CHAPTER VIL
Russian Demoralization—On the Heels of the Enemy—Remarkable Japarw.se Strategy—The Paper Army—The Thin Black Line of Reinforcements-Position of the Russian Army—Kuropatkin Tied to his Railway—The Second Scheme of Attack—A Model of Organization—Perfect Secrecy of Plans—Cutting off Port Arthur—AlexeiefFs Command of Language—And the Sober Truth—Third Blocking Attempt—Lurid Flashing of Starch-lights—On the Bones of their Predecessors—Half the Passage Blocked— Honored but Unarmed—Russian Acknowledgements—Terrific Casualties— Togo for Liao-tung—The Japanese Landings—Escape of Alexeieff—Port Arthur Isolated.
HE signal victory of the despised Japanese at the Yalu
T       River filled official circles in St. Petersburg with the liveliest   dismay and shook   that determined optimism which had   survived even   the   unexampled series of naval disasters sustained by the power of the Czar in the Far East   There seems never to have been the least doubt among the
Grand Dukes   and the   Bureaucrats by
Russian Demoralization   whom   the   Emperor   was   surrounded
that   whatever   fate   might   befall the
fleet, the "yellow monkeys," as they elegantly called their foes, would fly headlong before the onslaught of the Russian soldiery accustomed as it was to victory on many a bloody field in Europe. The fatuity of this overweening confidence now stood revealed, and it was at last tardily recognized that as stern a task awaited the Russian forces on land as at sea. But St. Petersburg officialdom, wounded in pride and shaken in nerve as it was, still preserved a bold front to the world, and excuses for the disaster that
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