PREFATORY NOTE
Reading edition
No one who has seen anything of the fighting between the Russians and the Japanese needs to make any apology when presenting to the public a truthful account of any events of which he was an eye-witness. Very little was actually seen by any newspaper correspondent, and every history of the war, and even of each campaign, must depend for many particulars upon official reports, with which the public are familiar. I do not profess to have attempted to compile anything like a detailed story of the siege. Instead, I have preferred to give merely my own experiences in Port Arthur and elsewhere in Manchuria and the Far East; to describe what I saw, to repeat something of what was told to me, to say what I thought of such happenings as interested me, and to write of the people whom I met when in quest of information. Some of the things I have set down may throw sidelights upon certain phases of the war, and if what I have written induces readers to think for themselves what ought to be the policy in the Far East of Great Britain and the United States, then my object will have been attained.