Jack London
San Francisco Examiner/July 1, 1904
When I landed at Yokohama I soon found that there were two ways of playing the game: either to sit down in Tokyo as the Japs wanted me to and eat many dinners, or to go out on my own resources. I started out with the first brigade of the first army into Northern Korea and stayed with them about two months, seeing what I could see and taking pictures. They didn’t seem to have orders concerning me and let me follow along. We got up into Northern Korea before I was ordered back to Seoul.
There we waited around for a while till some of us correspondents were assigned to go to the front. Fourteen of us were picked to go. I was one of the lucky fourteen that was graciously allowed to travel with the army. But this time it was different. It was like a party of Cook’s tourists with supervising officers as guides. We saw what we were permitted to see, and the chief duty of the officers looking after us was to keep us from seeing anything.
We did see part of the battle of the Yalu from the outer walls of Wlju, where we had been led by the supervising officer. We saw the opening of part of the battle. The fight raged on and up to Hamatan, a six miles’ running fight, where the final desperate stand was made. One Japanese company was completely annihilated. All this time we were not permitted to follow the fight, or to get any of the details, but were ordered back to our camp, which lay behind the range of hills from the Yalu. The details of this fight were not given us until May 9th; the fight took place May 1st and these details we were not permitted to send by the local censor.
From then on the Japanese treatment of the correspondents with the first army grew stricter and stricter. We crossed the Yalu and went to Feng Wang Cheng. There we settled down and had a beautiful Ideal California camping trip. We lived in a grove beside a temple, where each of us had a magnificent little camp. There was nothing to do. We spent a couple of weeks there. Every day we went in swimming, played bridge, got up games and protested gaily against those who controlled our destinies to be allowed to see something. They in turn tightened the screws on us, so that our freedom of movement was limited to a circle drawn about the city of Feng Wang Cheng, the radius of which was a mile and a half. And there be struck.
Remonstrance Suppressed
We got up a joint telegram, signed by every man at the front, and to be cabled to their respective papers in France, England, the United States, explaining the utter futility of the situation, and that further stay in the field was a useless expense. But the Japanese by their usual Asiatic indirection, which involved the subtlest dialectics and discussion of things metaphysical, and concerning all things under the sun except the point at issue, sidetracked the telegram. Then they made promises of giving us greater freedom of movement, which they did not fulfill. I, for one, in disgust started back. There was nothing to see, nothing to write about save the woes of correspondents, swimming pools and peaceful temple scenes.
The Japanese resembles a precocious child who talks philosophy one moment, and the next moment Is making mud pies. One moment he is acting with the wisdom of the West, and the next moment with the childishness of the East. For instance, they resolved at Wiju, before the crossing of the Yalu, that the correspondents could not date their telegrams from Wiju, for the reason that the Russians reading these dispatches in the English and American journals would conclude that the correspondents would be with the headquarters of the first army, and that therefore the headquarters of the first army were at Wiju. But the correspondents constantly evaded this restriction by stating in the body of the telegram that they were at Wiju. The Japanese did not wish the Russian to learn that they are attempting to build bridges across the Yalu. If the Russians did not read it in the newspapers they would never dream that the Japanese dreamed of crossing in that manner. One correspondent evaded this restriction in this way: “The Japanese are at work with the timber in the river. I am not permitted to say what they are working upon. I can assure you, however, that they are not digging a well.”
Reflected on Valor
At Feng Wang Sheng the Japanese told us in their official information that at the beginning of the war they had thought their cavalry greatly inferior to the Russian cavalry, but that they had since learned, in numerous patrol affairs, that their cavalry was superior to the Russian cavalry and that they were compelled constantly to restroom their men. On top of this, for several days they told us officially of many patrol contacts in which there had been no casualties. One correspondent, from dearth of news compelled to telegraph something, innocently composed a wire which contained the following: “In numerous recent meetings of patrols discretion had been observed on both sides.” When this was interpreted to Colonel Haginaw his face went red with wrath and he pounded the offending telegram with his fist and dashed out with it to the staff. Returning somewhat calmed, he said that the telegram could not be sent because it reflected upon the valor of the Japanese. To add to the correspondent’s woe, on his return to camp be was nearly man-handled by his brethren because be had not revised the telegram to read: “In numerous recent meetings of patrols discretion bas been observed by the Russians, indiscretion by the Japanese.
When I left Yokohama homeward bound, all the other correspondents, patiently playing the game according to Japanese etiquette, were still publicly dining and privily blaspheming in Tokyo. The armies to which they were assigned had been for weeks at the front, and had fought many bloody battles. Nor did they have any definite assurance as to when they would be permitted to go to the front. I left Richard Harding Davis and John Fox Jr. at Yokohama, assuring me as they said good-by that as soon as they heard one shot fired they would hit the high places for the United States, but that they could not possibly return after the months of waiting until they had heard that one shot fired.
Scribe is Last
The Japanese does not in the least understand the correspondent or the mental processes of a correspondent, which are a white man’s mental process. The Japanese is of a military race. His old caste distinctions placed the fighting man at the top; next comes the pennant, after that the merchant, and beneath all the scribe. These caste distinctions are practically in force today. A correspondent from the West is a man who must be informed by printed Instructions that be must dress and behave decently.
The Japanese cannot understand straight talk, white man’s talk. This is one of the causes of so much endless delay. The correspondent talks straight to the Japanese, but he cannot realize that it is straight talk. He feels that there is something at the back of the correspondent’s mind, and the Japanese must have a day or a week to meditate upon what is at the back of the correspondent’s mind. Having done this, he has another talk; but again he must go away and meditate upon what is behind this new talk, and so nothing is accomplished from the correspondent’s point of view.
Granting that no revolution arises in Russia and there is no interference of outside powers, I cannot see how Japan can possibly win. Not heroics on the battlefield, but economics at home determines the outcome of modern wars. Japan, with all the prestige of their splendid land and naval victories, has floated a loan by pledging her customs at 6 per cent. What per cent will be demanded by the investor who takes a second mortgage on her customs? And what percent will be demanded in case of a protracted war or in the event of disaster to her arms? This loan has been a colossal blunder on the part of her statesmen, and its retrievement a more difficult undertaking than that of the capture of Port Arthur.
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