who succeeded in capturing it could hope to plant his own guns there. It is not in question that the Japanese suffered appalling losses in the attempts to storm these defences; but they persevered, though for weeks together their hostile activities were limited to pouring into the Russian lines a tremendous shell fire at long range. The fall of Port Arthur which had seemed possible in June, was confidently predicted for July. Then August was fixed, and the Japanese forces, largely reinforced, undertook another desperate assault in the middle of that month. It failed; and though the dogged, impenetrable defence and the fierce and reckless struggle went on with few intermissions, October came without any perceptible change having been effected in the situation of the combatants. [Sidenote: Fury Unparalleled in History] Two Russian officers who escaped with dispatches to Chifu, brought accounts of the terrible pitch to which the temper of the opposing forces had been wrought in their long-drawn and implacable struggle. They stated that the Japanese losses during the last attack were enormous, and that even several days afterwards wounded men were to be seen raising their arms by way of appeal, but that it was impossible to help them as the fire was incessant. As for the struggle, it was carried on with an amount of fury to which there is no parallel in history. The Japanese dashed forward with the bayonet like madmen, and in serried columns, in which the shells made terrible furrows. Every time that they reached the Russian lines horrible mêlées, in which even the wounded fought to the death, took place. No quarter was given. Pairs of corpses were found clinging to each other, the teeth of the men being buried in their adversaries' throats and their fingers in their eyes as they had expired. In the last attack the 9th Japanese Division was sent forward in two columns, each composing a brigade, and when the first gave way under the avalanche of iron, the general commanding the second fired upon and exterminated it. So intense was the fury that when they got within hearing of their foes, the Japanese shook their fists at and insulted them. The failure of the Japanese to make headway with the siege of Port Arthur was the one substantially gratifying aspect of the war from the Russian point of view. Russian patriotic sentiment had something to be proud of in the courage, endurance, and resource of General Stoessel and his troops. But, as a matter of fact, the fall of Port Arthur would have been a far better service to Russian arms than the heroic resistance of its garrison. Because the fortress, which from the first had exercised such a benumbing influence on the Russian fleet and such a distracting influence on military counsels, still remained as a fatal factor in the equation for Russian strategy. The garrison were counting on relief from the north, and the honor and pride of Russia were engaged to send that relief if possible.