at Kharbin by a certain officer who gave to me and some friends of mine a generous feast, which resulted in our host being inebriate for at least thirty-six hours. That same officer I happen to know never left his regiment during the time I spent in Manchuria, which was always at the extreme front, except for one day; and his regiment was kept continually at work, with only the bare necessaries of life till men and horses could do no more.
But a foreigner, had he seen that man in Kharbin, would have put him down as a hopeless case. During the whole time I was attached to a home battery I never saw a single case of drunkenness among the officers, even when we were quartered at Mukden. Before we started for the battle of the Sha-ho I managed to buy a dozen bottles of champagne from the store. I expected that we should have a great carouse. This was not the case. Somewhat to my astonishment a glass apiece was dealt out, and the rest was laid by, by the head of the mess, for future occasions, against the event of there being guests. Of course it was impossible to carry about any quantity of wine or spirits when we were at the front, and the only places where carouses of any kind were possible were towns such as Mukden and Liaoyang and Kharbin.
While I lived with General Kossagofsky's staff, I met some very fine fellows. The most remarkable was a young man called Egoroff. He had passed ail his examinations, and was offered a place on the general staff, which he refused, as he preferred a more modest situation at the front, where he would be sure of getting some fighting. He was a splendidly built, good-looking young fellow, exceedingly modest, and well educated. He was always at his post, and took part in every single small engagement which presented itself. He was a bom leader of men, and saved the situation when a panic occurred among the Cossacks of his division at Yantai.
Somehow or other fate was against him, and he never had an opportunity of brilliantly distinguishing himself, and he was one of those men who never push or put themselves to the fore. Many men during the war gained a great reputation owing to some lucky fluke, and more or less rested on their laurels. He, I think, worked as hard as anyone ; if there was kudos to be gained or not, he was always there and had gained no remuneration except the inward satisfaction which nobody can take away from him; that glow which Keats said made him so indifferent to praise or blame. He answered to the description of a brave man that one of the characters gives in Tolstoi's Sebastopol sketches, namely a man who always behaves as he should do, a definition which Tolstoi points out closely resembles Plato's definition of courage. He struck one as if he had stepped out of one of Shakespeare's historical plays, and he could be cast for the part of Hotspur or Henry V. During the war I met with counterparts of nearly all the individuals portrayed by Shakespeare in his historical plays, and heard conversations almost identically the same as those recorded in Henry V. among the soldiers in the English lines the night before the battle of Agincourt This man impressed me as much as any man I met during the war.
But apart from a phcenix of this kind I met a great many officers who struck me as good fellows, and who did their work well. The good officers remained at the front; the inferior kind used to hang about the stations, until General Kouropatkin put a stop to this. One point which certainly deserves to be mentioned was the extraordinary hospitality of the Russian officers. Hospitality is a quality which is universal in Russia ; it is equally remarkable in all classes; among officers, soldiers, moujiks, tinkers, and thieves.
Whenever one passed by an officer's quarters he invariably invited one to come and to partake of something, and however little he had for himself, he gave you of his best. It was quite extraordinary to see what a fuss they made about a guest. The first example I had of this was in the train from Kharbin to Mukden, when I was in General Holodovsky's carriage. I did not know him beyond a mere formal introduction at the railway station, and he at once sent me tea, biscuits, and a candle to read by. Every morning he sent his servant to see that I had everything I wanted, and one evening at Mukden when I told him that my foot was hurting me, he at once set out before I could stop him to get a doctor from the Red Cross. I wondered whether it was usual for generals to take such trouble about war-correspondents. But where it was more remarkable still was at the front when officers at once put the small luxuries they had at your disposal. They were not satisfied with your taking one helping or one glass, but insisted on your satisfying yourself to repletion. I have already described the soldiers' hospitality; it was impossible to watch them eating without their at once offering you a share, and often I was glad of the offer. The officers who hung about the stations, and there were too many such men, were of a different order, and sometimes the fact of being a correspondent put one at their mercy.
The correspondents wore a red badge on their left arm, which often proved to be a red badge of suspicion. The badge had the drawback, which was in some cases an advantage, of putting one at the mercy of a casual inquisitive stranger who regarded one as public property, a thing to be looked at like a penny-in-the-slot machine. This is the kind of conversation I constantly had with strangers : —
What is that red mark on your arm ?" (Very often they knew this, and the opening was varied.
Sometimes it took the form of "Come here, correspondent") " I'm a correspondent". "What country ?" — "I'm an Englishmaa" (This produced a somewhat chilling effect generally.) "What newspaper ?"— " The Morning Post: " (I find everybody knows the Morning Post by name, and considered it by far the most Russophobe newspaper.)—" Ah ! " (effect bad).
Sometimes I made the acquaintance of someone casually, and it was only in the course of conversation that the fact that I was a correspondent was known, the red badge being often confused with the badge of the Red Cross, which it in no way resembled. I found that in general the correspondent was regarded as a kind of Sherlock Holmes, and was credited with being aware of the plans of both armies by a process of induction. But one thing I have always found — I have found it in every country that I have travelled in, but more especially when one wore a red badge — that the man who at once comes up to one and effusively makes friends is a bore, and very often not a high-class person ; and I often sat for hours at a railway station exchanging mirthless jests and drinking endless toasts in vile liquors with these importunate strangers. There were exceptions, of course, even to this rule. But the best sort of people were those I either met by accident or by introduction, but not those who went out of their way to make my acquaintance. The red badge not only attracted the military, but put one at the mercy of all the nondescript class of officials, clerks, merchants, Greeks, and camp-followers, and all such people who hang about an army. With such, however, it was easier to deal. There was also another kind of officer, who to my mind was worse than the class who haunted the stations.
The type will be found in any army; in Russia it is more objectionable owing to the political situation of the people. The qualities that distinguish him are a violent and uncompromising Jingo spirit, a narrow mind, a blustering and swaggering manner. Officers of this kind talk of the privates as if they were brutes, utterly devoid of either intelligence or human feeling of any kind ; whereas they little know how far more intelligent the private soldiers are than themselves. Such men fill one with a revolutionary spirit when one hears them talk.
Their counterpart exists, alas, all over the world, and they are responsible for some of the stupidest acts that have ever been committed. It is only fair to add that I met very few men of this type, and none in the corps to which I was attached.
To go back to my military life, I presented myself later on in the day to General Kossagofsky, who received me with the utmost cordiality, and gave orders that I should be provided with quarters, and everything that I wanted. I was installed with the intendant and the regimental doctor in a Chinese house, as the guest of the Staff, and told to make myself at home. There I spent three pleasant days getting up at sunrise, and going to bed at nine; there was a lull for the moment in events, though every now and then we heard firing. I spent most of these days lying out in the fields talking with the officers. On the evening of the 22nd, I rode into Ta-shi-chiao to see how things were going there. At dawn the next morning I was wakened by the noise of guns, which seemed to be very near. I made ready to ride out immediately, but my servant brought me the news that my pony had been stolen during the night. The house was infested with Chinese boys and mafoos (grooms), who were Christians and spoke French — two bad signs. I asked what steps had been taken to recover the pony. My servant said he had been to the police, who had inscribed in a book the names, ancestors, domicile, and religion of the horse and its owner, and that the necessary proceedings would be taken in due course. As this process seemed to be likely to involve delay, I adopted another. I took every Chinese in the house by the pigtail, and thrashed them one after the other, and said I would continue to do so until the pony was brought back. I also gave a small coin to one of the mafoos, a certain Vasili, who was the greatest scoundrel of the lot.
This sounds brutal and disgusting, but it was the only way to get my pony back ; and had I not done so, I should have been taken prisoner by the Japanese, and sent home. In half-an-hour's time I was informed that the pony had returned of its own accord. It walked in at the gate with its headstall in perfect order, showing that it had not broken loose. I started at once in the direction of the firing, but unfortunately this delay caused me to miss the fifst engagement.
The Japanese had advanced and opened fire from the hills due south of Ta-shi-chiao, and the Russians by the time I arrived — the position was roughly about ten versts from Ta-shi-chiao — had retired from the first position with insignificant losses. The general position was like this : From Ta-shi-chiao southwards a perfectly flat green plain extends to the south, flanked to the east and to the west by a range of kopjes ; about ten miles due south there is also a range of hills. A road intersects the centre of the plain from Ta-shi-chiao to the south. To the west, in the centre of the plain, not far from the road, is an isolated kopje. To the east the range of hills is quite close to the road, to the west the plain extends for a considerable distance. The Russians retired from their first position, which was the range of hills due south, and established a battery to the east between their first position and their second position, which consisted of a high range of kopjes to the east. From this half-way position they opened fire on the Japanese, who were establishing a battery on the position just evacuated by the Russians. The firing lasted about three hours and a half. The commanding officer stood on a small mound, the battery beneath him, some distance away.
Behind us a regiment of Cossacks was concealed in the tall kowliang. (Kowliang is giant millet, which grows so tall that a regiment can remain concealed in it, and could march, if the men picked stalks, as the army of Macduff marched on Macbeth, like a moving forest.)
On the east side of the road, about two hundred yards behind the mound, was an exiguous village. The Japanese made no answer to the Russian fire. After a time, in the scorching heat, I walked back to the village, where my pony was tied up with those of a detachment of the Red Cross. This was about noon. The Russian guns were firing steadily, and the noise was loud. I was talking to a man of the Red Cross whom I knew. "We shall retreat very soon," he said. I said I supposed the Japanese would fire on us as we retreated. " They have been firing on us for the last five minutes,'' he replied, and then I noticed that the house to which most of the ponies had been tied had been damaged by a shell, and on walking across the road I saw that a house on the right had been blown up.
Our firing ceased, and we began to retreat. One Cossack had been killed in the village. The Japanese fired on us as we retreated through the kowliang, but without doing any damage. A little further down we emerged on the open road, and were joined by a regiment of infantry which had also been concealed in the kowliang. Looking round I saw that the little village was in flames. That was all that happened on Saturday.
As a big fight was expected the next day I rode into the town, and started in the evening to find my division. This was no easy matter, as it had rained in the afternoon, and the small streams had become impassable floods. I eventually found the Cossacks bivouacking in the village where they had been before. I shall never forget that ride through the kowliang, in a sunset which suffused the earth and sky with an unearthly softness, and later on in the moonlight, which seemed to be at pains to soothe the earth after the noise and dust and heat of the day of toil and fighting.
I slept on the side of the road in the lee of a wall, and woke with the first streak of day, while the morning star was yet bright and isolated in the stillness and the glimmer of the dawn. Nothing was audible. I had the ponies saddled, and was given some tea, hot potatoes, and eggs, by an officer. Then the sun rose, and almost with its first shaft of light firing was heard. I immediately made for the Russian second position.
The Japanese opened fire from the east, and soon afterwards from the south-east. The Russians had three batteries to the east, and three to the south-east, and later on one by the isolated kopje to the west. An artillery duel began, which lasted all day and until after sunset. The Japanese were a long time in determining the Russian positions, and when they did so their shells did not manage to find the batteries themselves. I took up my position where the infantry and artillery reserve were in waiting by the village, and rode out now and then to see how things were going at different points. The shells were falling in the plain. Early in the morning a regiment of infantry was sent up the road southwards, but the Japanese opened fire on them and they retired to the village. The Red Cross were in attendance not far from one of the batteries, but during the morning I saw no wounded brought back.
The aspect of the field of action was briefly this. In the distance a low range of very soft blue hills, to the west a stretch of brilliant vivid green, out of which the cone of the isolated kopje rose. To the east dark green hills, with patches of sand, and at their base the brilliant green kowliang. In the centre the hot sandy road. Heat, blazing heat, everywhere. Not many trees — a few near the village — a cloudless burning sky, and a ceaseless deafening noise. The Japanese shells were bursting in puffs of brown and grey, and the sky was full of little clouds of smoke, as if someone was blowing rings of tobacco smoke across the mountains. Every now and then Cossacks appeared in the kowliang, or a shell would burst in the plain. In the evening I ascended one of the hills, but my field-glasses had been carried off in the shifting transport of my division, and I could see nothing in detail, though the positions lay beneath me as clear as a map.
During nearly the whole of the day I was among the artillery of the reserve and transport and some detached Cossacks, and shared their midday meal. The more I saw of the Russian soldiers the more my admiration for them increased. More splendid fighting material it would be impossible to conceive. They will endure any hardships, any fatigue without a murmur. They take everything as it comes, smiling.
They have the supreme quality of making the best of everything good-naturedly, and without grumbling. Early on Sunday morning as I rode out to the position I fell in with a detachment of transport They had never stopped for a moment's rest They were exhausted and hungry, and had settled down to have their tea when the man (he was not an officer, or even a sergeant) who was in charge of them announced that they would have to do without tea as there was no time. The men merely remarked : "This morning we shall not drink tea," and I didn't hear a single grumble. Secondly, their good nature and kindness were quite extraordinary. I had endless examples of it on various occasions. During the journey which I have previously described I was treated as a distinguished guest ; but here, in the theatre of war itself, I experienced something different, and perhaps unique, that is the way they treat strangers whom they consider as equals. After a week's campaigning, wearing a very dirty Russian shirt, and having a half-grown beard, I was taken by the soldiers many times for a kind of detached private. One man asked me if I came from the Caucasus ; another asked me if I was on leave. One Cossack asked my servant, when I was riding to the staff, where his master was ; he pointed to me. "No," said the Cossack, " where's your master?" I said I was he. "I thought," he answered, ''you were a simple (ordinary) man" (Prostoi chelovjek). I first noticed this owing to the fact that I was addressed by soldiers as zemliak or zemliachok, which in Russian is equivalent to the French word "un pays," and means countryman. It is especially used among soldiers as a familiar way of hailing somebody. I always hastily explained that I was a foreigner, an Englishman, and a correspondent, but that never seemed to make much difference.
They gave me of their best when they had got little for themselves, tea with two lumps of sugar, when sugar was precious. One man gave me a tin of soup, because, he said, I should want it in the evening. If I offered them money they refused it When I said I was a correspondent they at once asked me to foretell the future of the campaign in accurate detail, and were disappointed when I told them that I knew even less than they did of what was going on in the present, let alone the future. Once, when I was in Liaoyang, I had been given the receipt of a telegram on which the name of the person to whom the telegram had been addressed was written in Russian. I could not decipher the name, and asked the Censor's Cossack servant what it was. He patted me on the back and said, ''No, little pigeon, I'm like you ; I can't read, or write, either'' (Ja toshe nte gramotni).
Soon after noon, when one of the batteries was relieved, only three of its men had been wounded. All the morning the Japanese fire had seemed concentrated on this battery. In the afternoon firing began further east and west, and the Russians placed a battery near the isolated kopje. Towards six o'clock all firing on the west ceased. The spirits of the Russians rose as the day went on. The number of wounded was very small ; men were brought in on stretchers every now and then, but most of them had succumbed to the sun, which was unbearably hot. I myself saw only five wounded men brought in, but I only had two batteries within the immediate range of my inspection. Towards sunset the Japanese fire had greatly diminished. Two batteries were said to be out of action. Their infantry had not shown itself. It seemed that their advance was checked. The Russian batteries were intact Firing ceased at nine o'clock in the evening. It had lasted fifteen hours without a moment's break. The Russian fire had seemingly proved most effective, while the behaviour of the men and the general management of the batteries were admirable.
When I arrived home at nine o'clock in the evening I was met by an extraordinarily ludicrous situation. Two Chinamen had just arrived to rebuild the church, and had pulled down the altar, and at the top of the ladder were working at a new frieze. The Chinese have no sense of time, and they began to work at nine o'clock in the evening, probably because they had been busied with other affairs during the day. Secondly, the two Montenegrins, Giorgio and Siacco, were quarrelling in the yard, and throwing brushes and pans at each other. Thirdly, one of the Chinese boys had prepared me a hot bath in the middle of the yard. A gunner arrived who had been fighting all day, sweating, grimy and extenuated with fatigue. He asked a Chinaman for a drop of water. The Chinaman told him to get out as quickly as possible. That was like a Chinaman. I gave him some hot tea with half a tumbler of cognac in it, and noticing that the building was a church, the gunner went in and said a prayer. Then I tried to stop the Montenegrins from quarrelling, upon which Giorgio said he would shoot me. They were both armed to the teeth. I dismissed him from my service. He refused to go, alleging that he was Brooke's servant, and not mine (which was not true). Brooke had left two days previously, leaving his horses behind, and having meant to return in a day or two. I went into the town to find the police, and there I heard that a general retreat had been ordered, and that Ta-shi-chiao was to be evacuated. The news produced great depression, and seemed inexplicable. It was owing, I suppose, to the fear of the Japanese turning the Russians' left flank. And what had apparently happened was that each flank had considered itself unsupported Many competent authorities, among others Colonel Goedke, maintain that the retreat was unnecessary. At the time it certainly seemed so. An instance of the untrustworthiness of the reports that come from the coast of China was furnished to me when I read a month later in the English newspapers that it was reported from Newchang that Ta-shi-chiao had been taken on Sunday night at the point of the bayonet.
When I learnt that the retreat had been ordered I saw that whatever happened the Montenegrin must stay, as I could not possibly take five ponies and two mules back to Liaoyang. (Brooke had left his horses at Ta-shi-chiao, meaning to return.)
I started the next morning with Mr Dourkovitch, a Polish artist, five ponies, two mules, two Montenegrins, and two Chinamen. The Montenegrins quarrelled as we started over a piece of string, and Giorgio called Siacco a mule; Siacco said that he wouldn't move a step out of Ta-shi-chiao. I finally pacified him and persuaded him to start It was a blazing hot day. We sooil passed through the town and station of Ta-shi-chiao. The transport was retreating, the station was ready for destruction, the buffet had sold out its last bottle of wine, and its last cigarette. The whole place had the appearance of a race-course the day after a race-meeting. Everything was empty and desolate, but there was no confusion nor disorder — not more than you would observe in an empty bee-hive where only the honeycombs remain. We followed the transport ; but we met no retreating regiments; they were fighting a rearguard action. Firing was audible at first, but not after eight o'clock. I was struck by the leisurely way in which the transport retreated. It seemed to go on comfortably and automatically without ofiicers. I only met one captain from 6 a.m. to midday, and very few sergeants. Colonel Goedke, the military critic of the Berliner Tageblatt, remarked to me the next day that he too had been struck by the extremely calm manner in which the retreat was
being conducted. "In Germany," he said, "it would probably be done more quickly, and more smartly, but there would be more cursing and swearing, more fuss." It struck me that in this case the Slav temperament showed the qualities of its defects. The Russians with their habit of doing their duty in their own leisurely fashion like automata did it just as well without orders as with.
It grew hotter and hotter. At midday we rested for three hours under the shade of some trees.
There were many wells on the road. At the beginning of the campaign I used not to drink water at all ; then I used to put capsules of permanganate of potassium in the water; finally, on this march, and from that time forward, I drank any water that was to be got. The water must have been very good in Manchuria. Otherwise the whole of the Russian army would have been laid up with dysentery. The soldiers drank any water they could get, however dirty, and they eat a great quantity of raw cucumbers and unripe melons with the rind There was very little dysentery, and the cases were, as a rule, not severe, and arose generally, I think, from people eating the horrible concoctions that came from Shanghai, or from drinking iced beer.
While we were resting under the trees, Giorgio and Siacco quarrelled once more. Giorgio had been sulking during the whole of the morning, and the consequence was one of the mules was lost. A search had been instituted in the beanfields and kowliang. Finally one of the Chinamen found it.
We resumed our march about three o'clock in the afternoon and leaving the transport went by a road over the hills. Towards six o'clock we again heard sounds of firing. We arrived at Haichen at seven o'clock in the evening. M. Dourkovitch went to the French missionaries and I sent my ponies thither also, intending to take the night train for Liaoyang. I arrived at the station and asked when the train started. "Nie iswiestno — It is not known," was the answer — an answer I knew so well. Being used to fifteen-hour waits at these Chinese stations I troubled little about the train, and being told that no one knew when it was to start I went to have some food. I thus managed to do what was very difficult in these times : to miss the train. I set out for the town. The gates were closed for the night. I returned to the deserted station half dead with fatigue. It began to rain. I fell on a chair outside the buffet ; an official told me I must not sleep on that chair — anywhere else, but not there. I lay down on the ground of the platform a little further up. A soldier had been watching the proceedings. He waited till I was asleep, then he brought his own matting, lifted me up, put it under me, built a small tent of matting over me, and brought me a sack as a pillow. I woke up and protested against taking his belongings, but he insisted, and made himself comfortable with a greatcoat and a piece of matting. The next morning he brought me a cup of hot tea at dawn. I offered him a rouble. He
refused it. I never saw him again, but his "little unremembered act" will never be forgotten by me.