Brown of Moukden
A Story of the Russo-Japanese War
BY
HERBERT STRANG
AUTHOR OF "KOBO: A STORY OF THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR"
"TOM BURNABY" "BOYS OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE" ETC.
Illustrated by William Rainey, R.I.
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1906
- "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
—Tennyson's Ulysses.
My dear Raymond,
Last year I wove a romance about the early incidentsof the great war now happily at an end; this year I havechosen its later incidents as the background for my hero'sadventures. But while in "Kobo" the struggle was viewedfrom the Japanese stand-point, in "Brown of Moukden"(which is in no sense a sequel) you will find yourself amongthe Russians, looking at the other side of the shield. It isnot the romancer's business to be a partisan; and we Britishpeople were at first, perhaps, a little blind to the fact thatthe bravery, the endurance, the heroism, have not been allon the one side.
As a boy preparing for the Navy, you would have liked,I dare say, to see Jack Brown in the thick of the great navalbattle at Tsushima. But I had three reasons for givingno space to that famous victory. First, Jack could notpossibly have seen it. Secondly, sea-fights had a very goodturn in "Kobo". Thirdly, I hope some day to give yousea-dogs a whole book to yourselves—but that, as Mr. Kiplingsomewhere says, will be another story. Meanwhile, if youget half as much fun in reading this book as I have hadin writing it, I shall count myself very lucky indeed.
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