At Kinchow the Russian barracks still stood, also some huge, damaged Russian guns. Many of the prisoners left the train, but not to weep over these reminders of their lost dominion. It was only to get, for the purpose of making tea, some of the hot water which a Chinese coolie was distributing. But the Chinese coolie ordered them away with a threatening wave of a stick and insisted on serving the Japanese first. The Japanese looked on, laughing in the goodnatured, self-complacent way in which one laughs at an imbecile. They laughed until their eyes looked like two oblique slits, at the big, uncouth, bearded babies waddling after them, meek, docile, dirty, utterly humiliated.
At some distance apart, a well-groomed group of Japanese officers, station functionaries and doctors had collected, and were smiling in an affable and patronising way at the awful specimens of humanity that disfigured the landscape. Beside them orderlies held magnificent Russian horses, some of the widestrewn spoils of Port Arthur.
Dalny! the name brought vividly to my mind the first visit which I paid to Liaotung, in September 1903. I recalled the profound impression of Russian might the place made on me then. I recalled my first sight of that fine European town, the easternmost limits of a White Empire, of Europe, my first glimpse of the harbour fit to shelter navies, of the enormous piers built not for an age but for all time.
This monument of Russian might was now an eternal monument of Japanese bravery. This fine European town was Japanese. This frontier post of Europe had ceased to be European. This harbour sheltered only Japanese ships. These piers echoed only to the triumphant clink of Japanese " geta."
At Dairen I met three other correspondents who had been captured at other parts of the battle-field — M. Ludovic Naudeau, of the Journal (Paris), Mr. Richard Little, of the Chicago Daily News, and Baron Bilder von Kriegelstein, of the Berlin Lokalanzeiger.
CHAPTER XVIII
FR AS A PRISONER OF WAR
The most interesting sea trip I ever made in my life was the trip from Dalny to Ujina, Japan, in the middle of last March. I went as a Japanese prisoner of war in a hospital ship, the Awa Maru, a fine little vessel, formerly on the Nippon Yusen Kaisha's European run, with a German captain in command of her, and, down in the engine-room, two canny Scotch engineers, who were making big pay but were mortally afraid that if they went hame to their ain countrie they would be promptly run into gaol under the " Foreign Enlistments Act."
The number of wounded Japanese on board that boat was considerable, and the way in which the privates were accommodated in tier upon tier of shelves in the hold was marvellous and economical. Japan did wonderful things in the late war, but nothing more wonderful than the way in which she cut down expenses without sacrificing efficiency, presenting in this respect a great contrast to Russia, which, although comparatively a poor country, spent money with a lavishness which would make even wealthy nations like America or Great Britain stand aghast.
Without paying anything for it, however, Japan derives from her geographical situation advantages which all the gold in the Russian treasury could not buy. The Russians brought their wounded by jolting carts to the railway, and such of them as survived that preliminary trial were brought by jolting trains to Chita, Verkhnyudinsk and Irkutsk, where they ran a good chance of dying from ennui in the monotonous Siberian plains, while the Japanese wounded could in a few days be transported from the battle-field to the loveliest islands in the world.
The change from dusty Manchuria to the clean sea, the bright sky, the green islands, the snowy seagulls, the glad vinous air, the sunshine sparkling on the polished brasswork of Awa Maru, the snowy billows dancing before the prow, the white foaming water spouting continually from the condenser at the side, the sea churned into foam underneath the propeller, the deck as white and spotless as the snowy quarterdeck of a British warship, the clear-cut horizon, — this change was so great that I felt — well, I felt as if I had just drunk a deep draught of some rare wine.