enemy, and to frustrate them is the part of military wisdom, and it is not pleasant to have to acknowledge want of foreknowledge as well as failure in achievement. It is easier to appear wise after the event, and some Japanese Staff Officers succumbed to the allurement. Yet the fact remains indisputable, that until the morning of September 3rd, the Japanese never suspected the Russians of any intention to flee from Liao-yang. Under that conviction they developed their attack on the triple line of redoubts and entrenchments before the town, and made heroic though vain attempts to destroy the enemy’s communications with the North. If Field-Marshal Oyama discovered on August 30th that it was the enemy’s purpose to retire on Mukden, to what end did he sacrifice the lives of thousands of men by hurling them in frontal attack against redoubts and trenches upon which his artillery had made no impression? If he believed that General Kuropatkin was already retreating, then with what object did he reduce General Kuroki’s army to one-and-a-half divisions, and send him across the river with orders to seize the heights commanding the railway and cut the Russian communications? When your enemy has bolted the door and is escaping by the window, surely it is wasting time and strength to break down the door while you may be at the window. The truth, I fancy, will be found in the fear of the Japanese Commander that the Russians would not merely offer a stubborn resistance, but would attack his own communications with the South. Under the influence of that fear he concentrated nearly the whole of his great force in front of Liao-yang and made a feeble demonstration against the railway. His tactics were foredoomed to failure. As to General Kuropatkin’s real purpose, it must be judged not from his defeat and retirement, but from the conditions under which he accepted battle. For several months he had been accumulating supplies and concentrating troops at Liao-yang; he had guarded the approach to the town with a triple line of trenches, redoubts, pits, entanglements and military obstacles of every kind; he had many field and heavy guns, and he had chosen for his first line of defence the low hills South of Liao-yang which have been always recognised as an excellent position from which to oppose an advance. These are obvious material considerations which I admit would not weigh one grain in the balance against the security of an army. But their value as evidence of General Kuropatkin’s intentions is undeniable when we recall the stubbornness with which they were defended, and above all when we consider the heroic efforts and sacrifices made to destroy the force on his flank North of Liao-yang, and to regain a position that he must have known was of no strategic and of little tactical importance to the Japanese. History, I think, will confirm the conviction that General Kuropatkin intended to make a decisive stand at Liao-yang, where he hoped to check