Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 79, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 May 1904 — RETREAT OF JAPANESE. [ARTICLE]

RETREAT OF JAPANESE.

Army of 20,000 Avoids a Battle with 32,000 Russians. Reports of the Japanese retreat to Fenghuangchengare officially confirmed. The Japanese, numbering 20,000 men, came upon 32,000 Russians in a strong position Monday sixty miles west of Fenghuangcheng. It being unwise to risk a battle, the Japanese retreated in good order and with great rapidity. An inofficial Russian authority says a pitched battle was not fought, but rumor says there was considerable loss on both sides during the clashes, with the Cossacks harassing the flanks of the Japanese. This division presumably was executing a reconnaissance. The pursuit was checked when the main body of the Japanese was rejoined. This news apparentlj- accounts for the withdrawal to an unknown destination of warships and transports from Tower Hill, ten miles north of Kaichau, Liaotung Peninsula, and of renewed defensive activity at Ninchwang. Commenting on Japan’er-naval losses, war experts say that the Japanese naval supremacy in the far East is too firmly established to be menaced by the destruction of two of its fighting ships, but the losses it has just sustained are, nevertheless, serious, amounting to at least 10 per cent of its sea power. The first-class battleship Hatsuse, sunk by Russian mines on Monday with 441 of its crew, was one of the most modern and effective of the Japanese war vessels. The Yoshino, destroyed through collision while maneuvering in a fog off Port Arthur, was a fast protected cruiser. The seriousness of the loss lies not in its immediate effect in disturbing the

relative status of the Russian and Japanese fleets, but in its possible future consequences. Japan now has only five battleships where it had six at the beginning of the war, and in addition it loses one of tho more effective of its fourteen protected cruisers. Every disaster that tends to weaken the strength of the Japanese fleet must have an important effect in determining Russia’s action with regard to its Baltic fleet. Japan has no reserve force except the ships it can build or buy to meet the emergency, fn proportion as its navy is weakened the temptation to send the Baltic ships to unite with the Russian ships at Port Arthur and Vladivostok and possibly regain command of the sea will be increased.