78         PRELIMINARY OPERATIONS
If the Russian preparations by land and sea had been in accordance with such facts and figures as official Russia allows to see the light, and in accordance also with the reports that have conceivably misled the Tsar, then we might, indeed, have expected to see Russian arms throw back the " insolent foe " into the sea. But every single page of the war hitherto has been a revelation of Russian incompetence, mismanagement, and misconduct, and we seem to be carried back to 1878, and to remember the terrible disillusions of the reigning Tsar, who was compelled to arrest the inquiry into the wholesale defalcations at that period, owing to the influential personages whose names were found to be inextricably involved in the scandals.
We were bound, for want of proof to the contrary and in order to keep on the safe side, to accept the primafacie evidence of Russian official statements ; we were bound, when Kuropatkin himself visited East Asia and declared all to be ready, to think at least that all was not unready. If Japan finds that she has an easier task than she thought, it is so much to the good; better, at least, to over-estimate an enemy than the reverse. " People are trying to intimidate us with phantoms," wrote the Novoe Vremya three weeks ago, in reviewing the warnings of the English press, but anything more unpleasantly solid than the Japanese phantom has never crossed Russia's path. One is forcibly reminded of Thiers's historic exclamation on being informed of the strength of the Prussian army before 1870 :—" Allons done ! Ce sont la des phantas-magories! Si ces chifires e"taient vrais, il faudrait de'sespe'rer du sort de la France 1"
Phantom or phantasmagoria, the parallel is striking, and one can only hope, in Russia's interest, that the awakening may be less bitter than it was to France.
Where the weight of the first blow will fall still remains a secret, but the scouts of the two armies in Northern Korea are in touch between Anju and Ping-yang, and this part of the theatre of war remains the