To take Port Arthur seems impossible. It takes men drunk with victory and strong in ancient might to dare the task. It is only looking at what the Japanese have already taken that makes one have faith in their ability to do what they are now trying; otherwise, looking across at that six-mile line, one would say as he might have said of the ridges lying behind us: human energy and prowess cannot force them; only madmen would attempt it. But the Japanese have already forced at least five positions, seemingly as difficult as Port Arthur. First, they took Nanshan, which was even worse than this, for the approaches were gradual for two miles, while here precipitous heights and deep ravines give shelter. Nanshan the Japanese took in a single desperate day; Kenzan, where they had to climb hand over hand, they scaled in a night; Witozan, where they broke in over parapets built on rocks seven hundred feet above the sea, they reduced at high noon; Anshirey, where the road climbs up a spiral for a mile, and is raked at every yard, they enfiladed and took in two days; and Taikushan, a saddle of malachite and granite straddling the main road to Port Arthur, they shelled out in thirty-six hours. Thus it is we have faith that some morning the world will wake to hear that the Rising Sun flies over Port Arthur, which the military experts of the Powers have declared impregnable. Bitter as the contest is, war has not touched the bowels of the land. Looking into the plain behind me I can see a score of busy and peaceful villages serene in a sea of golden harvest. Maize and buckwheat, beans and millet, cabbage and barley alternate green and russet over the meadows. Springless bullock carts, ancient as Jerusalem, helped by tiny donkeys and naked children, painfully garner the grain. Women sing in low monotones at the primitive stone mills where blindfolded donkeys travel all day in a circle, grinding out the seed and flour. Lines of coolies wend through the footpaths, spring-kneed with huge weights on limber poles. Shells at the rate of four or five an hour drop into this great area, separated from the field of battle by a range of mountains, plowing up a hill, shattering a house, tearing a road, killing a donkey, wounding a coolie, but of no great damage. No one minds. The harvest goes on. The glorious, golden September continues. The women sing, the naked children play, the tiny donkeys labor. It is the plain in front, under the Cock’s Comb and the Golden Mount, guarded by the Two Dragons that has desolate quiet. There the maize is untouched and the heavy heads of the millet fall from sheer weight, while the cabbages are crushed by infantry passing in the night. Fires have blackened the villages, the Manchurians have fled, and in ragged lines from sea to sea the two armies hold their hostile trenches, from which, through the twenty-four hours, goes up the intermittent ping and pop of rifle bullets.