Russo-Japanese War

MY RECOLLECTIONS OF the war with Russia are rather hazy. We followed the victories of our allies with sympathy and admiration. The system of propaganda with which one became so familiar in the ‘Great War’ was already well developed. With the aim of sustaining the morale of the nation, successes were magnified and reverses concealed or minimised, sometimes with disconcerting results. The Russian fleet in Port Arthur was reduced to scrap iron more than once and, each time, reassembled itself in surprising fashion. When Port Arthur was invaded the public, instead of being warned that it was a hard nut to crack, was told that its reduction was a matter of a week or two. Informed that the Vladivostock fleet dared not show its nose out of harbour, the public failed to understand how it could make raids on shipping even at the entrance to Tokyo Bay and set Admiral Kamimura’s house on fire as a protest. Finally, when they had been given to understand that Russia was beaten to the dust, the supposed moderation of the peace terms roused the ire of the public to fever heat; serious rioting occurred and the envoys, who had made a wise peace for their country and brought back substantial gains, had to be guarded on their return from the US.

Possibly one is too prone to judge the value of propaganda from its effect on the cities and towns. Crude methods are suitable enough no doubt, to a population whose patriotism is not calculated and who do not weigh facts, when they are disclosed, against previous government announcements. Nor is the war brought home to the townspeople to the same degree as it is to the country-people, amongst whom war losses leave a gap in the community perceptible to all. The knowledge that their sons have died for the country and, in doing so, have enabled the country to march gloriously from triumph to triumph, is no doubt a source of pride which might be damped if it were known, for instance, that the form of attack adopted at Port Arthur in the early stages, had been wasteful in the extreme.