Headquarters Third Imperial Army, Before Port Arthur, Oct. 9th: Often we dine with the Army’s leaders. To-day all the temporary occupants of the headquarters village, which include the human impedimenta of an army, such as the expert on international law, the official photographer and the correspondents, were called to the General’s house. My invitation read:

We went. There were some long tables peppered with aluminum ware, fruit and wine under the pear trees of a Manchurian back yard. We stood up to the cold luncheon, partly foreign, partly native, charmingly served by soldiers. There was a crowd of dignitaries distinguished by uniforms. They were of all ranks, from the three stars and three stripes of the General of the forces to the single star and stripe of the sub-lieutenant, who is commissary adjutant. But it was not an affair of dress, so out of the crowd rose two personalities who burned themselves into my consciousness, where they hang yet, resplendent in energy. There was about them a native dignity, a primal force, that indefinable something that distinguishes great men.

One wore a pair of yellow boots and might have stepped from an American fashion plate. There was American vitality and freshness in him, too. He dispensed with ceremony, spoke keenly, decisively, almost brusquely, and looked you square in the eye with a twinkle that said he appreciated all the social gayety and yet kept back his own opinion. He had a square jaw, thick neck, broad shoulders, massive palms and a head long from chin to crown—all unusual for a Japanese. This was Major Yamaoka, the parliamentaire who recently rode into Port Arthur with the Emperor’s offer of safety to noncombatants. He is one of General Nogi’s most trusted aides, a popular orator, a man of decision. He walks like a thoroughbred. Had Cæsar seen Major Yamaoka walk across that Manchurian garden he would surely have put him on his staff.

The other wore a pair of Pomeranian top boots, elegant and serviceable as Yamaoka’s were fresh and hardy. They were pulled snugly over his knees to keep out the bitter Manchurian wind. Above were a pair of white kersey breeches, spectacular as Napoleon’s. He was fond of rising on the toes of these boots and writhing sinuously in them, like an acrobat testing, as he responded to a toast or applauded the music and fun. Everything about him indicated the strong man of action—the tensity of his muscles, the flex of his waist, the sure set of his heels, the poise of his head, the ease and power of his bearing, his well-knit mouth, his regular, beautiful teeth, the clarity of his eyes, the sincerity of his smile, even the straight, tough fiber of his hair. In physique the opposite of Yamaoka, for he is five feet nine in height, exceedingly tall for a Japanese, slender, and with delicate hands, the two yet have the same vivacity and shrewdness, the same kindliness touched with hauteur. But the second man is chief of the army, not only in rank, for it was General Nogi, but in worth as well. His mastery was easily felt to-day. He stands at the pinnacle of a wonderful career and the world’s eyes center on him. How handsome he was—and how simple and friendly, how easily pleased, how innately courteous! Is he not also that ideal philosopher whom the Roman Emperor Aurelius wrote about as bethinking him always of his enemy’s comfort? I asked him how he would like to exchange places with General Stoessel.

“I think often of General Stoessel,” he replied. “To be frank I think of him every day. When I go to bed at night and when I get up in the morning, and often between times I wonder about him, how hard his position must be, and how well he defends it, and if he is really injured as we have heard. Sometimes I put myself in his place and imagine what I should do. Then I try to think that some day I might be in just his position. And so I fight the battles all over again from his side and from mine.”

“Does it teach you much?”

The General laughed heartily. “We have learned much from the Russians. I am always pointing them out to my soldiers as model fighters.” He took from the ground a pick whose handle had been splintered by a shell, evidently found on the battlefield. Both nose and heel had been worn half away, rounded with dullness and rust. It was not like the Japanese picks, which are small and short-handled.

“I assembled all the battalion commanders a few days ago,” he continued, “and showed them this pick as an object lesson. It has turned over many a hundred weight of earth and shows how expert the Russians are at trench-making. Our soldiers do not like to dig trenches. Many of them are of gentle blood and think it is coolie work. Besides, they say: ‘We are going forward in the morning. Why dig trenches to-night?’ The Russians have taught us tactics, too.”

Here Villiers interrupted. “Men who, like the Russians, build trenches so they must show themselves on the skyline to shoot can’t teach tactics,” he said. The talk slid on to the bonzais, mutual promises to dine together next in Port Arthur, and au revoirs.

But I started to write of the Manchurian. He knows not, neither does he learn. Yet you can scarcely ask who let down that shaggy jaw and who sloped that head away, for he has a magnificent, strong, clean jaw and his head is handsome and high. That he bathes only once a year and cares not who owns the land so long as he tills it; and that his wife and daughter sit on the stone fence of his donkey stable picking the lice from one another’s heads, doubtless has nothing to do with the question propounded by our sociological poet.

Nor is the Manchurian uncivilized. He has, indeed, reached quite a state of development, for he is the abject slave of fashion—at least his wife and daughter are. They bandage their feet until where a No. 8 boot should go they wear baby 6’s. This, I dare say, is a less harmful fashion than that other silly one of corsets, for surely the organs beneath a shoe lace are not so vital as those under a waistband, but it looks sillier. To see women in the harvest fields, by the roadside washing clothing, cleaning the donkey stable, baking bread, spanking boys, suckling babies, attending husbands, all the time balancing themselves as a première danseuse on her toes, is to think of stake and rack! They say that this is not real Manchuria, that up North, where the other army is, the women do not bind their feet. The present Dowager Empress of China, considered by many the most remarkable living woman, is a native of northern Manchuria. In all this vast country the women are noted for modesty and virtue. Ten years ago, during the China-Japan War, many committed suicide to escape expected ravishment. But it was well learned then that the Japanese never outrage a woman. An incident of such atrocity by Japanese, in either war, has yet to be recorded. It is said that the Russians are different, though it is difficult to see how any Westerner could look with more than curiosity on a Manchu woman. Certain it is that they go about their lives here in complete freedom and security. Not only do the Japanese respect women; they respect property also. Here is a fertile country with rich crops sustaining a vast army, yet no farmer has lost a bushel of grain, except when the chance of battle has substituted shot for scythe.

A son of the soil is the Manchurian, but not a friend of nature, with whom he wars valiantly for his daily bread. He fights terrible suns in summer and ghastly winds in winter. When the winds and snows drive out the flies that eat him up, the lice come in until the sun and flies can have another turn. So can you blame him for being a money grabber? He thinks only of this season’s maize crop and of next spring’s plowing. Whether the Russians or the Japanese or the Chinese rule the land is much the same to him. He will put his tax into the Governor’s coffer and go on with his toil. Why should he bother? He remembers that Confucius was born on the Liaotung and that Confucius taught to resist no violence and remember the fathers. Consequently he fills the country with tombstones and babes while other men fill it with war and nameless graves. Over in the valley is a granite monolith erected in the memory of one who honored his father and mother. A Russian shell has struck it in the pit of the stomach and Japanese bullets have shattered its back.

Patriotism? No. But he has his religion and it is this: to remember the fathers and owe no man.

Recently the master of our house went out with us for a day to carry supplies. A stray shell passed over us, perhaps twenty feet above. We all ducked, but as soon as the coolie recovered he ran. We called him, for we were without other help. He kept running. We sent a soldier. The coolie came back grudgingly. Finally we gave him a yen. But he shook the yen impudently in our faces, and fell back simulating death, crying out: “Coolie dead, yen no good.”

He should be used to danger now. His neighbors are. The shells and bullets are to them what blowsnakes and mosquitoes are to an American country district. To-day I saw children playing among corn stubble while three shells burst within a hundred yards. The children did not look up. For three months the Russians were in the land; now for three months the Japanese have been in the land. For three months the Manchurian nonchalantly carried Russian wounded into Port Arthur and buried Russian dead by the roadside for fifty kopeks a day. For three months he has nonchalantly carried Japanese wounded into Dalny and buried Japanese dead in the fields for fifty sen a day. What concern is it of his which survivor he gives up sen and kopek to afterwards?