New Year’s Day is a Japanese festival, and even in the camp of the investing army custom held revel. Visits were made and hospitalities exchanged, while comrades fought their way up Bodai and looked down from the shattered peak into the quivering heart of the city. None dreamed that the long struggle was ended, and that the gallant defenders were preparing to lay down their arms. At dawn a strange stillness descended upon the narrow peninsula. Under the burden of silence, hills that for months had been charged with volcanic energies shrank into mounds of brown earth, and valleys and gorges that had pulsated with the sound of Titanic combat became mute as the grave. It was a new land in which we awoke--a land of unnatural silence that seemed full of portent. What had happened? Was this weird calm the precursor of a hurricane or was it the end? We wondered as we walked to the village where General Nogi had his Head-quarters. “Port Arthur has fallen!” That was the greeting. Not a trace of exultation! The Staff Officer might have been announcing a fall in the temperature. “Port Arthur has fallen!” The words sounded incredible. Even the most hopeful had looked forward to one more month of sapping and mining, and had seen in his mind’s eye the last glorious stand of the garrison sworn to make the fortress its tomb. But the silence was convincing. The end had come with amazing suddenness, and the walls of the “impregnable fortress” had fallen, like the walls of Jericho, at the blast of a trumpet. The letter brought to the Japanese lines under the flag of truce made known General Stoessel’s decision: “Having regard to the state of affairs at the seat of war generally, I find that further resistance in Port Arthur is useless, and with a view to avoid fruitless loss of life I would like to negotiate for the capitulation of the fortress. If your Excellency agrees to this proposal I beg you to appoint delegates to discuss the order and conditions of surrender, and to name a place where my delegates may meet them.”