Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1905-04-22
AS They Fought at Lookout.


As They Fought at Lookout.
Stories of losses in battle in Man
churia may be received with reserva-
ton. perspective of fifty years is
really required through which to view
what actually happens on mOmentous
dates.
Lookout Mountain, Gettysburg, An
tietam, the Wilderness, may now be
seen through the light of the truth
prejudice. false colors have disap-
peared. 1t is a reasonable belief even
with the truth of Port Arthur's de-
tense and fall, gradually coming out,
that as yet the Tartar-RuSs and the
Manchu-Jap have not met each other
in the same fury of hand-to-hand grip
as characterized Lookout Mountain in
our own civil war of '63-or the death
clasp at Gettysburg.
In Hongkong there is saying:
"The Russ is charming liar; the Jap
lies charmingly''
This being true one may feel that as
to actual number of men engaged in
the fighting from the Yaiu to Mukden
and at Port Arthur, and the losses
On both sides, much has been grossly
exaggerated for purposes best known
to that antithesis of the western mind
the oriental.
1t does not appear, so far as the fig
ureS furnished by the cables can be
conservatively sifted, that in any of
the great battles in the Orient during
the last thirteen months greater loss
has been inflicted upon either army
than 6 per cent of the whole force en-
gagged on either side.
One reason for this. is that the fight
ing, with the exception of the last
charges and assaults at Port Arthur,
has been at long range, and M. Bloch
demonstrated long ago that far-range
fighting meant a large diminutiOn in
the actual number of men put out of
service. temporarily or permanently.
Those who take much comfort in
peace and who disbelieve in war may,
therefore, haye comfort in the thought
that with modern guns, modern am
munition and modern tactics earlier
and notable battle scenes could not be
repeated in this war of peoples who
really in the beginning came practi-
cally out of the same womb.
Taking Harpers' Book of Facts for
authority in the famous Fredericks-
burg or Mud" campaign of the civil
war, the total number of men engaged
on both sides, was 2C7 900 and the
total losses about &c per cent. There
men fought shoulder to shoulder, jaw
against jaw, hand upon throat. One or
the other must die in short-range fight
ing.
At Gettysburg about &c per cent of
all the men engaged, North and South,
were killed and wounded, a record not
paralleled by any engagement be-
tween the fanatica1 "Japs'' and the
stolid Russians.
In the battles which Immediately led
to the capture of Lookout Mountain,
80 per cent of the total forces engaged
were killed and wounded, a record
not even to be measured by Port Ar
thurs attack or defense. And when
you think of Port Arthur made by
man, turn back to Lookout Mountain,
made by God. and read the old story:
Away to your left is shining ell
bow of the Tennessee. At your right
you have wooded undulations- Three
fourths of mile distant rises Or
chard Knob, a conical mound, perhaps
a hundred feet high. Then lodges of
rock and narrow breadths of timber
and rolling sweeps of ground for two
miles more, until the whole rough and
stormy landscape seems to dash
against Missionary Ridge, three miles
distant that lifts like a sea wall 500
feet high wooded, rocky, precipitous,
wTinkled with ravines-
"On the top of that wall are rebels
and batteries; below the first pitch,
800 feet down, are more rebels and
batteries, and still below are their
camps and rifle pits sweeping five
miles.
The assault on Lookout began.
The federal troops stood 'twixt heav-
en- and-ChattanOoga- But above
them lifted a precipice, grand and sui
len; and they were men, not eagles
The way was strewn with natural for
tifications, and from Behind rocks and
trees the enemy delivered it's fire.
ION the shorn side of the noun
tain suddenly appeared the head of
the federal column And there it
held, as if riveted to the rock. and
the line of blue, a half a mile long,
swung slowly around from the left.
like the index of a mighty dial, and
swept up the brown face of the noun
tain
Five hundred feet of sheer ascent