Vol. 77

The Japanese Land Victory

The first serious engagement in the land campaign between Russia and Japan began on Tuesday of last week, and lasted for six days, culminating in at decisive victory for the Japanese on Sunday. For some time the Japanese have been gathering on the east bank of the Yalu River. Their troops have been strung along the river for some eighty miles, to disguise the point of concentration. In the Yalu there are two islands, near the mouth of the river, one just above Wiju, the other just below. From one the Russians were driven, from the other the Russians, on being attacked, withdrew. With these in their possession, the Japanese, though harassed by the Russian artillery, constructed a pontoon bridge and began crossing the river. By Saturday night the twelfth division. of the Japanese army had reached the right bank of the Yalu. In the meantime, Japanese gunboats in the mouth of the Yalu assisted the army in its passage of the river by scattering some of the opposing Russian forces. On Sunday morning the Japanese charge began. From Antung there runs a road northwest to Liauyang. About parallel to this road and north of it, there flows the Iho, a tributary of the Yalu, flowing from the northwest. The Japanese in making their charge crossed the Iho, breast-deep, stormed the Russians' position on the heights, and swept them back across the plateau. The Russians made two stands, but were forced to abandon Antung, which they burned. The Japanese loss is reported as 700, the Russian as 800. The Japanese are now in a position to march up the road from Antung to Liauyang. If their progress is successful, they will be able to occupy the railroad at Liau

No. 1

yang and cut off communication between Mukden and Port Arthur.

Other War News

In comparison with this. battle the achievement of the Vladivostok squadron in sinking. a Japanese transport, the Kinshiu Maru, laden with rice, coal, and other military stores, and carrying a company of Japanese soldiers and their officers, was insignificant. Some of the Japanese officers were taken prisoners, but with their fatalistic heroism, fired volleys the soldiers who refused to surrender, from their rifles into the Russians until the waves closed over the vessel. The number lost is estimated as between

seventy and eighty. The transport had become separated from the other transports and a convoy of torpedo-boats in a fog, and was thus taken, as it were, by accident. The squadron immediately returned to Vladivostok, just in time to escape an encounter with a

Japanese fleet of ten vessels. The announcement by the Associated Press early in the week that the Czar, in response to suggestions that came infor mally from other Powers, notably England and France, had declared that he tion during or following the war, has been would not accept mediation or intervenconfirmed by the issuance of an official notification to that effect from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Russian representative with foreign Powers.

ment plan for curtailing the power of the magistrates in granting, renewing, or refusing the renewal of public-house licenses. The Bishop of Colchester urges that the power of the magistrates is the only power for the protection of the public which exists, and if that power is removed, the liquor trade can do almost as it pleases. Fifteen bishops have made their opposition known through the Church of England Temperance Society. No equally convenient organization exists for making known the opinions of Churchmen on the Chinese compound question-the other moral question in politics which just now is agitating England. Several of the bishops, however, and many clergymen have recently announced their intense dislike of the Pretoria ordinance. By these various expressions of the bishops and clergy, all the ChurchesEstablished and Free-are now represented in the movement against the retrograde change in the licensing law, at the dictation of the liquor interest, and against the introduction of an army of indentured Chinamen into the Transvaal. Mr. Lyttelton, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, has quite recently reiterated his statement that the agitation against the Chinese ordinance is a partisan movement. But it is impossiEle that he can long adhere to this assertion in face of the fact that representatives of all the organized religious bodies-Churchmen and Methodists, Congregationalists and Baptists, Unitarians and Quakers-have now put themselves on record against Lord Milner's iabor policy. Congregationalists, Baptists, Unitarians, and Quakers are usually Liberals in politics by association and tradition; but the Methodists in England are generally as unready to throw themselves into any movement against the Government as is the Church of England.

pressed her unwillingness that the territory of her neighbor and vassal should be invaded by any foreign power, and this opposition has been so vigorous that it has indicated a possible reinforcement of Tibetan troops with Chinese troops. It is probable, too, that in the pursuance of his policy to establish thoroughly friendly relations with all the Great Powers, King Edward VII. has received assurances from Russia which have removed the painful impression produced by the statements in the Tibetan Blue Book, and have made it plain that there is no real conflict of British and Russian interests in Tibet. A third and perhaps most influential reason is the unwillingness of the King and of the English people to repeat the slaughter at Guru. Guru. The impression made by that massacre of Tibetans, arrayed for defense of their country, was very painful throughout England. Colonel Younghusband's expedition under military escort did not reach Gyangtse without a second conflict; and it became very clear that any attempt to open Tibet to the world at this moment will meet with the most determined opposition. Under the circumstances the Ministry has wisely concluded to withdraw the expedition and to abandon the attempt to keep a Resident at Lhasa ; and Tibet will be left to manage her own internal affairs until she sees, as she will in the end, not only the impossibility of closing her doors against the world, but the great advantage to herself of coming into relations with the rest of mankind.

Congress: The End of the Session

On Thursday of last week the second session of the Fifty-eighth Congress was declared adjourned. It was an unusually early date for adjournment. Often in Presidential years Congress has continued in session until July, and it has in one case not adjourned until October. The fact that the special session last fall brought Congress together a month earlier than usual, makes the session just closed not quite so exceptional as it seems. There is hardly any ground for regret, moreover, that Congress has already adjourned; though there were measures of some importance left unde

cided, they were no more important than measures which have been abandoned under similar circumstances in other years. As the session drew to its close the members became less and less concerned about legislative matters and more and more engrossed in partisan politics. Occasionally a gathering of grown men will act like children, and the Congress of the United States is no exception. A peculiarly stupid wrangling occurred in the accusations and recriminations that passed between Republicans and Democrats, with Mr. Dalzell and Mr. Cockran as chief spokesmen. Nobody in the country is really concerned about either of these men, but almost every American enjoys a fight. The same instincts which bring a crowd of people to gether in the street whenever there is the cry of "Dog fight !" led the newspapers to publish and the public to read with evident relish the accounts of the encounter between these two men. The fundamental sanity, however, of Congress was recovered in time to enable it to dismiss the affair without an investigation. The present session has been made notable by two men and two measures. Mr. Cannon, the Speaker of the House, self-made, kindly, honest, with an equal mixture of drollery, ruggedness, frankness, and common sense, has established a personal relationship with the members of the House of Representatives quite unique. Mr. John Sharp Williams, leader of the Democrats, has supplied what his party has for years sorely lacked-sane, competent direction. A highly educated man, with American and European university training, at the same time in the broadest sense a democrat and man of the people, he has won the respect of his opponents as well as the confidence of his own party. He has been sane enough to see that it is not the business of the leader of the Opposition necessarily to oppose everything that the majority wants done; and has had the discernment to concentrate his opposition upon the weakest points of the party in power. The measures of note have been the passage of the Cuban Reciprocity Bill and the settlement of the Panama question. The enactment of the Philippine shipping

bill, amending the present law, also stands to the credit of Congress.

Pensions Once More

Several correspondents seem to be still under the impression that The Outlook's attitude on the matter of the service pension involves disregard of the claims of the men who bear the scars of the Civil War. The Outlook has stated many times its opinion that the country cannot treat too generously its disabled soldiers; that in its judgment not a dollar ought to go for service pensions, but that any increase which the country can afford to make to its already great appropriations for pensions ought to inure to the benefit of disabled or injured men. The Outlook is opposed to the service pension because it believes that it involves a mischievous principle and lowers the quality of the service which the soldier renders and the estimation in which those services are held. It shows a gross lack of discrimination in the value of services to put on the same basis men who served three months-in many instances without going near a battlefield, in some instances without leaving the town in which they enlisted— and men who served through four years and are bearing the scars and disabilities of their service to this day. Pensions ought to be awarded on a basis of service rendered and disabilities endured as the result of those services. Senator Scott, who appears to be anxious to hold the very questionable honor of being the greatest "pension boomer" in the country, recently declared that he would pay a pension of $25 a month to every soldier, whatever his term of service and whether he was rich or poor. It is this sort of talk which discourages the serious-minded man and brings the pensioner into disrepute, because it separates the pension from the service rendered, and in many instances makes it a mere gratuity to a man who has had only formal relations with an army. It is absurd to deny a pension to a man who has served the Government all his life in a civil capacity, and give it to another man, equally able to take care of himself, who served the Government three months