Book Description

Excerpt from The Great Siege: The Investment and Fall of Port Arthur The siege of Port Arthur forms a well-defined episode, separated from and practically independent of the other events of the great war between Russia and Japan. Clear in outline and complete in itself, it stands out in bold relief from the more complex and intricate operations at the main theatre of war. As all the fighting took place over a comparatively small area, the events of the siege have been easy to follow and understand. I, as correspondent of the Daily Mail, had the privilege of watching the operations from the first day to the capitulation. From a military point of view the siege of Port Arthur derives its greatest interest from the fact that it is the first regular siege that has been carried out against a modern fortress during the last half century. The science of modern military engineering, all its new improvements in the art of fortification and in the means of destruction, have here stood their first practical test, and the question of the chances of the offensive against the defensive under modern conditions has to a large extent been solved. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.