The Disasteous Retreat from Penlin    359
yet, negatively, is glorious to the rank and file, inasmuch as very few unwounded prisoners were taken. I know several commanders who, finding themselves in such a guet-apens, would promptly lay down their arms. Perhaps they might be right, perhaps they might be wrong; but certainly the Russian method of seeing the thing through appeals much more effectively to patriotic sentiment.
If, however, the Russian soldiers fought bravely and died gloriously, I think even the most ardent patriots of St. Petersburg or Moscow must admit that at Yushuling and Penlin, the quality of generalship was wanting to their arms, and that, apparently, it was not compensated for by the automatic working of any thoroughly effective brigade or regimental system. I am fully conscious that a British General spends his life in a glass house. The public are pleased to think that because their army is often happy-go-lucky in its methods, this is a military characteristic. It is useless to tell them that the profound belief in itself which encourages the army to think it can dispense with taking much preliminary trouble, is a national, and not at all a military, characteristic. But I never could see myself that the man with the beam in his own eye did anything but a friendly act when he relieved his brother of a mote ; and so I venture to say that, big as my beam may be, it does not in the least prevent me from seeing quite clearly that the Russians were remarkably casual at the Makura-yama mountain, and by their arrangements seemed to court disaster.
Probably most people will think the British were on occasion even more careless and less watchful in South Africa. It may be so; I am not a fair judge. But the only instance I can think of as being fairly