The Washington times., 1905-01-08
A REPULsE.
AWFUL DRAMA OF WARFARE
PLAYED BEFORE PORT ARTHUR

Sappers are through. the infantry ruShes
in and widens the trench with mattock
and spade. Finally the engineers come
TO strengthen the sides and cover the ex-
posed places overhead with timber balks
and conceal the turnings and pile1 of
earth with maize stalks. The latter is
trick learned from the Beers in South
Africa, who, IN turn, learned it from
the Kaf1irs-
Eighteen Miles of Tunnels.
In this way eighteen wonderful miles
OF these parallels and approaches have
been cut across the Shuishing Valley.
Troops live in the parallels by day and
emerge from them at night for work, or
at dawn and at sunset they leap from
the sap heads for assault
The plain covered two months ago
with dead is today alive with ant-like
figures, and the japanese generals can
pour their divisions almost TO the para
pets of the Russian forts without los
ing j man
One can easily go across the Shut
shing Valley, over which bullets an0
shells constantly fly, and across which
| all the bombardments take place. Twice
! ] was in the captured fort called Ban
duzan by the japanese. Panlung by the
! Chinese, and the Eternal Dragon by the
| English
| Work Was Amazing.
The work done on the plain was arnaz-
/ ing It was unbelievable when one knew
! how II was done, under conditions that
would have unnervsd the stoutest heart,
with the dead bodies of comrades form
| ing some of the intrenchments and with
/ other comrades constantly falling about
1 the workers. Yet IL showed as much
care as the American miner could use in
| cutting mine shaft
The lines Were all mathematfcaIIy
| correct. the planks had been sawed
square, and the sandbags piled in geo
metrica1 patterns Looking back across
! these eighteen miles from the Russian
side, looking at them as the Russians
do. could see no evidence that an
army had wriggied through the ground
as monster worm through the mud Of
the seashore. Only, instead of mud here
was rock. instead OF the fisherman here
was Mr. Bombsheil, his vicious chill
dren, the shrapnel. and Ills nasty rcla-
| t4ves. the tiny, deadly bullets
But where had the thousand tons of
ask where the chipmunk puts the dirt
from his hole
In the Dragons Bloody Angle.
| LIVING condltlolS are worse than
dying conditions. Men on this side OF
the water think it hard If they have TO
live in valise. The soldiers OF Nip
pom before Port Arthur live in a pocket
| handkerchief and the handkerchief is
! Of paper the size of letterhead
! In the Eternal Dragon, which the
Russians held III wise. being within
fifty yards on three sides for two
months. and which was called the
| bloody angle because the dead of both
sides were piled up five deep there dur
ing the three days fighting when it was
taken-so deep that ilostiiities were sus-
pended because of sheer Inability to
wade through the corpses-the Jap+
! anese garrison hung on virtually by
| its eyelfds and toenails-
Lay With the Dead.
Compelled in the hurry Of entrench-
ment on the night of the capture 10 fling
the slain bodies into the embankments
the japanese were never able 20 pluck
them from the partial interment II any
man showed so much hand above
the works it was instantly pierced BY
aharpshooters less than fifty yards away
. ! Compelled TO lie in the stencil OF tho
! dead. for Ii was midsummer and about
forty-eight hours was sufficient 10 bring
| on decomposition, they did not move
They stuck there and kept sentries there
along a Coward trent and nearly ever,
night baued with sortieing heroes from
the other side, quite as willing 10 fighl
and die, but not quite as able TO live 50
: desperately as the japanese
Philosophy of War.
Here we can see tn whole philosoph,
of the war. Both sides arc equally will
, ing To die, but the japanese. though ..Ss
, may not be more willing, are more abb.
TO live. They can exist on a ball O
rice a day in their five-foot-six space o.
! earth, smiling with fatalistic contempt
living that they may die, and dying tha
they may live.
The front of the Eternal Dragon wa.
, called the thirty minute trench, becaus'
so intense was the strain with stencil
sun, and Russian sharpshooters com
. bined, that even Japanese soldiers coult