For, contrary to the popular
accusation, no matter how flattering it may be, we could not describe
events at which we were not present.
But what mainly moved us to decide, was the statements of Okabe, the
officer especially detailed by the War Office to aid and instruct us,
to act as our guide, philosopher, and friend, our only official
source of information, who told us that Liao-Yang was occupied by the
Japanese and that the Russians were in retreat. He even begged me
personally to come with him into Liao-Yang on the 29th and see how it
was progressing under the control of the Japanese authorities.
Okabe's news meant that the great battle Kuropatkin had promised at
Liao-Yang, and which we had come to see, would never take place.
Why Okabe lied I do not know. Whether Oku had lied to him, or
whether it was Baron-General Kodama or Major-General Fukushima who
had instructed him to so grossly misinform us, it is impossible to
say. While in Tokio no one ever more frequently, nor more
unblushingly, made statements that they knew were untrue than did
Kodama and Fukushima, but none of their deceptions had ever harmed us
so greatly as did the lie they put into the mouth of Okabe. Not only
had the Japanese NOT occupied Liao-Yang on the evening of the 27th of
August, but later, as everybody knows, they had TO FIGHT SIX DAYS to
get into it. And Kuroki, so far from being fifty miles north toward
Mukden as Okabe said he was, was twenty miles to the east on our
right preparing for the closing in movement which was just about to
begin. Three days after we had left the army, the greatest battle
since Sedan was waged for six days.
So our half year of time and money, of dreary waiting, of daily
humiliations at the hands of officers with minds diseased by
suspicion, all of which would have been made up to us by the sight of
this one great spectacle, was to the end absolutely lost to us.
Perhaps we made a mistake in judgment. As the cards fell, we
certainly did. But after the event it is easy to be wise. For the
last fifteen years, had I known as much the night before the Grand
Prix was run as I did the next afternoon, I would be passing rich.
The only proposition before us was this: There was small chance of
any immediate fighting. If there were fighting we could not see it.
Confronted with the same conditions again, I would decide in exactly
the same manner. Our misfortune lay in the fact that our experience
with other armies had led us to believe that officers and gentlemen
speak the truth, that men with titles of nobility, and with the
higher titles of general and major-general, do not lie.
