The capture of Heikautai had become necessary to the security of the Japanese position, but repeated attacks on it had been repulsed. The spirit in which the emergency was met is revealed in the laconic words of Marshal Oyama's dispatch. "Our object had not been attained, so I encouraged all the columns to make night attacks. All the columns of the attacking parties expected annihilation. We attempted several attack movements, but suffered heavily from the enemy's artillery, and especially from the machine-guns, but all the columns continued the attack with all their might. The enemy was unable to withstand our vigorous attack, and began to retreat at half past five in the morning. Our forces charging into Heikautai, occupied the place firmly and entirely by half past nine in the morning." The net result of the battle was to give the Japanese secure possession of a line east and west of Hun-ho and south of Mukden, and to inflict on the Russians casualties which certainly exceeded 10,000, and probably reached 15,000. In war especially "the attempt and not the deed" confounds. It is not the first step but the last that costs--not the attack, but the retreat after repulse. No sooner had the failure of this big attempt on the Japanese left been fully confirmed than it became known that the movement had been directed by General Gripenberg, the commander of the Second Manchurian Army. When, after the battle of Liao-yang, the Czar sanctioned the formation of this Second Army and committed the command of it to General Gripenberg, there was a great flourish of journalistic trumpets in the Russian and French press. At last Kuropatkin would have not only an "Army worthy of the might and dignity of Russia," but would have a lieutenant worthy of himself to share the tremendous strain of directing nearly half a million of men. The two Generals exchanged cordial messages, and then Gripenberg set out for Harbin to superintend the gradual organization of his Second Army. By the end of the year its units had been completed, and then the impatience of General Gripenberg to assert himself appears to have become uncontrollable. He conceived the movement against the Japanese left--a movement that might easily have achieved substantial results if the Japanese had not been so well prepared for it--and his direct responsibility for it was made patent to the world by the angry and undignified recriminations between him and Kuropatkin that followed the repulse. General Gripenberg immediately asked to be relieved of his command, ostensibly on the ground of ill health, but really as he allowed to be perfectly manifest, in dudgeon at the treatment which he alleged had been meted out to him by his superior officer. He claimed that his flanking movement had in fact succeeded, and that he only needed reinforcements to maintain the position he had won. He complained loudly that he applied very urgently for these reinforcements, but that they were