THE TAPAN-RVSS1A WAR.
was utterly unprepared, were still obdurate to conviction even by the logic of such disastrous events. Nothing is more stubborn than wounded pride, or more blind than baffled vanity. The more desperate the situation, the more perversely bent became the bureaucracy of Russia in prolonging it, and in refusing to recognize facts which impeached the competence and sagacity of the existing regime. Already the strain of maintaining the army in Manchuria had begun to have its effect at home in widespread distress and growing discontent among the peasant and industrial classes. The characteristic remedy of the governing clique was to attempt not a cure, but a diversion. Kuropatkin was ordered to renew his activity and to achieve something that could be represented as a victory at any cost. Since the last great battle in October—the battle of the Sha-ho, when Kuropatkin's ill-advised offensive had been converted into a
perilous retreat that almost degenerated
Raids in Manchuria    into disaster—the two opposing armies
had been practically quiescent.    Before
they.had either recovered from the exhaustion of their last tremendous struggle—before their awful losses could be repaired and their depleted stores and supplies could be replenished—the inexorable grasp of the Manchurian winter had fallen upon them and frozen them into mobility. While the last critical acts in the siege of Port Arthur were being enacted, the troops of Oyama and Kuropatkin were occupied only in maintaining a jealous vigilance on each other, and in digging themselves into their winter quarters. In a climate that is almost Arctic in its severity, where the temperature is regularly for weeks and months together 30 and 40 degrees below freezing-point, active campaigning would be impossible, even if the deep snow under which the face of the country is buried did not make transport impossible.   Each army proceeded to entrench itself
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