The Japanese officers state that the Russian defence at Taipingling was determined and courageous, and that of all the battles to that date, the end of July, the battle of Tashichiao was the most bitterly contested and hardly fought. The Japanese casualties during the two days’ fighting exceeded 1,000, and those of the Russians were double that number. In addition, some two to three hundred Chinese bandits had been killed in the neighbourhood of Tashichiao, and in the subsequent operations the Japanese losses were not less than 12 officers and 150 men killed, and over 850 wounded. At Telissu the Japanese derived an immense advantage from the superiority of their artillery, their shells exploding over the Russian trenches, blowing the infantrymen to ribands and annihilating whole companies. At Tashichiao the Russian artillery fire was the more effective; the Japanese guns could not be placed in tenable positions, and the battle had to be won by hand-to-hand conflict in the darkness. The result was the same in so far as the superiority of the Japanese army as a fighting force is proven by its victories, but these victories are not entirely satisfactory, as they fail to show that the strategy of the Japanese is superior to that of the Russians, or prove that the tactics employed will enable the Japanese to win through in every battle of a long campaign. CHAPTER XI The Japanese as Conquerors Possibly the partial military evacuations of Newchwang were of the nature of rehearsals for the real event which took place in the small hours of the morning of July 25, after the heavy firing throughout the day. I saw the Censor at Yingkow as late as ten o’clock on Sunday night; he had no news, and was amusing himself with his fiddle. About two hours later, when the Japanese had rushed the trenches at Taipingling, twenty-five miles away, there came a telephone warning for all Russian Government employees to hurry away, as the evacuation of Newchwang had been ordered. By dawn there was scarcely a Russian soldier left in the town, only four of the military police. I was early astir, but the Press Censor had fled; he had taken with him his fiddle, and some one else’s easy chair, and so many things that in their quarters there was nothing left for the Chinese to steal. Then I went to the telegraph office at Yingkow, but the Russian official notices remained posted, and the clerks would not accept uncensored messages for transmission. I sent the news down by train, for this day there were no scrutineers in Russian employ, no Russian postman accompanied the mail. Soon the military refugees began to come in from over the water. They arrived weaponless Russian soldiers, but they tore off their shoulder straps, pulled their tunics up loose to fall and hide their belts, donned straw sailor hats or tweed caps, and were hardly distinguishable from the many sutlers and camp followers with which the station had been thronged for months past.