FOOTNOTES:
[41] In Vol. II of the "Detailed History of the Railways in the South African War" (Chatham: Royal Engineers Institute, 1904), there is a series of 45 full-page photographs of damaged bridges and of the low-level deviations constructed to take their place.
[42] For a description of these blockhouses, see vol. iii, pp. 125-6, of the "History of the Corps of the Royal Engineers," by Col. Sir Chas. M. Watson. Royal Engineers Institute, Chatham, 1915.
[43] "Natal: An Illustrated Official Railway Guide and Handbook." Compiled and edited by C. W. Francis Harrison. Published by Authority. London, 1903.
[44] "History of the War in South Africa, 1899-1902. Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government." Vol. IV, Appendix 10: "Notes on the Military Railway System in South Africa." London, 1910.
[45] Official "History," Vol. IV, Appendix 10.
[46] For English translation, see "Journal of the Royal United Service Institution," January, 1902.
[47] In the preface of his standard work on "Military Railways," Major W. D. Connor, of the Corps of Engineers, United States Army, says: "On the military side I refer to the reports of Colonel Sir E. P. C. Girouard, K.C.M.G., R.E., of the British Army, whose work in Egypt and South Africa has set a high standard for any engineer who in future may be required to meet and solve railway problems in the theatre of war. These reports give the solution of many points as worked out in the field, and confirm the main lessons to be learned from the history of the military railways in our Civil War." (See "Bibliography.")
CHAPTER XVII
The Russo-Japanese War
The Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5 was a test not so much of the military strength of the two combatants as of their respective means of communication and concentration.
From Moscow to Port Arthur the distance is 5,300 miles, and, save for the sea journey via the Baltic, the North Sea, the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, the Russians were dependent for the transport of their troops and stores to Manchuria on such very inadequate railways as they then controlled. Japan, on the other hand, was able to rely on her fleet and her considerably developed mercantile marine; and, as soon as she had paralysed the Russian fleet and established her own command of the sea—as she did within two days of the outbreak of hostilities—she could land her forces whenever she chose at almost any convenient point on the sea-board of the theatre of war.
The situation recalled, somewhat, the still worse position in which Russia had found herself at the time of the Crimean War when, in the absence of any rail facilities at all, her troops had to march, and their supplies and munitions had to be conveyed, hundreds of miles over dreary steppes—"huge columns that had quitted the far north and east of the interior dwindling to a few broken-down Battalions before they came in sight of Sebastopol"—whereas the allies could send their troops all the way to the Crimea by sea.
While there are many other causes which, rightly or wrongly, have been regarded as contributing to the defeat of Russia by Japan—included therein being personal shortcomings of the Russian officers; mistakes made by them in strategy and tactics; defects in the Russian military system, and the half-hearted interest of the Russian nation in the struggle—the really decisive factors in the situation were the transport deficiencies of the Siberian and Manchurian railways.
The construction of a Trans-Siberian Railway as a great strategic line stretching across Asia, facilitating the development of a vast territory, and, above all, calculated to foster the realisation of Russia's aims in the Far East, first came under discussion about the year 1860. It was made the subject of an exhaustive study by a Committee of Ministers in 1875, but it was not until 1891 that the first sod was turned.
Military and political considerations being paramount, such energy was shown in the work of construction that by 1896 the western section had been carried through Irkutsk to Lake Baikal and from the eastern shores thereof to Strietensk, while the eastern section—known as the Usuri Railway—had been made through Russia's Maritime Province from Vladivostok to Khabarovsk. The original design was that the line should be constructed on Russian territory all the way to Vladivostok; but this meant that from Strietensk it would have to follow the great bend made to the north by the Amur, the southern boundary of Russia, and the Russian Government thought it desirable to secure a more direct route.
Towards the end of 1896, in return for the great services which she considered she had rendered to China in the war between that country and Japan, Russia obtained the concession for a railway which, starting from Chita, Trans-Baikalia, about 200 miles west of Strietensk, would pass through Manchuria to Vladivostok, avoiding the great bend of the Amur, though still offering the disadvantage that one important section of the through route would not be on Russian territory. Under a contract made between the Chinese Government and the Russo-Chinese Bank, a Chinese Eastern Railway Company was formed to build and operate the line thus conceded; but the arrangements made were carried out through the Russian Minister of Finance, and the line was directly dependent on the Russian State.
Russia's occupation of Port Arthur in March, 1898, led, in the spring of the following year, to the further construction being begun of a southern branch of the Chinese Eastern Railway from Harbin, a station on the Chita-Vladivostok line, to the extremity of the Liao-tung peninsula.
It was these two railways, the Trans-Siberian and the Chinese Eastern, terminating at Vladivostok in the one direction and at Port Arthur in the other, which came into special consideration in the war of 1904-5. It was on the Trans-Siberian line, more especially, that Russia was mainly dependent (as the German official report on the war points out) not only for the concentration and maintenance of her army but even for the raising and organisation of most of its units.
When the Trans-Siberian was first built, the desire to avoid undue expenditure on a line which must necessarily involve a huge expenditure, with little or no prospect of yielding a return sufficient for the payment of interest thereon, led to the adoption of an economy which was to hamper very materially the transport capacity of the railway. Only a single line of rails was allowed for; a limit was placed on the breadth of the embankments; the curves were greater than considerations of speed and safety should have permitted; the gradients were either dangerously varied or so excessive that divisions of the trains were necessary; the rails used were of no greater weight than from 42 lbs. to 47 lbs. per yard, and they were badly laid, even then; the bridges across the smaller streams were made of wood only; the crossing-places and the railway stations were few and far between, while all the secondary constructions were provided on what was almost the cheapest possible scale.
These conditions necessitated the limitation of the traffic, when the line was first opened, to the running of three trains a day in each direction. The length of the trains was restricted to sixty axles. It was thus impossible to meet the demands even of the ordinary traffic in peace time, apart altogether from any question as to military requirements in time of war. No sooner, therefore, were the main portions of the line ready, in 1898, than there was set aside, for a railway which was already to cost over £350,000,000, a further sum of £9,130,000 for relaying those portions of the line with a better quality of rails and sleepers, the reconstruction of sections dangerous to traffic, the provision of more stations and more rolling stock, and other improvements. It was expected that this additional work would be completed by 1904, by which time the line was to be equal to the running of thirteen pairs of trains daily.
Reporting on the condition of the Russian railways in 1900 (at which date the Eastern Chinese line was still unfinished), General Kuropatkin, then War Minister, afterwards Commander-in-Chief in Manchuria, did not hesitate to declare that it was still impossible for them to cope with heavy traffic.
Relations between Russia and Japan became strained towards the end of 1903, though the Government of the former country were desirous that any outbreak of hostilities should be avoided until they were better able to undertake them. In his account of "The Russian Army and the Japanese War" General Kuropatkin says concerning the position at this period:—
Our unreadiness was only too plain, and it seemed at that time that we should be able, with two or three years' steady work, so to strengthen our position in the Far East, and improve the railway, the fleet, the land forces, and the fortresses of Port Arthur and Vladivostok that Japan would have small chance of success against us.
Regarding war as inevitable, and disinclined to give Russia an opportunity of first strengthening her position in the directions here suggested, Japan broke off diplomatic relations with Russia on February 6, 1904, this being the immediate prelude to the hostilities that followed.
In anticipation of a possible rupture, Russia had already despatched reinforcements and stores to the Far East by sea; but the rupture, when it did come, found her quite unprepared to send further large reinforcements by land, while her forces in the Far East were scattered over the vast area extending from Lake Baikal to Vladivostok, and from Port Arthur to Nikolaievsk. No orders for mobilisation had been issued; the army was in the midst of rearmament and reorganisation, and the unreadiness of the railways had prevented the drawing up of time-tables for the concentration of the troops. Ten days after the outbreak of war the Russian Government issued a statement in which they said:—
The distance of the territory now attacked and the desire of the Tsar to maintain peace were the causes of the impossibility of preparations for war being made a long time in advance.
Not only, too, was the seat of war 5,000 miles away, and not only was a single-track ill-equipped line of railway the only practicable means of sending troops and war material there by land, but an exceptionally great obstacle to traffic had to be met owing to the interruption of rail communication by Lake Baikal.
Having a length of 380 miles, a breadth ranging from eighteen miles to fifty-six miles, a mean depth of 850 feet (with a maximum, in parts, of no less than 4,500 ft.), and a total area of over 13,000 square miles, Lake Baikal ranks, next to the great lakes of the United States and Central Africa, as the largest fresh-water lake in the world; though it should, in reality, be regarded less as a lake than as a great inland sea. As it happened, also, this vast expanse of water stood in the direct line of route of the Trans-Siberian railway, and the crossing of it by the Russian reinforcements going to the Far East constituted a seriously defective link in the chain of communication.
At an elevation of 1,360 feet above sea level, the lake is subject alike to severe gales, to heavy fogs, and to frosts so intense that in mid-winter the water may be frozen to a depth of ten feet. From the end of April to the end of December troops and travellers arriving by rail at one side of the lake crossed to the other by passenger steamers. Goods wagons were taken over by ferry-boats which, also, acted as ice-breakers early and late in the winter season, so long as the passage could be kept open. When, in the winter, the ice was strong enough to bear, traffic was conducted by transport sledges; but when there was sufficient ice to stop the ferry-boats, though not sufficient to permit of the sledges being used—conditions which generally prevailed for about six weeks in the year—the traffic had to be discontinued altogether.
The question will naturally be asked,—Why had not the constructors of the line avoided these disadvantages by carrying it round the lake? The reply is that this had not been done, prior to the outbreak of war, owing to the formidable nature of the work involved from an engineering point of view.
Lake Baikal is bordered, on the south—the route a Circum-Baikal line would have to take—by mountains which rise sheer up from the water's edge to a height of, in places, no less than 4,600 ft. Across the mountains, along the rocky shores, and over the intervening valleys the railway would require to be carried for a distance of 160 miles in order to link up the two sections then divided by the lake. The difficulties of the work were likely to be as great as the cost would certainly be enormous, compared with that of the remainder of the Trans-Siberian railway. So it was that when the war broke out there were still 112 miles of the Circum-Baikal line to be constructed.
So it was, also, that, pending the completion of this line round the lake, Russia's reinforcements from Europe for the Far East had to cross the lake itself; and the outbreak of hostilities in the month of February placed Russia at an especially great disadvantage in regard to transport.
The combined ferry-steamers and ice-breakers had made their final journey for the winter on January 27, and at first the only way in which the troops could cross the ice was by marching or by sledge. After a day's rest at Irkutsk, they were brought by train to Baikal station, at the lake side, arriving there at about four o'clock in the morning in order that they could complete the journey to Tanchoi station, on the other side of the lake—a distance of about twenty-five miles—in the day. The track was marked out by posts, supplemented by lanterns at night, and it was kept in order by gangs of labourers. Small bridges were placed over cracks in the ice. Shelters, in telephonic communication with one another, were provided at four-mile distances alike for the purpose of rest and for the distribution of food prepared by regimental field kitchens; but the principal meal of the day was taken at a more substantial half-way house, where the cooking arrangements were on a more elaborate scale and better accommodation was provided. Around the half-way house at night petroleum flares were burned, so that it could be seen a long way off. In foggy weather, or during snow storms, bells were rung at all the shelters. Inasmuch as the temperature fell, at times, to 22 deg., Fahr., below zero, the provision of these rest-houses must have been greatly appreciated. Baggage was taken across in sledges, the normal supply of which had been increased by an additional 3,000. Some of the troops also made the journey by this form of conveyance, four men being seated in each sledge. The batteries crossed with their own horses.
As soon as the ice attained a thickness of about 4½ ft., the expedient was adopted of laying a pair of rails along it in order, more especially, that the additional engines and railway wagons urgently needed on the lines east of the lake could be taken across. The rails were laid on sleepers of exceptional length, the weight being thus distributed over a greater surface of ice; but, even with this precaution, it was no easy matter to keep the line in working order owing to the extreme cold, to storms, to the occasional ice movements and cracks, or to the effect of earthquake shocks in destroying lengths of line, sections of which sometimes required to be relaid almost as soon as they had been put down. The line was begun on February 10 and completed by the 29th of the same month. Between March 1 and March 26 there were taken across the lake, by this means, sixty-five dismantled locomotives (rebuilt on arrival on the eastern side), twenty-five railway carriages, and 2,313 goods wagons. Transport was provided by horses, the number so used being about 1,000.
Constructed to serve an exclusively military purpose, this twenty-five-mile line across Lake Baikal may certainly be regarded as a "military railway," while as a military ice-railway it holds a unique position in the history of warfare.
When, owing to the advancing season, the ice on the lake could no longer be trusted to bear either railway trucks or sledges, and when navigation was again open, dependence had to be placed on the ferry services. There were, however, only two vessels available for the transfer of railway trucks across the lake, and each of these, accommodating twenty-seven trucks at a time, could make no more than three return crossings in the twenty-four hours.
Only in one way could an improvement be effected in these obviously inadequate facilities for getting an army to Manchuria, and that was in carrying the railway round the southern end of the lake, thus avoiding the delay caused by the hitherto unavoidable transshipment and crossing, and ensuring a continuous rail journey. The need for this Circum-Baikal link had, in fact, become urgent, and the work was pushed on with the greatest vigour.
Mention has already been made of the engineering difficulties which the construction of the line involved. These will be better understood if it is added that the 160-mile link passes through thirty-four tunnels, having an aggregate length of over six miles; that it is carried across valleys, or open spaces, on two hundred bridges, and that numerous cuttings and many large culverts had also to be provided. The total cost worked out at no less than £52,000 per mile—probably the largest sum per mile ever spent on a railway designed, in the first instance, to serve a distinctly military purpose, and exceeding by £35,000 the average cost per mile, down to that date, of the entire system of Russian railways. Delays occurred, also, through strikes and other causes, and, in the result, it was not until September 25, 1904—more than seven months after the outbreak of war—that the line was ready for use, and that an interruption of the rail journey by the crossing of Lake Baikal became no longer necessary.
Meanwhile, an inadequate supply of engines and rolling stock had been a serious hindrance to traffic alike on the Trans-Baikal section of the Siberian line and on the Eastern Chinese lines. The locomotives and wagons taken across Lake Baikal either on the ice-railway or on the ferry boats had served a useful purpose, but six months elapsed before the Eastern Chinese lines could be worked to their full efficiency.
There were other directions, as well, in which traffic hindrances arose. The freezing, down to the very bottom, of the rivers between the eastern side of Lake Baikal and Harbin (Manchuria) was a cause of serious difficulty in the early part of the year in getting water even for such locomotives as were available. In the western Siberian section the supply of water was impaired by the great percentage of salt in the streams. In Manchuria the fuel reserve was inadequate; soldiers were the only reliable portion of the subordinate railway staff; the railway workshops were poorly equipped; there were not nearly enough engine depôts; large supplies of rails, fish-plates, sleepers and ballast were needed, and much work had to be done in the construction of additional sidings, etc. All these shortcomings required to be made good whilst the war was in actual progress, though for the transport of most of the necessary materials and appliances there was only a single-track line of railway already overtaxed for the conveyance of troops, munitions and supplies.
The number of trains that could be run was extremely limited. The capacity of the line of communication as a whole was fixed by that of the Eastern Chinese Railway between Chita and Harbin; and after three months of war it was still possible to run from west to east in each twenty-four hours no more than three military trains (conveying troops, supplies, stores and remounts), one light mail train, and, when necessary, one ambulance train; though these conditions were improved later on.
The speed at which the trains ran—allowing for necessary stops in stations or at crossing places on the line—ranged from five to eleven miles an hour, with seven miles an hour as a good average. For the journey from Warsaw to Mukden the military trains took forty days, including one day's rest for the troops at the end of every 600 or 700 miles. In April and May the journey from Wirballen, on the frontier of Russia and Germany, to Liao-yang, situate between Mukden and Port Arthur, took fifty days—an average speed of five and a quarter miles per hour.
What with the transport and other difficulties that arose, it was not for three months after the outbreak of hostilities that the Russian troops in the Ear East received reinforcements. It was not until after seven months of war that the three Army Corps sent from European Russia to join the field army were all concentrated in Manchuria.
Under these conditions the Japanese, free to send their own armies by sea to the theatre of war, and able to concentrate them with far greater speed, had all the initial advantage. The Russian reinforcements arrived in driblets, and they were either cut off as they came or, as regards, at least, the fighting from May 14 to October 14, provided only 21,000 men to replace 100,000 killed, wounded or sick; whereas the Japanese were able to maintain a continuous flow of reinforcements to make good their own casualties.
General Kuropatkin is of opinion that if the Russians had been able to command better transport from the outset the whole course of the campaign would have been changed. He thinks that even a single extra through troop train per day would have made a material difference, while the running, from the start, of six trains a day would, he believes, have secured for Russia alike the initiative and the victory. Referring to the Siberian and Eastern Chinese Railways he says:—
If these lines had been more efficient, we could have brought up our troops more rapidly, and, as things turned out, 150,000 men concentrated at first would have been of far more value to us than the 300,000 who were gradually assembled during nine months, only to be sacrificed in detail.... If we had had a better railway and had been able to mass at Liao-yang the number specified, we should undoubtedly have won the day in spite of our mistakes.
Kuropatkin himself certainly did all he could to improve the transport conditions. In a statement he submitted to the Tsar on March 7, 1904, he declared that of all urgently pressing questions that of bettering the railway communication between Russia and Siberia was the most important; and he added:—"It must, therefore, be taken up at once, in spite of the enormous cost. The money expended will not be wasted; it will, on the contrary, be in the highest sense productive inasmuch as it will shorten the duration of the war."
On the Trans-Baikal section six new stations were added, and additional crossing places to facilitate the passing of trains were provided elsewhere, so that by May some additional trains per day could be run. In June orders were given by the Government for the execution of extensive works designed to increase the capacity of the Siberian and Eastern Chinese main lines to seven trains per day in each direction, and that of the southern branch to twelve per day. The cost of these improvements was estimated at £4,400,000.
In November, 1904, Kuropatkin submitted to the Tsar a recommendation that the lines should be at once doubled throughout their whole length. The reinforcements, he declared, were even then still coming in driblets. "Supplies despatched in the spring are still on the Siberian side. Waterproofs sent for the summer will arrive when we want fur coats; fur coats will come to hand when waterproofs are wanted."
There was need, also, to provide stores of provisions for the troops. So long as the army was a comparatively small one it could depend mainly on local resources. In proportion as it increased in size it became more and more dependent on supplies from European Russia; but the collection of a sufficiency for a single month meant the running of five extra trains a day for a like period. Even when ample supplies were available at one point, weakness and inefficiency in the transport arrangements might lead to the troops elsewhere suffering privations which should be avoided.
Whether for financial or other reasons, the Russian Government did not adopt the idea of converting the single track of the railway system into double track; but the improvements made in the traffic facilities (including the provision of sixty-nine additional places for the passing of trains) were such that by the time peace was concluded, on September 5, 1905, the Russians had ten, or even twelve pairs of full-length trains running in the twenty-four hours, as compared with the two per day which could alone be run six months before the outbreak of war and the three per day which were running nine months later. The capacity of the lines had been increased practically fourfold; though the general situation remained such as to evoke the following comment from the writer of the official German account of the war[48]:—
In spite of the efforts made to improve the line, the connection of the Russian forces in East Asia with their home country was, and remained, an unreliable and uncertain factor in the calculations of Army Headquarters. No measures, were they ever so energetic, could be designed to remove this uncertainty, and it was only gradually, as the Manchurian Army itself increased and concentrated, and as the railway works advanced, that greater freedom of action was assured to the Commander-in-Chief; but even then the army as a whole, with all its wants and supplies, remained dependent on the Siberian and Eastern Chinese Railways.
What the railways did was to enable the Russians to collect at the theatre of war, by the time the war itself came to an end, an army of 1,000,000 men—of whom two-thirds had not yet been under fire—together with machine-guns, howitzers, shells, small-arm ammunition, field railways, wireless telegraphy, supplies, and technical stores of all kinds. Kuropatkin says of this achievement:—
The War Department had, with the co-operation of other departments, successfully accomplished a most colossal task. What single authority would have admitted a few years ago the possibility of concentrating an army of a million men 5,400 miles away from its base of supply and equipment by means of a poorly-constructed single-line railway? Wonders were effected; but it was too late. Affairs in the interior of Russia for which the War Department could not be held responsible were the cause of the war being brought to an end at a time when decisive military operations should really have only just been beginning.
Russia, in fact, agreed to make peace at a time when the prospect of her being able to secure a victory was greater than it had been at any time during the earlier phases of the war; but the Japanese failed to attain all they had hoped for, the primary causes of such failure, in spite of their repeated victories, being, as told in the British "Official History" of the war, that "Port Arthur held out longer than had been expected, and the Trans-Siberian Railway enabled Russia to place more men in the field than had been thought possible."[49]
Thus, in respect to rail-power, at least, Russia still achieved a remarkable feat in her transport of an army so great a distance by a single-track line of railway. Such an achievement was unexampled, while, although Fate was against the ultimate success of her efforts, Russia provided the world with a fresh object lesson as to what might have been done, in a campaign waged more than 5,000 miles from the base of supplies, if only the line of rail communication had been equal from the first to the demands it was called upon to meet.
Apart from this main consideration, there were some other phases of the Russo-Japanese War which are of interest from the point of view of the present study.
The Field railways, mentioned on the previous page, constituted a network of, altogether, 250 miles of narrow-gauge railways built and operated by the Russian troops—either alone or with the help of Chinese labourers—and designed to act as subsidiary arteries of the broad-gauge Eastern Chinese Railway by (1) providing for the transport therefrom of troops and supplies to the front; (2) conveying guns and munitions to the siege batteries, and (3) bringing back the sick and wounded. Horses, ponies and mules were employed for traction purposes. Each of the three Russian armies in the field had its own group of narrow-gauge lines, and the lines themselves served a most useful purpose in a country of primitive roads and inadequate local means of transport.
In one instance a broad-gauge branch line was built inland, during the course of the war, from the Eastern Chinese Railway for a distance of twenty-five miles. A depôt was set up at its terminus, and thence the supplies were conveyed to the troops by a series of narrow-gauge lines extending to every part of that particular section of the theatre of war.
Construction of the narrow-gauge line serving the Second Army, and extending nineteen miles from a point on the Eastern Chinese Railway near to Port Arthur, necessitated the provision of six bridges and three embankments. Three lines, the building of which was begun in January, 1905, were siege lines specially designed to serve the positions taken up at Liao-yang; but all three were abandoned on the evacuation of Mukden, early in March. It was, however, subsequent to the retreat from Mukden that the greatest degree of energy in constructing narrow-gauge lines was shown by the Russians. In addition to the 250 miles brought into use, there was still another 100 miles completed; but these could not be operated owing to the inadequate supply of wagons—a supply reduced still further through seizures made by the Japanese.
During the course of the war the traffic carried on these military narrow-gauge lines included over 58,000 tons of provisions, stores, etc., 75,132 sick and wounded, and 24,786 other troops.[50]
For the carrying out of all this construction work, and, also, for the operation of the Manchurian and Ussuri railways, Russia had twenty-four companies of Railway Troops, the total force of which was estimated at 11,431. In the first part of the war she relied upon her six East Siberian Railway Battalions. As the work increased other Battalions were brought from European Russia.
The Japanese were not well provided with Railway Troops; but they were none the less active in endeavouring to destroy the Russian lines of communication, on which so much depended. For instance, the railway to Port Arthur was cut by them near Wa-fang-tien at 11 p.m. on May 6. The Russians repaired the line, and by May 10 a further train-load of ammunition was sent over it into Port Arthur. Three days later the Japanese cut the line at another point, and from that time Port Arthur was isolated.
As regards the operation of the Siberian and Eastern Chinese Railways, Colonel W. H. H. Waters says:—[51]
Taking the railway as a whole, from Chelyabinsk, which is the western terminus of the Siberian portion, to Mukden, a distance of close upon 4,000 miles, it has worked better than I expected; but the one great fault connected with it has been, and is, the incapacity of Russian railwaymen, civil or military, to handle heavy station traffic properly. If Russia were to pay a British or American goods-yard foreman, say from Nine Elms station, a salary, no matter how high, and let him import his own staff of assistants, the improvement of the Asiatic lines in question would be remarkable.
Then, again, Captain C. E. Vickers, R.E., writing on "The Siberian Railway in War," in the issue of "The Royal Engineers Journal" (Chatham) for August, 1905, points to the need which was developed for the control of the railway during war by a separate staff, as distinct from the staffs concerned in arranging operations, distributing supplies and munitions, and other military duties.
Whether due to the personal incapacity spoken of by the one authority here quoted, or to the lack of a separate organisation alluded to by the other, the fact remains that the operation of the Siberian and Eastern Chinese lines did give rise to a degree of confusion that must have greatly increased the difficulties of the position in which the Russians were placed.
When, for example, in September, 1904, reservists were urgently wanted at Mukden after the retreat from Liao-yang, the traffic was so mismanaged that it took the troops seven days to do the 337 miles from Harbin—an average speed of two miles per hour. On December 5, Harbin Junction was so blocked in all directions by trains which could neither move in nor go out that traffic had to be suspended for twelve hours until the entanglement was set right. Still further, after the fall of Port Arthur, on January 2, 1905, and the augmentation of the Japanese forces by Nogi's army, the arrival of reinforcements then so greatly needed by the Russians was delayed for over one month to allow of the forwarding of a quantity of stores which had accumulated on the line.
Some, at least, of the difficulties and delays experienced in operation were undoubtedly due to developments of that interference by individual officers with the working of the railways of which we have already had striking examples in the case of the American War of Secession and the Franco-German War of 1870-71. Colonel Waters writes on this subject:—
It is interesting to note how the working of the line was interfered with by those who should have been the first to see that no extraneous calls were made upon it when the organisation of the army and the strengthening of Port Arthur were of vital importance.
The chief of the Viceroy's Staff was the intermediary between Admiral Alexeiev and General Kuropatkin, the former being at Mukden and the latter at Liao-yang, thirty-seven miles distant. Frequent conferences took place between Kuropatkin and this officer, who always used to come in a special train to Liao-yang. This necessitated the line being kept clear for indefinite periods of time and dislocated all the other traffic arrangements, as the then chief of the railways himself declared.
In the first days of May, 1904, the Viceroy and the Grand Duke Boris were at Port Arthur, and wished to leave it before they should be cut off. I heard that they actually took three special trains to quit Port Arthur, namely, one for each of them, and one for their baggage and stores. This entirely upset the troop train, supply and ammunition services, at a time, too, when the scarcity of heavy gun munition in the fortress was such that, within a week, Kuropatkin called for volunteers to run a train-load through, which was done a few hours only before the place was definitely invested.
There were, throughout 1904, plenty of other instances of special trains being run for, and siding accommodation occupied by, various individuals, so that the organisation and maintenance of the army was considerably hampered thereby.
These experiences simply confirm the wisdom of the action which other countries had already taken (1) to ensure the efficient operation of railways in time of war by staffs comprising the military and the technical elements in combination, and (2) to prevent the interference of the former in the details of the actual working by the latter.
Russia was, in fact, distinctly behind Western nations in these respects in 1904-5, and the need for placing her military transport system on a sounder basis was among the many lessons she learnt—and acted upon—as the result of her experiences in the war with Japan.