General Nogi—than whom no finer gentleman ever drew the breath of life 198 Morris inspecting our Christmas dinner 198 CHAPTER I _From War to Peace in Manchuria—Peking—A New Assignment, “Russia Direct”—Shanghai._ For three days we had been congratulating ourselves that we were on the eve of the greatest battle in history. Around us in silent might, two armies slept on their arms. From the border of far Mongolia for a hundred and eighty miles eastward lay the line of the Japanese trenches, and for forty miles deep every Manchu hut and village sheltered the soldier or coolie patriot of the Island Emperor. Above the roads for endless miles hung the heavy powdered dust of Mongol soil; like a mist unstirred by any wind, it rose from the plodding of the feet of limitless thousands of men and animals, pushing forward for the last great struggle of a mighty conflict. Regiment after regiment fresh from home, poured along the Japanese made arteries, for the blood of an army corps. Now and again the khaki colored battalions at the command of an officer halted at the side of the road while a battery of artillery, with clanking chains and creaking limbers, trotted through the thickening clouds of dust that settled on one like flour. Cavalry, red cross, transport, coolies, bridge trains and telegraph corps gave place the one to the other in rapid succession. In eighteen months’ association with the Japanese we had not seen such activity. “The Peace Conference at Portsmouth has failed” we told ourselves, and leaving the extreme front of the army, where we had been visiting the cavalry outposts, we turned our horses’ heads for the thirty-mile ride to the headquarters of General Nogi, to which we had been attached since May. All our talk was of the coming of the great battle and of the preparations which we must make for a three weeks’ campaign in the saddle, and more important still, how we should arrange an open line of communications from the ever-changing front of the prospective struggle to the cable office in the rear. Covered with dust an eighth of an inch deep, we rode into Fakumen, our headquarters, late on the afternoon of September 4th. At the door of a Chinese bean mill, where for four weary months we had been awaiting the call to action, stood a Japanese orderly. As we dismounted, he saluted and respectfully handed me one of the Japanese charactered envelopes of the Military field telegraph. Turning my horse over to my Japanese boy I opened it, and read the word “Return.” The Russo-Japanese War was over, and even before the armies themselves knew that the end had come, my chief in his office in far away Chicago had sent the word over the cable which meant as much as reams of explanation. The same night the _London Times_ reached half around the world and ordered home its special correspondent with the Japanese armies in the field.