It was, one would have thought, patent that to defend Port Arthur it was necessary to defend the peninsula from sea to sea and from Kinchou to Liao-tieh-shan, or an area of some eighteen miles in breadth by forty in length. As it was unlikely that an attacking enemy would advance on the Fortress held by a civilized power such as Russia with the same impetuosity as was shown by the Japanese in 1894 against an effete nation, it was equally obvious that as many delaying positions as possible, from the most excellent one of Kinchou right away back to the actual enceinte of the place, should be held. Such is the nature of the country that there is a whole series of positions. Even if general principles were not to be regarded, it might be thought that the manoeuvres of the years preceding the war would have shown in actual practice how valuable these positions were to any force defending Port Arthur. The enemy were evidently of opinion that we would take every advantage of what Nature had given us, and would supplement these natural advantages with all the resources of art. It follows, therefore, that in the preparation of these successive positions, quite apart from the defence of the Fortress proper, there was an immense amount of work to be done which would necessitate the skill of technical troops. Within and round the place itself also, even supposing that all the permanent defences had been ready at the commencement of war, [which they were not by any means], there would be during a siege great scope for the employment of technical troops. It is largely for siege-work that such troops are included in the organization of an army. On the whole, therefore, both the more distant defences of the district and the closer defence of Port Arthur appear to have called for the provision of a very large number of sappers. The district was large, from a point of view of the amount of defensive work that was necessary, and the Fortress was large. Let us see what the higher authorities in St. Petersburg and the local authorities in Arthur apparently thought sufficient.