The Russian centre was the hope of the Russian Commander. He claimed impregnability for it, and impregnable it proved. Nevertheless Nodzu sent scores of assaults at its steep slopes, and the later advances were made by the Japanese over the bodies of comrades who had fallen in earlier efforts. The Russian centre resisted without a break, and only left its positions March 7, when events elsewhere resulted in the order to fall back north of the Sha-ho. The story of the struggle here is an exact replica of many which waged in the bloody days of the siege of Port Arthur, though here the loss of life was heavier, since none of the protective engineering devices used at Port Arthur were resorted to. The assaults were simply dashes by Japanese infantry up the bare slopes of a hill rising five hundred feet in the air. It was man unprotected against steel in armor, and the man lost. Behind the Russians was the Sha-ho River. Their second line of defences was sunk in the hillsides and hilltops there. With the river in front, the ice weakened until it was questionable whether men in any numbers could make safe crossing, this position was only a little less strong than the first. All in all, it is little wonder that the Japanese Commander elected only to feint here and deal his blow at other positions. The second line, however, availed the Russians little except to hold in check the pursuit and leave General Nodzu to be only a minor factor in the culmination of the disaster that finally befell the Russians. The centre army, while it played no conspicuous part in the battle, while it was not called upon to repel, and was not expected to take the Russian positions as a vital part of the Japanese strategy, possibly even greater credit belongs to these men who died in droves, knowing that they were being sacrificed as a matter of secondary importance, that upon others elsewhere, miles and miles away, was falling the really great events and upon whom would fall the glory. Whether they knew it or not, there was no faltering. With cries of "banzai" they stormed up Putiloff Hill, up Novgorod Hill; by regiments they fell, and regiments as loyal and heroic took their places, apparently satisfied that all the sacrifice was only to prevent reinforcements from the centre from being sent to the lines northeast, northwest, where their brothers were writing victory in blood across Manchuria's plains. War is essentially waste; waste of men, waste of money. Here the spirit of waste was fully exemplified, yet the waste was a factor if victory was to be won, and Oyama sent his armies to their work bent on victory as perhaps never an army was bent on victory. [Illustration: THE RUSSIAN FLEET IN THE BATTLE OF THE JAPAN SEA.] [Sidenote: Battle Culminates on West]