masonry parapets, through which they could not force an entrance. This wonderful network of fortifications, strong by nature, strong by virtue of the skill and care with which it had been built, was distinguished from all previous defensive works by the fact that here for the first time were used all those terrible agencies of war which science in the last century has rendered available. There were steel shields to protect skirmishers, machine guns, smokeless powder, artillery of high velocity and great range, high explosive shells, the magazine rifle, the telescopic sight, giving marvelous accuracy of fire; the range-finder, giving instantaneously the exact distance of the enemy; the searchlight, the telegraph and the telephone, starlight bombs, barbed-wire entanglements, and a dozen other diabolic inventions, the sum of which, allied to this stupendous fortification of nature by man, enabled the military authorities of the world to pronounce upon Port Arthur that superlative word, impregnable. Reducing the scale of this fortress, we might see in miniature its intricate construction if we looked upon the hair-clippers of a barber. The forts were the teeth, the murderous scientific apparatus the death blades of this monstrous clipper. For five months they shaved clean everything that approached them. At the beginning of the operations, in the War Office at Tokyo, the plan of campaign against Port Arthur was laid out as all Japanese campaigns are laid out--by the General Staff. With a passion for detail and a mania for precision, the fortress was plotted and the operations against it mathematically separated into stages. Now that Port Arthur calls on history for an answer, the exact nature of this plan, and how rigidly it was adhered to, may be for the first time disclosed. There were to be four stages in the reduction of the fortress. The work was divided into stages, because the Japanese are so practical that they must plainly see on paper what they project. They live by system. They have reduced accomplishment to a problem of economics. They believe that the most successful man is he who makes the closest analysis. It was fore-ordained that they would be successful, for they analyzed Port Arthur. [Illustration]