This early fighting, which lasted from dawn on the 25th April till noon on the following day, won us a footing, not more than that, on the Peninsula; it settled the German brag that we should never be able to land. We had landed upon, had taken, and were holding the whole of the southwestern extremity of the Peninsula and a strip of the Ægean coast, in the face of an army never less than twice our strength, strongly entrenched and well supplied. We had lost very heavily in the attack, our men were weary from the exceedingly severe service of the landing, but the morrow began the second passage in the campaign, the advance from the sea, before the Turks should have recovered. Many have said to me, with a naïveté that would be touching if it were not so plainly inspired by our enemies: "Why did not the troops press on at once, the day they landed? The Japanese pressed on the day they landed, so did the Americans in Cuba. If you had pressed on at once, you would have won the whole Peninsula. The Turks were at their last cartridge, and would have surrendered." It is quite true that the Japanese moved inland immediately from their transports at Chemulpho and Chinampo. Those ports were seized before the Russians knew that war was declared: they were not defended by Russian soldiers, and the two small Russian cruisers caught there by the Japanese fleet were put out of action before the transports discharged. The Japanese were free to land as they chose on beaches prepared, not with machine guns and mines, but with cranes, gangways and good roads. Even so, they did not press on. The Japanese do not press on unless they are attacking: they are as prudent as they are brave: they waited till they were ready and then marched on. The Americans landed at Daiquiri and at Guanica unopposed and in neither case engaged the enemy till next day.