Character Sketches. 



565 



HIS FIRSr SUCCESS AS WAR CORRESPONDENT. 



The result justified their enterprise. The yt'7o 

 York Ilnahi had a man on the spot from the first, 

 and it was able to beat all its rivals. Mr. McCullagh 

 was the only man to report the first Japanese attack 

 on Port Arthur. He thus describes his first great 

 " scoop " as war CL.rrespondent : — 



" I was on board a small British vessel called the 

 Colnmbhi, an< hored among the Russian battleships in 

 the outer harbour of Port Arthur, when, on the night 

 of February 8th, 1904, Togo's torpedo-boats made 

 their first mad dash. The Columbia trembled with 

 the violence of the exjjlosion and I fell out of bed. 

 Next morning the Japanese attacked with their whole 

 licet, and as shells were falling all around us — one 

 even went through the I'.ritish flag flying at our mast- 

 head—old Captain .Anderson decided to move. Hut 

 the Russians refused him permission to leave, and 

 placed two armed soldiers on board so as to make 

 sure that he remained, for they were evidently afraid 

 of his carrying to the Japanese news of the torpedo- 

 ing of three vessels, of the damage done to the 

 others, and of the exact Dosition of the Russian 

 ships. 



" But it soon became evident to all of us that if 

 we remained where we were a shell would surely hit 

 us, for the surface of the sea was dotted with falling 

 proje<'tiles as the surface of a pond is doited with falling 

 raindrops in a thunderstorm. Of course it was not 

 quite so bad as tliat, but to our excited imagina- 

 tions it was even worse, and as a mailer of fact the 

 danger was great. We decided to make a dash for 

 it, but first of all we had to dispose of the Russian 

 soldiers on board. Our plan was to suddenly throw 

 ourselves on them in a body and wrest, their arms 

 from them, but on coming to where they stood on 

 guard we found only the rifles. The .soldiers, frightened 

 by the deafening uproar, had gone below, as near the 

 bottom of the boat as they couid get, and were pray- 

 ing and crossing themselves at a great rate. Without 

 more ado we got up steam and never stopped till we 

 reached Chefoo. Chefoo knew nothing of the great 

 events whicli had taken place on the other side of the 

 bay. To ([uotc my own account of my landing in 

 that little Treaty Port : — 



.As I hurried lowanh the Iclcgrapli office I Liuyhed hilariously 

 .a the uUer slcc|)ine^s ami respectability of that staid little out- 

 port, which rcmindL-d me slronyly of sonic oliscure Eni^lish 

 village on a wet .Suiuiuy afternoon, for I knew that I carried news 

 which M-uuld stir it like an earllu|uake. The telegraph office 

 w;ls ns silent as a church in the Koniney marshes on a ueek'day. 

 An invisible clock tickcil loudly, and an old woman was ex- 

 l.laininy a lelc(;ram to a pale, bored-lookini; clerk, who t;azcd 

 .11 ine reproachlully when I came in, judging rlouhllevi from my 

 appearance that I war, — well, that I was not quite sober. In ten 

 minutes more that clerk rushed out from his sanctum with 

 flushed face and gripped me in ailencc by the hand." 



THROUGH THE MANCHURIAN CAMPAIG.V. 



No sooner had McCullagh got his telegram off 

 than he returned to the Russian arm v. He attached 

 liimself to the stall (jf ihc famous Russian Cossack 



General Mischenko, and rode with the Cossacks 

 through all the battles of the war until he was 

 ca[)Uired after Mukden and taken prisoner to Japan. 

 Mr. McCullagh told the story of his adventures in a 

 book published by Eveleigh Nash in 1906 entitled 

 " \V'ith the Cossacks : being the Story of an Irishman 

 who Rode with the Cossacks throughout the Russo- 

 Japanese War." .\ friend of his says it is difficult to 

 get him to talk about hitiiself : — 



Vet he was in the thick of the first bombardment of Port 

 .Arthur by Togo's fl<-et, running the gauntlet of that tremendous 

 cannonade in the little" trailing stcairier Columbia. He stood 

 on the hill of Shushnn when its peak became the centre of the 

 greatest bombardment the world had ever seen ; he was all 

 through Mischenko's famous raid ; the only foreigner with the 

 Cossack army, he was voluntarily amongst the last to leave 

 Mukden when the Russians fell back before the relentless 

 advance of the Japanese legions, and he shared with the Russian 

 rearguard all the horrors of that terrible and disastrous rout. 



WITH THE COSSACKS. 



As another friend wrote in the Daily Mail of the 

 MacGahan of the Twentieth Century : — 



McCullagh, spectacled, slightly built, youthful-looking, and 

 shy mannered, earned high reputation during the Rus>o-Japanese 

 war as one of the bravest and most reckless of adventurers. 

 Even in the Russian army, where the love of adventure for 

 .adventure's sake is at its greatest, his name is remembered 

 to-day as that of a man foremost in the most dangerous advance 

 and last to retreat. 



His book, which he wrote and published after his 

 release from his captivity in Japan, achieved an instant 

 and commanding success. He was recognised as the 

 V'erestchagin of war correspondents. Said one among 

 a host of admiring reviewers : — • 



The reader for ih; first time realises what the war meant, 

 lie understands all the horrors, all the heroism, all the madness 

 involved. .\ picture here, a picture there, without any 

 connected narrative or elaborate discussion, leaves an ineffaceable 

 impression. 



KEAI, lines Ol' WAR. 



.Mr. .McCullagh enjoyed the war, but the retreat 

 frotn Mukden was almost too much for hiin : — 



" During the retreat from Mukdeti I happened to 

 be with a Russian rearguard which was surrounded, 

 shelled, and forced to surrender. This was the worst 

 experience I had of war up to that time, for during a 

 terrible night march which preceded our capture we 

 passed hundreds of sokliers lying wounded and dying 

 on the ground. I put one wounded .soldier on my 

 horse, but both horse and soldier disappeared before 

 daybreak, and 1 was never able to trace them again. 

 But I was not sorry to lose a good horse in the cause 

 of charity, especially as that horse belonged not to 

 me but to the Xcw York Herald. With the tletach- 

 ment of the Japanese Imperial Guard which forced 

 us to surrender next morning I found many old 

 friends — Colonel Hume, a British attache with the 

 Japanese; Colonel Crowdcr, .American; Major von 

 Et/,el, German ; Mr. Collins, an American journalist, 

 now chief of the .Attierican Associated Press Bureau 

 in London. Gn hearing of the numbers of Russian 

 wotinded who were dying from the intense cold, 

 Collins went out to try and rescue some of them. 



