How shameful for the upstart to command! He had never left his native land. He spoke only Japanese. He had a most vulgar way of pitching into things, of living on the tick of the watch, of showing people in and out minus ceremony, of laughing as a boy might at the things he liked and of frowning ingenuously at what displeased him. More horrors! He scorned a frock coat for ordinary wear and stuck to a kimono. Only upstarts defy the fashions. Sometimes, however, the upstart happens to be a great man--a Socrates barefoot, a Grant without his shoulder straps. Now there were plenty of men who had been abroad, who could speak French and English perfectly, who could crease their trousers and who could add the proper dignity to a function. Besides, Kodama was only a lieutenant-general, of whom the realm had a dozen others, to say nothing of four full generals, two field marshals and an emperor. Why should he run the war? But Yamagata and Oyama knew and the Emperor knew. They were too keen not to see and they were too patriotic to let Japan suffer. They could not give Kodama the place, but they crowned him with power. So to-day he has the only coach on the Japanese end of the Trans-Siberian railway and is the first to pass over the rebuilt road from Liaoyang to within sight of Port Arthur. Yamagata stays in Tokyo, one foot in the grave, holding himself to work with will and prayer, snowed with seventy years, in counsel with the Emperor; Oyama, loved by the people, always a figurehead, goes to command the northern armies, and Nogi is given the glory of reducing the “Gibraltar of the East,” but Kodama, with his hands on everything, the brains of all, unifies the whole. I saw him leave Tokyo, cheered by the coolies of the streets, who, like the Emperor and his marshals, know. Already the campaign was in his hands. He went straight to Liaoyang and saw the first great blow struck at Kuropatkin. Then he came here, stayed two days, saw his plans being effected to his satisfaction and got back to Liaoyang before the battle of the Shaho. It was on his way back, during the day’s rest in Dalny, that I saw him for the second time, when he granted me an interview, in which he made his first public utterance.