In the bloody angle the ordinary sand-bag redoubt would not do. There was no opportunity to erect the permanent masonry or even the semi-permanent timber redoubt. The men must have some protection that would let their heads be sheltered a foot or more below the top of the trench, and yet give them loopholes for firing. Any conventional trench built from experience or laid down in the text-books was impracticable. A French, a German, an English, a Russian soldier would have thrown up his hands because his father and his grandfather knew no medicine for such a hurt. The American, had he been far enough away from red tape, might have improvised. The Japanese did not hesitate. Around the bloody angle he raised a trench modeled on the medieval bulwarks of his samurai fathers. It was built with ingenious quickness due to his twentieth-century training. He erected a front of rock, like the turret of a castle, and through the deep embrasures of this turret fired his machine-guns, while the ragged skyline overtopped and kept him safe. On the spot he married old with new. He was following the destiny of his race--to tie the ages together.
D’Adda--the Marquis D’Adda of Rome--had studied history well, and he declared that the end would come at “ze psychologique mo-ment--in ze wind, ze rain, when ze high spirit go low.”
D’Adda was wrong. Port Arthur did not fall--it capitulated. It was not stormed and won. It was worn out. The military critics of the world were right. Port Arthur is impregnable, and well may some other power some day learn this, when it is defended by Japanese soldiery, properly provisioned, properly officered, and properly supplied with ammunition. It was because the Japanese were ever vigilant and never lost an opportunity to push their victorious arms onward that they entered the city as soon as they did.
The end came unexpectedly with the new year. There was nothing dramatic about it--nothing spectacular, and he who wanted excitement would have required excess imagination to find in the event the dramatic climax of a great war. When Port Arthur was taken ten years before, it collapsed in a day, and the unspeakable carnage before and after furnished one of the lurid chapters of history. Chinese were massacred, the town was plundered, and the world rang with outrage. When Plevna fell, thirty years before, the Turkish prisoners marched through the snow, across the Volga, dropping thousands of starved, scurvy-ridden, frozen comrades by the ebbing mile stones. When Metz went down a vast army came to the victor, and hemisphere-resounding was the scandal. Nothing of the sort distinguished the surrender of Port Arthur on the morning of January 2d, 1905. A stalwart, grim-visaged soldier in Turkoman cap rode on a white charger out of the town to a little village on the plain, saluted his victorious adversary, and presented him the beautiful white horse. The adversary, Nogi, with exquisite courtesy, refused the gift. On being pressed by Stoessel, in the Turkoman cap, he accepted it on behalf of his army. Complimented upon his achievement he replied: “I see no reason for exaltation--the cost has been too great.” The next day this courteous soldier, Nogi, the soul of chivalry, a prince of leaders, marched in at the head of his worn but marvelous followers. The Russians marched out, some to honorable parole, and some to tender care among their enemies. There was no massacre, no spectacle, no great dramatic incident. War had become a business. It was thus that these two great men--Nogi and Stoessel--wrote “finis” at the close of the first chapter of this interesting new volume, called “Civilized Warfare.”