ARMY BEATEN BY A NATION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 292, 4 December 1908, Page 3

ARMY BEATEN BY A NATION.

KUROPATKIXS TRIBUTE. " If a war is to be successful hi these days it must be carried on, not by an army, but by an armed nation." Such is the conclusion drawn by General Knlopatkin in the suppressed portions of his memoirs of the Russo-Japanese war, a further remarkable instalment of which appears in the October number of McClure's Magazine. Genera) Knropatkin devotes himself in these pages to consideration of the causes which led to the success of the Japanese, the most important of which, he states, was that "Russia did not fully appreciate the material and moral strength of Japan, and did not regard * conflict with her seriously enough." . As aa instance of the ignorance in, which Russia watered on the war, he I mentions that according to the figures of the general staff, the total number I of available men in tile standing army, | the territorial army, and the regular reserve of Japan was only a little more than 400,000. ■ "As a matter of fact," General Kuropatkin states, " published official reports of General Kipke, chief medical inspector of the Japanese army, show that the loss of the Japanese in killed and wounded, in the course of war, was 83 follows: Killed 47,387 : • Wounded 173,425

Total 220,812 v "Their loss in killed, wounded, and 'sick was 534,885—a number considerably greater than the whole force which 'according to the figures of our general Staff, they could put into the field. They sent 300,000 sick and wounded back from Manchuria to Japan. • "The moral strength of the Japanese"' General Knropatkm adds, "we underestimated or entirely overlooked. 'Japanese soldiers, deeply conscious of the bearing that their exploits inig.it have on the future of the country, fought with a self-sacrificing devotion 'and a stnbborness Unit we have never seen in any war in which we had pieviously been engaged.' . The lethargy of the Russian army and nation was in striking contrast, o the enthusiastic self-sacrifice of the .Milanese? and General Knropatkin is very caustic in his criticisms. , "Out of the ten thousands of Russian students who were then living in Idleness, many of them at iM«J*">«| of the Empire," he writes, onij a handful volunteered, while at that very tfme in *!»». 90ns of thc TT* , d r 4 fished boys 14 and •> years of age-were striving for places mothers killed themselves Ihroueh shame when their sons were W% be physically unfit for military service."