I am confident that if future historians take into consideration the enormous distance of the theatre of war from the centre of Russia, they will not only be amazed at the results achieved by the War Department in strengthening our position there between the years 1895 and 1903, but will see how unfounded was the accusation that adequate steps were not taken to prepare for war. I repeat that, with such money as was available, and with the limited time at our disposal, a great and responsible work was accomplished, so much so that the Pri-Amur district, which was defenceless in 1895, was in 1903 so strong that a whole armed nation, in spite of its own great efforts and the entire uselessness of our fleet, was unable to touch our territory anywhere, with the exception of Saghalien. In 1900 I recorded my opinion that the Japanese would be able, in the event of war, to put into the field about 400,000 men with 1,100 guns. Of course, it was not possible for us to pour such a number of men into Manchuria and Pri-Amur. This would have necessitated many years, and the expenditure of millions, as well as the earlier construction of railway connection with the Far East.
The extent to which our strength in the Far East directly depended on railway efficiency is apparent from the fact that in our schemes of July, 1903, for the transport of troops, we could only count on two short military trains per diem. When instructions were given to carry four Rifle and one sapper battalions, two batteries, and 1,700 tons of military stores as quickly as possible to Port Arthur, it was calculated, according to the mobilization schemes, that it could not be done in less than twenty-two days, and we were unable to make use of the full carrying capacity of the newly built Eastern Chinese line for six months after the opening of the war. To improve it an immense amount of work in laying sidings and crossings, arranging for water-supply, ballasting the track, and the construction of buildings, was necessary. All this implied railing up a large number of sleepers, rails, building materials, and rolling-stock; construction trains were also required. During 1902 and 1903 the greater the number of troop-trains that ran, the less was the progress in the construction and improvement of the line. During the latter year the War Department took every advantage of the railway in order to increase our forces in the Far East, and it was only owing to the immense exertions of all the railway personnel that it was possible to transport the troops and military stores without stopping construction altogether. Notwithstanding the danger of such a course, we used the sea for the transport of troops as well as stores, and the great risk that we ran in doing so during the second half of 1903, after the viceroyalty had been formed, is illustrated by the fact that some of the consignments of preserved meat sent for Port Arthur fell into the hands of the enemy a few days before war was declared. It is clear, therefore, to what extent Bezobrazoff’s project for the rapid concentration of an army of 75,000 men in Southern Manchuria [sent to me in the summer of 1903] could be carried out. The scanty population and the absence of local resources in the Pri-Amur prohibited the maintenance of a large force there in peace-time. Over the wide stretch of territory from Lake Baikal to Vladivostok there are only about a million souls, and of this total only 400,000 are in the Amur and Maritime districts. From this can be gathered what an impossible burden to the State it would have been to attempt to maintain a large army in such a desert. Consequently we endeavoured to keep in Siberia and Pri-Amur only such a number as would be sufficient, in the first instance, to contain the enemy, and to form a screen, under cover of which the reinforcements could be concentrated. The conditions are the same on the western, Caucasian, and Afghanistan frontiers: the local troops form, so to speak, an impenetrable veil, under cover of which the main forces can be concentrated.
Though this screen consisted, in the Far East, of 172[50] battalions, of which more than 100 could take the field, it was never, of course, intended that the issue of the war should hang upon their efforts alone; but our difficulty lay in bringing up our main forces soon enough, for, as the enemy could concentrate quicker than we could, our reinforcements might be destroyed in detail as they arrived. So poor was the traffic capacity of the railway that we were neither able to send drafts to the advanced troops nor to support them in time with adequate reinforcements. If the arrangements had been such as I shall detail later on, we should have had double the number of men at Liao-yang and Mukden that we did have, and the issue of the battles must have been different. But the Ministries of Ways and Communications and of Finance were unable to carry out their promises, and our army only succeeded in concentrating eight months later than it should have done. By September, 1905, we were at last able to collect an army 1,000,000 strong, ready in every respect to commence a second campaign, with troops and material of a nature to guarantee success. We had received machine-guns, howitzers, shells, small-arm ammunition, field railways, wireless telegraphy, and technical stores of all sorts, and the senior officers were mostly fresh. The War Department had, with the co-operation of other departments, successfully accomplished a most colossal task. What single military authority would have admitted a few years ago the possibility of concentrating an army of a million men 5,400 miles away from its bases 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 causes of the war being brought to an end at a time when decisive military operations should really have only just been beginning.
The re-armament of the artillery was accomplished as follows. Owing to the introduction of the quick-firing gun in other armies, we were compelled to adopt it. The superiority of the quick-firer over the old pattern was obvious, for, apart from its greater range and accuracy, each quick-firing battery, by reason of the greater number of shells it fires, can cause destruction equal to that of a much larger number of non-quick-firing guns. After prolonged and exhaustive trials of different patterns, amongst which were those submitted by the French factories of St. Chamond and Schneider, the German firm of Krupp, and the Russian Putiloff, preference was given to the Russian design, and in the beginning of 1900 the first lot of 1,500 guns was ordered, further trials being also arranged for. Not everybody was convinced of the undoubted superiority of the new type of weapon, and General Dragomiroff, who had always been opposed to quick-firing artillery, still remained a strong opponent of its adoption. In 1902 an order for a second lot of guns of a modified and improved pattern was given. To test the weapon thoroughly and under war conditions, the 2nd Battery of the Guards Rifle Artillery Division, armed with this new 3-inch quick-firer, was sent, in August, 1900, to the Far East, where the Boxer campaign was then in progress. The division took part in four expeditions, two in the valley of the Pei-chih-li, one in the hills and sandy steppes of Mongolia, and one in the hills of Eastern Manchuria. It covered altogether about 2,400 miles of different sorts of country, under variations in temperature of from 35° to 22° Réaumur. Most of the marches were as much as forty miles in length. The battery came into action eleven times, and fired 389 rounds at cavalry, infantry, buildings, and fortifications at ranges from point-blank to 2,500 yards. The results attained were quite satisfactory, particularly if the arduous nature of the campaign, the season of the year, and the haste with which the battery was formed, be taken into account. Unfortunately, the test of shelling houses and field works was made against an enemy who made little resistance, so that faults in the ammunition which have recently come to light were not then discovered. Wishing to have as simple an equipment as possible, we adopted one pattern of shell, which was efficient with time-fuze against troops in the open, and could be used with percussion-fuze against troops under cover; but we omitted to take into account the weakness of the explosive employed as burster. The projectile which did splendidly against exposed targets was of little use for destroying such cover as buildings, timber, or breastworks. In March, 1902, the necessary grant was made for re-arming batteries of the 2nd Category, and the orders were carried out in our arsenals. The re-armament made such progress that at the time of the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War the whole of our artillery, with the exception of some Siberian batteries, was armed with quick-firers. At this time a quick-firing mountain-gun was also invented, which proved very effective. Generally speaking, the re-armament of the artillery was quickly and skilfully carried out.
But besides the four points above mentioned,[51] to which the Tsar was pleased to give his particular attention, the War Ministry had to make great efforts in other directions connected both with the life of the army and its efficiency. Amongst these tasks was that of improving our communications by building strategical roads and railways. These were constructed in order of urgency, according to a special scheme, as funds became available. Great efforts were made to push on with both the Bologoe-Siedlce and Orenberg-Tashkent lines, which were of particular strategic importance; and in 1899 considerable improvements were carried out in the Krasnovodsk-Kushk line.
In 1902 we began to consider what would be required in the five years 1904 to 1909, and in 1903 I submitted to the Finance Minister a demand for a supplementary grant of £82,500,000 in addition to the ordinary Budget for these five years. He only found it possible to grant £13,000,000. Numerous pressing measures which had been already postponed in 1899 had again to be put off with a hope that perhaps in 1910 Russia would be able to find means for the safeguarding of her most vital interests—in other words, for the defence of the Empire.
In submitting his annual report on the War Ministry in 1904—the first year of the new five-year period—Lieutenant-General Rediger, in his capacity of War Minister and as an acknowledged authority, made the following true and important observations:
“The existing defects in organization and equipment of our army are the direct result of the inadequate financial grants made ever since the war with Turkey. The sum allotted has never corresponded either to the actual requirements of the army or to the work it has had to do, but has been fixed entirely by the amount of money which seemed available. It has been made clear, in drawing up the scheme for the coming five years, that to satisfy only the most pressing needs a supplementary sum of £82,500,000[52] is required. Only £13,000,000 has been allotted. Thus the estimates for the current five years afford no hope of improving the existing situation.”
Owing to the large requirements of a peace army of 1,000,000, and the necessity for protecting frontiers stretching for over 11,000 miles, the Ministry of Finance had undoubtedly great difficulty in meeting the demands of the War Department. The requirements of the navy were also continually growing, with the result that less was available for the land forces. But if the Minister of Finance[53] had confined himself to his rôle of collector of revenue whereby to satisfy all the needs of the State, it could never have been suggested that the money so collected was spent except in accordance with actual requirements, for the decision as to which demands were the most urgent would not have been within this official’s province. As a matter of fact, our finances were managed in so curious a manner that the Finance Minister was not only the collector, but also the greatest expender of State moneys! Besides having to bear the ever-increasing outlay in his own department—for establishment, for expenses connected with the collection of taxes and the sale of Government liquor—he formed in his own Ministry subsections of the other Ministries, such as Ways and Communications, War, Navy, Education, Interior, Agriculture, and Foreign Affairs. So equipped, he planned, built, and administered the great Eastern Chinese Railway without any reference to the Minister of Ways and Communications; organized and commanded two army corps, one of Frontier Guards, and the other of guards for the railway, and actually chose the type of gun for their armament without reference to the Minister of War; initiated and managed a commercial fleet on the Pacific Ocean, and ran a flotilla of armed river steamboats, which might be regarded as the duty of the Naval Ministry. As regards the work of the Department of Education, the Finance Minister founded the higher technical institutions; as regards the sphere of Ministries of Interior and Agriculture, the Finance Minister had the most important administration—the so-called “alienated” strip of land set aside for the Eastern Chinese Railway—and the building of towns and villages, and the decision of questions concerning the taking up of land and its cultivation; as regards the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Finance Minister conducted negotiations with the highest representatives of the Chinese Administration, concluded treaties, and maintained his commercial and diplomatic agents in different parts of China and Korea. There is, I believe, a proverb to the effect that “charity begins at home.”[54] Is it to be wondered at, therefore, that the grants for the pet projects of the Finance Minister were more liberal than those for corresponding services required by the other Ministries? The appropriations for public education were cut down, but many millions were spent in constructing huge buildings for polytechnic institutes in St. Petersburg and Kieff, magnificent blocks for the Excise Department, and perfect palaces for officials. Immense sums were spent on the creation of the town of Dalny, on the Eastern Chinese Railway and its palatial offices in Harbin, and on the services connected with it. For this latter enterprise, which was both a commercial and State proposition (private as regards management, and official as regards the supply of funds), the money was mostly obtained from the so-called “surpluses.” These “surpluses” expanded in a manner unprecedented in the financial records, not only of our own country, but probably of the world, and in our case much to the detriment of the most pressing needs of all departments. The idea underlying the creation of a surplus was simplicity itself. While all demands for money made by the different departments were cut down, the estimated receipts from revenue were also reduced. The results were amazing. The excess of receipts over expenditure at a time when the most pressing requirements for national defence could not be met for lack of funds amounted in some years to over £20,000,000. The following table gives the “errors” in estimating made by the Finance Minister in calculating the revenue between 1894–1905:
| The Revenue. | Actual Excess over Estimate. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Estimated. | Actual. | ||
| £ | £ | £ | |
| 1894 | 100,482,327 | 115,378,581 | 14,896,253 |
| 1895 | 114,295,700 | 125,581,878 | 11,286,177 |
| 1896 | 123,947,169 | 136,871,935 | 12,924,765 |
| 1897 | 131,836,649 | 141,638,609 | 9,801,960 |
| 1898 | 136,445,821 | 158,485,444 | 22,039,622 |
| 1899 | 146,912,820 | 167,331,306 | 20,418,485 |
| 1900 | 159,374,568 | 170,412,850 | 11,038,282 |
| 1901 | 173,009,600 | 179,945,715 | 6,936,114 |
| 1902 | 180,078,448 | 190,540,444 | 10,461,995 |
| 1903 | 189,703,267 | 203,180,081 | 13,476,813 |
| 1904 | 198,009,449 | 201,826,131 | 3,816,682 |
| 1905 | 197,704,561 | 202,443,193 | 4,738,631 |