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THE TURN OF THE TIDE 263
of sick and wounded, that the Russians had been
obliged to establish hospitals all over the town,
sometimes quite close to buildings which the
Japanese knew contained flour mills, stores, &c.,
which they meant to destroy. With howitzers
firing at long range it is impossible to shoot
with so great an accuracy that any single building
can be taken under fire without danger to the
neighbouring houses. But it can, on the other
hand, scarcely be denied that the Japanese might
have done more to avoid the accusation which
the Russians have formulated against them ;
the
number of shells which “ unfortunately ” struck
the hospitals was greater than should have been
the case. The illustration of the army hospital
No. 9 in the new town, in the neighbourhood
of which all houses were either hospitals or
private residences, irrefutably corroborates my
statement. As I have already pointed out in one
of the early chapters, one of the weakest points in
the whole system of defence of Port Arthur was
that the first line of fortifications was not pushed
forward to a greater distance from the town,
allowing the Japanese batteries, long before the
enceinte forts had been taken, to do great damage
to the town, destroying the arsenals, stores, bar-
racks, and so forth, and depriving the soldiers, the
labourers, and the civilians of a place of refuge
where they could live and work and rest free from
danger and without anxiety.
After the capture of 203 Metre Hill the
Japanese operations fall into two distinct groups ;
on the one hand they followed up the advantages
which the possession of the hill had given them,
and on the other hand they carried forward their
preparations for renewed vigorous attacks on the
eastern fort-ridge.
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