memoir · by a contemporary

With the Russians in Manchuria

Maurice Baring (1874–1945), 1906

Named on the pages for Battle of Liaoyang, Battle of Mukden.

machine-read Machine-read (OCR) from a scanned book at the Internet Archive: expect misread words and names. The scan itself is at the library.

draft Matched to the battles automatically; not yet reviewed.

Passages that name the battles; the whole book is at Internet Archive.

24 August – 4 September 1904 (11–22 August Old Style)

Battle of Liaoyang

THE BATTLE OF LIAOYANG
THE BATTLE OF LIAOYANG

20 February – 10 March 1905 (7–25 February Old Style)

Battle of Mukden

CONTENTS
III. Kharbin and Mukden .

THE RETREAT FROM LIAOYANG
I did not ask for the exchange, as I intended some day or other to find my Transbaikal battery. I stayed three days at Mukden, and on the 20th I started with Colonel Potapoff to pay a visit to General Kossagofsky's corps, which was on our extreme right flank near Sin-min-tin, forty versts from Mukden. We arrived at the first "etape" in the evening. "Etapes" are a sort of official post, in charge of an officer, consisting of one or two houses, placed at intervals on the main roads, so that travel- ling officers can pass the night in them.

THE RETREAT FROM LIAOYANG
now and then we used to be startled by Hun-hu- tse atrocities. One poor man who was caught by them was frizzled to death by lighted spirits of wine in a small saucer. The Japanese were ex- pected to attack on this flank, as they subsequently did in the battle of Mukden ; but it never came to anything. After a time I began to think nothing would happen in this part of the world, and I resolved to go back to Mukden and try and find the battery and my friends once more. So one morning I started home again with an escort across the happy autumn fields down the Sin-min-tin road, which was crowded with innumerable Chinese carts, Pekin carts, pack mules, and foot passengers. I arrived at Mukden on October the 3rd, and at the railway station I met the veterinary surgeon of the 2nd Transbaikal Battery, who told me they had just arrived from Kuan-chen-tze, and were now encamped near the station.

GENERAL IMPRESSIONS
The feeling among the army when I left the front was that if Port Arthur fell peace should be made, that irretrievable mistakes had been committed, that the war was fundamentally iniquitous ; that the Japanese were an admirable people, enlightened and putting so-called civilisation to shame. I hear that this feeling developed to extraordinary degree after the battle of Sandepu ; and now after the battle of Mukden it must be stronger still. The feeling in the army was that what Russia wants is peace and internal progress and the develop- ment of her immense home resources, the opening and development of Siberia for instance, and not aggression abroad. If such a feeling obtains in the army how much stronger must it be in Russia itself.

Public domain. Text from Internet Archive.