Since the days of the telegraph and the modern war correspondent, there has never been a war in which the work of the chroniclers was beset with such difficulties. During the early months of hostilities practically all of the correspondents were bottled up in Tokio, chafing at their delay, beseeching this official and that, buying winter outfits only to be compelled to change them for summer equipment, and wasting their energies during this fretful period of uncertainty in the description of conventional phases of Japanese life or of the entertainments given them by their inscrutable hosts of the Japanese war departments. It was only by some rare stroke of forehandedness, daring, or luck, by which he escaped temporarily from the Japanese watchfulness and censorship, that any correspondent was able at this time to do effective work. Of the little army of men who tried to chronicle the war, with pencil or camera, none more really “made good” than Collier’s photographer, James H. Hare. Mr. Hare worked in Tokio before war was declared, and he followed Kuroki’s army from its landing in Korea through the Yalu campaign and until the battle of the Sha-Ho. Mr. Hare is a specialist not in any sense a “button-pusher,” as he calls the amateur who carries a camera as an incidental. “When we stood on the heights of Wiju,” wrote Collier’s correspondent, Frederick Palmer, “the soldiers appeared only as the veriest specks to a camera lens. Jimmy wanted to see the charge as much as the rest of us. But the detail had to be shown and the photographer must be near the detail, so Jimmy slipped away when the censor wasn’t looking. I wonder if those who saw the realistic pictures of the groups of wounded around the hospital tents at the Yalu realized at all what they cost this little man, who is nearing his fiftieth year. He was the first of the correspondents’ corps to cross the river. He trudged through miles of sand up to his knees. His pony was worn out; his weary servant promptly resigned. But Jimmy himself was up the next morning at daybreak, ill and pale, developing the first photographs of the army at the front to be published.” [Illustration: VICE-ADMIRAL ALEXIEFF RUSSIAN VICEROY IN THE FAR EAST ] [Illustration: MARQUIS ITO HIROBUMI JAPAN’S GREATEST LIVING STATESMAN ]