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HE successful management of the great armies of the present day involves apart from strategy and tactics-clear and accurate foresight, careful attention to details, and many preliminary rehearsals. Failure to anticipate emergencies, neglect of apparently insignificant precautions, or omissions of antecedent practice may bring disaster upon a much smaller aggregation of men than a modern army. This has been shown many times in Arctic expeditions. One of Sir George Nares's sledging parties was disabled and wrecked merely because it had not foreseen the need of snow-shoes. Water had come up through cracks in the ice, and remained unfrozen under a protecting blanket of snow, although the temperature of the air was much below zero. The men's feet went through the snow into the water, and then froze when they were withdrawn. Snow-shoes would have kept them on the surface of the snow above the water.

Captain De Long's party starved to death in the Lena delta largely because it had brought rifles ashore from the sinking ship instead of shotguns. Arctic hares and ptarmigan-the only game to be found on the north Siberian coast in winter-are both snow-white, and it is almost impossible to discover them until they run or fly. Many were seen by De Long's men, including two hundred ptarmigan in a single covey, but they were almost invisible when at rest and very difficult to hit with a rifle when in motion. A single shotgun might possibly have saved the whole party.

In war, in which conditions and equipment are much more varied and complicated than in Arctic exploration, the need of foresight and attention to details is still greater. Our army was wrecked in Cuba chiefly because conditions had not been foreseen, and little provision had been made even for the most obvious and urgent needs. Proper landing facilities would have saved hundreds of men,

and mosquito-nets and water-boilers would have saved hundreds more. By foresight and attention to details, moreover, the army might have been kept in a state of efficiency, as landing parties of marines from the navy were, under the same conditions and at the same time.

In the Japanese-Manchurian campaign nothing had been neglected, and almost every possible contingency had been foreseen. The Japanese had everywhere adequate transportation, as well as abundant supplies of all sorts, from concrete and steel turn-tables for siege guns and ship-loads of chains and timber for defensive booms, down to filters, mosquito-nets, microscopes, towels, soap, and salt for soldiers' tooth-brushes. They even had, in the field, portable lofts of trained carrier pigeons for the use of scouts and small reconnoitering parties on long trips. The only thing, so far as I know, that they did not anticipate was beriberi, which disabled tens of thousands of men; and the only things that they did not have were hand grenades, which they afterward improvised in the field out of old tin cans when they had learned from the Russians how useful such missiles were in trench fighting.

Order and system have always been characteristic of the Japanese, and in the rush and excitement of war they were even more noticeable than in the comparative leisure of peace. At Sasebo, when I visited that great military base in June, 1904, they were loading on transports more than three thousand tons of assorted supplies every day; and yet they were so little flustered or hurried that they found time to look up and bring off to our cruiser an upright grand piano, for which some of our Japanese passengers had happened to express a casual wish. In the thirty-two storehouses or other large buildings that I personally visited at Sasebo the supplies for the front were so admirably grouped and arranged that a transport officer would have had no difficulty in filling an order for three

thousand tons of assorted stores in the middle of the night and without a lantern.

No less thought and attention were given by the Japanese to preliminary practice. When they had decided upon the best method of accomplishing a thing, they practiced it, and practiced it, and practiced it, until the doing of it had become second nature. There has always been at least a probability that we might have to send an army across seas; and yet, so far as I know, we have never practiced the embarkation and disembarkation of troops. That we needed such practice any one who saw the helter-skelter embarkation of General Shafter's army at Tampa will admit. The Japanese could put, and often did put, a whole division on board ship in the middle hours of a single night without the least hurry, excitement, or disorder. In every military field practice was second only to foresight.

In a thinly settled region in central Japan they had an extensive range, two miles or more wide and three or four miles long, for the training of field artillery. This range was gridironed with transverse trenches, and in the trenches were papier-maché figures of cavalry, infantry, or mere human heads which were attached to horizontal iron rods in such a way that by the turn of a crank they could be thrown up into sight. At a given signal a row of heads or a line of infantry would suddenly appear above ground at a distance of 500 yards, 2,000 yards, 3,000 yards, or some intermediate distance; and it was the duty of the practicing battery to go into action, estimate the range, cut the shrapnel fuses, and open fire in the shortest possible time. Frequently the dummies would be thrown up in three or four widely separated places, either simultaneously or in rapid succession, and the gunners were expected to hit them all. This practice, of course, gave them great quickness of vision and action.

Generally speaking, the Japanese accustomed their soldiers to do swiftly and accurately in time of peace everything that they would have to do in the rush and excitement of war. They even trained stokers for their battle-ships. At Sasebo I saw a line of seventy-five or a hundred half-naked men shoveling heaps of large pebbles into oven doors with as much dash and energy as if their lives depended upon the quick and accurate accomplishment of their task. They were kept at this practice day after day, until their muscles were like cords of steel wire.

The projectiles used by modern armies are small-caliber rifle bullets; siege shells for heavy mortars; common shell, shrapnel, and solid shot (including the large bullets of machine guns) for field artillery; and hand grenades for use in close fighting. Shells are exploded either by percussion or fuse, and the bursting charge consists generally of lyddite, melinite, Shimose powder, or some other picric acid compound of great expansive force. The projectile that is most destructive to troops in the open (with the exception of machine-gun bullets) is the shrapnel shell, which has everywhere superseded the grape and canister of earlier days. By shrapnel fire exposed columns are sometimes almost annihilated. In one of the assaults that I witnessed on the Russian fort of Sungshushan, at Port Arthur, a Japanese storming party of two hundred and thirty men lost all but nineteen in a charge of three hundred yards, and probably four-fifths of the killed and wounded were hit by shrapnel bullets. It has been said that a forty per cent loss will stop almost any charging column; but a loss of eighty-two per cent did not stop the Japanese. Nineteen men reached the edge of the moat and would probably have entered the fort if they had not found that their light bamboo scaling-ladders-or rather truss bridges were too short to reach the parapet. Even then six or eight of them, under shelter of a few sand-bags which they carried, went to work with intrenching tools and burrowed into the ground so far that they were safe. They were soon reinforced, were never afterward dislodged, and when I visited the spot, two weeks later, the comparatively shallow excavation had become a fairly spacious bomb-proof which opened into the moat and was held by fifty men with a machine gun. From this bomb-proof they dug a gallery under the moat and eventually blew up the parapet with dynamite.

Many readers doubtless think, as I thought before experience led me to investigate, that

a shrapnel case, in exploding, scatters bullets in all directions. I supposed that a large number of them must necessarily go perpendicularly downward; and when I found myself, for the first time, in an open trench with shrapnel cases bursting overhead, I thought my chances of escape were few. But no shrapnel bullet ever goes straight downward. It is blown out of the front end of a tube, and follows the trajectory of the projectile as a whole. If you fire a loaded shotgun barrel out of a two-inch cannon, and then, by means of a time fuse, discharge the shotgun barrel in the air, the shot do not go straight downward, but are sprayed out, fanwise, ahead of the barrel, in what the experts call a "cone of dispersion." Shrapnel bullets are deadly to troops in the open, and especially troops massed in close order, but they are not so dangerous to men who are sheltered by even a low wall or the side of a trench. The Russians often threw shrapnel for half an hour over a trench in which there was a solid line of Japanese without hitting one of them. An enfilading fire along a trench may be deadly, but not a cross-fire.

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The Japanese at Port Arthur used shrapnel when necessary, but they had also a projectile which I should describe as an unevenly tempered shell of steel. I do not know how it was made, and the words "unevenly tempered" express merely a conjecture of my own. The peculiarity of the shell was that it burst into three or four large fragments and an immense number of small ones. Its distinctive merits were that the large pieces had weight enough to smash through light covers or intrenchments, while the smaller fragments wounded a large number of men. saw in hospital at Maizeru an officer from the Russian battle-ship Orel who had been struck by fourteen small pieces from a single Japanese shell. Not one of his wounds was dangerous to life, but the hemorrhage from them all put him out of action. I also saw on the captured Russian battle-ships steel walls and partitions which had been struck by fragments large enough to perforate, and also by myriads of splinters big enough to mar the paint, but not big enough even to make a dent. One such wall, ten feet by fifty or more, was so spotted by small splinters that there was hardly a hand's-breadth of unmarred surface. My conjecture was that the different parts of the projectile had been differently tempered, some being tough and coherent enough to hold together in large

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masses, while others were as brittle and explosive as a Prince Rupert's drop. If such a process be practicable, it may explain the effects. Certain it is that myriads of small splinters found their way through the narrow observation slits of the conning-towers on the Russian battle-ships, and in some of them killed or wounded almost every officer present. The last man left in the conning-tower of the Orel was a midshipman, and sixteen out of eighteen deck officers were put out of action.

The most intimidating and nerve-racking projectile used by modern armies is probably the common shell loaded with high explosive. The terrific concussion as it bursts, the whizzing scream of the fragments as they go off at all angles into the air, and the ghastly laceration and bloodshed when the ragged splinters strike human bodies are extremely trying to the nerves even of seasoned troops. The small-caliber rifle bullet is noiseless, and kills without much disfiguration or effusion of blood, so that it does not greatly shock the spectator; but the effects of a shell-burst in a mass of men are in every possible way terrifying. Shells, however, to an army as a whole are not nearly so destructive as the bullets from rifles, shrapnel cases, and machine guns. The ratio of shell wounds to bullet wounds in the Japanese army was one to eight in the north, and one to three at Port Arthur.

Prior to the Russo-Japanese War hand grenades 'had not been much used in modern warfare; but in trench fighting and the defense of forts they were found to be very effective, and at Port Arthur both sides made use of them, the Japanese throwing them by hand and also firing them from small bamboo mortars. They might possibly be used to advantage now in aerial fighting, but no airman, so far as I know, has yet tried them.

BARBED-WIRE ENTANGLEMENTS

A New York journal of recent date says that the Russian military authorities are trying to place in the United States an order for five thousand tons of barbed wire. They had every reason to be satisfied with the use made of this material at Port Arthur. Their entanglements there were of the most formidable character, and consisted, as a rule, of four parallel lines of three-strand fence, ten feet apart, with three more strands running back and forth in zigzags from line to line. Between these barriers quantities of wire had

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been thrown loose on the ground in big snarls to entangle the feet and legs. Getting through or over these obstacles, under heavy rifle and shrapnel fire, proved to be almost impossible. The Japanese first tried our method in Cuba, by equipping their storming parties with wire-cutting nippers. This scheme failed. The men were all killed or disabled before they got half-way through. Then they organized volunteer "sure death. parties," and sent them, one after another, to clear the way before the assault began. proved to be too costly in life. Next they tried equipping the storming party with mattresses which, when thrown on the barriers, enabled the troops to scramble over without getting caught in the barbs. This also was unsatisfactory, because the men got hopelessly tangled up in the loose snarls between the lines. Finally, when the slopes in front of the forts were covered with the bodies of their dead, they began sending up at night long lines of men with trailing ropes tied around their waists. When a Russian searchlight was turned on that part of the field the crawling men lay still, and could not be distinguished from the hundreds of other bodies that were still forever. When the beam moved on, they crawled a few yards upward. Moving in the intervals of darkness, they finally reached the fences, made the ropes fast to the posts, and wriggled back to shelter. A hundred men or more then hauled on the ropes and pulled a whole section of the barrier down into the front parallel. Thus an end was put at last to the terror of the barbed-wire entanglement. This form of obstacle has already been used by both Russians and Germans in the present war,. and there is no doubt that in places where it can be adequately protected by rifle, shrapnel, or machine-gun fire it presents an almost insurmountable obstacle to cavalry or infantry, although it may be smashed by wellplaced artillery.

SIEGE METHODS

In the siege methods of the Japanese and Russians at Port Arthur there were a number of modern innovations, as well as some revivals of past practices. Among the things that seemed to me new were telephones for the control of indirect artillery fire; defensive shields of steel for bomb-throwers; electric apparatus for the explosion of mines; airpumps for forcing air into sapping tunnels; siege guns mounted on steel turn-tables set

in concrete; timber and sand-bag bridges to protect trenches from an enfilading fire; and searchlights, magnesium rockets, and parachute torches for the illumination of fields of battle at night. Among the revival of old methods were the masking of trenches with cornstalks (in what had been a field of corn); the rolling of explosive barrels down into moats; and the use of suffocating gases to expel sappers from underground galleries. It is probable that the Japanese would also have tried, if the suggestion had come in time, an American plan which provided for the flooding and destruction of the Russian forts by streams of water thrown into them in accordance with the methods of hydraulic mining. Toward the end of October, when they had established themselves on the edges of the moats, they were near enough to do this with every chance of success.

The largest guns used by the Japanese at Port Arthur were 11-inch siege mortars, carrying a 500-pound shell loaded with Shimose powder. With these guns and projectiles they silenced the Russian forts and damaged them more or less, but they could not completely reduce them. In the uninjured caponieres and counterscarp casemates there were always men enough left to repel an assault, and the forts had finally to be destroyed by saps and mines. In the light of this experience it seems evident that the Germans must have brought against the forts of Liège and Namur much heavier guns than the Japanese had at Port Arthur; but, even so, it is hard to understand how the invaders in so short a time were able to make solid emplacements for such artillery. A 420 millimeter mortar, such as the Germans are said to have had, would be, of course, tremendously destructive; but it could not be accurately aimed without something stronger and better than an improvised emplacement. The heavy Russian naval guns mounted in the field at Port Arthur had no accuracy of fire, because their foundations were not sufficiently solid. The Japanese guns, although much smaller than those of the Germans, were mounted on heavy steel turn-tables set in eight feet of concrete, and the making of such emplacements requires more time than the Germans would seem to have had. But the present war may give us many surprises in the way of new or improved siege methods.

At Tsingtau, where siege operations must soon begin, the Japanese will have the full

benefit of their experience in front of Port Arthur, because every detail of it was permanently recorded on the spot. No strain or emergency was allowed to interfere with careful note-taking. Every officer in every part of the trenches who had charge of any siege operations wrote in a daily journal a full account of his work and its results, with plans, measurements, drawings, suggestions, and details of every kind that might be useful in future study or instruction. I saw these records in three or four different places on the line of investment, and was told that they were being made everywhere. Even at the Panlungshan fort, in the middle of the Russian line, where the fighting was almost incessant, Major Sato, with one hand wrapped in a bloody bandage, got out for me carefully drawn plans and diagrams to show what the situation was there and what had happened. I refer to these records as another innovation in siege methods, as well as an additional illustration of Japanese foresight and thoroughness. Never before, I think, had such war chronicles been written in the storm and stress of almost continuous fighting.

SANITATION

In no field, perhaps, has the art of war changed more in the last half-century than in the field of sanitation. Fifty years ago, before it became known that the so-called infectious and contagious diseases are transmitted by flies, mosquitoes, and impure water, from four to ten soldiers died of sickness for every one that was killed in battle. Even as late as the Boer War in South Africa (18991902) the ratio of deaths from disease to deaths in action was more than seven to one. The first great modern army to adopt sanitary measures based on recent discoveries in medical science was the army of Japan in Manchuria.

I first had an opportunity to see the methods of the Japanese at Port Arthur, where a considerable part of General Nogi's army was closely massed in trenches and gulches or under the shelter of protecting bluffs. When large numbers of men are concentrated in limited areas, and particularly in excavations below the surface of the ground, it becomes extremely difficult to maintain cleanliness. In some of the Russian trenches that I visited filth and offensive odors were very noticeable even three or four weeks after they had been abandoned. The Japanese trenches, on the contrary, were as clean and free from smells

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as the streets of Tokyo. There were no open latrines, such as I had seen in our camps both in Florida and in Cuba, nor was there anywhere an accumulation of organic refuse or garbage. All offensive matter of that kind was instantly carried away and either buried or burned. In two months I did not see, at any one time, an amount that would have filled the crown of a hat. The result was that there were practically no flies to carry germs of disease, and consequently little typhoid or dysentery. In South Africa more than twelve per cent of the entire British force suffered from one or the other of those diseases; while in Manchuria the percentages were, respectively, about two per cent and one per cent. In General Oku's army of 75,000 men there were only one hundred and eighty-seven cases of typhoid and fifty-five of dysentery in seven months.

In the Santiago campaign in Cuba our army was practically wrecked by malarial and yellow fevers caused by the bites of infected mosquitoes. In the Manchurian campaign every Japanese soldier was furnished with gloves and a folding head-protector of fine netting on a wire frame, which he wore whenever he was exposed to that kind of danger. The result was the practical elimination of malaria as a cause of disease. In the war of 1895, in China, there were 42,000 cases of malarial fever among the Japanese troops; while in the war of 1904-5, in almost exactly the same field, there were only 1,200 cases, or about one-half of one per cent of the total number of sick.

In the armies of the last century contaminated water was often the cause of epidemics. In Cuba most of our soldiers were virtually forced to drink water from polluted streams, even when they knew it to be deadly. In Manchuria every well, river. and brook was tested by army surgeons before the soldiers were given access to it, and condemned water was either boiled in a portable plant carried for that purpose or withdrawn from use altogether.

As a result of these various precautions, the previous record of deaths from disease to deaths from bullet and shell was in the Japanese armies almost reversed. Instead of four disease deaths to one battle death, there were in Manchuria more than two battle deaths for every disease death. (According to official reports, 58,887 battle deaths to 27,156 disease deaths.)

The most serious blot on the sanitary record