“ ‘I earnestly request you to arrange for the early improvement of the running and carrying capacity of the Siberian Railway. Engineer Pavlovski, in charge of the Siberian line, informs me that he has already represented that, in order to work up the number of trains on the western portion to thirteen, in the central to fourteen, and in the hilly portion fifteen (of which nine, ten, and eleven will be military) during the summer, an expenditure of £650,000 is absolutely necessary. Please arrange as soon as possible to credit him with this amount and an equal sum for the Trans-Baikal line. I have informed the Tsar as to my opinion of the necessity of eventually working up the whole line from the Volga to Harbin to fourteen trains, though it be only twelve at first. Pavlovski considers it desirable and possible to get seventeen pairs of through trains. I cannot hope to act energetically unless the railway to Harbin is improved to the extent I recommend. From Harbin onwards it is absolutely necessary eventually to have eighteen, and temporarily fourteen, pairs of trains. I earnestly beg you to support this request.’ ”

By the middle of March Prince Khilkoff succeeded in sending across the ice-line on Lake Baikal sixty-five dismantled locomotives and 1,600 waggons. [When I met him he was very ill, but had succeeded in accomplishing a tremendous work, which it is to be hoped the country will appreciate.] Échelons[81] of troops marched twenty-nine miles over the ice in the day, every four men having a small sledge to carry their kit, etc. When I passed across the lake not more than four échelons were crossing in the twenty-four hours. The Trans-Baikal line was working very badly, and together with the lake was a great cause of delay.

In order to expedite the troop moves in Southern Manchuria, I telegraphed to the Viceroy on March 16, emphasizing the necessity of improvising road transport on the many roads between Harbin and Mukden for the carriage of units and supplies from the former place, and of not taking up more than one train in the day on the southern branch for goods. At the same time I drew attention to the fact that the troops should not be allowed to take with them more than their field-service scale of baggage. I had noticed that the 3rd Battalion of the East Siberian Rifles, which I had inspected on the way to the front, were taking as much baggage as if moving in the course of ordinary relief. On March 27 I reached Liao-yang, where the weary wait for the arrival of reinforcements began. The first troops to arrive were the 3rd Battalions for the seven East Siberian Rifle Brigades, at first one and then two in the day. These were followed by the artillery units and drafts for the brigades of the 31st and 35th Divisions. Meanwhile the money required for the improvement of the Siberian and Eastern Chinese lines had not been allotted as quickly as it should have been. On May 19 I received from the Ministry of Finance a telegram forwarding a copy of another to the Viceroy, dated 15th. From this it appeared that the question of bringing the carrying capacity of the Eastern Chinese Railway up to seven pairs of trains, and that of the southern branch to twelve pairs, had been thoroughly gone into at numerous meetings of the special committee, and that the necessity for despatching the following to the line was recognized: 190 miles of rails with joints, 770 sets of crossings, 355 engines, 88 passenger coaches, 2,755 goods vans and trucks. In addition to these, Admiral Alexeieff asked for 30 miles of rails, 265 sets of crossings, and 1,628 vans. The Finance Minister stated that it would be necessary, in order to improve and develop the line, to provide it with 3,000 truck-loads of various stores. But as it had only been found possible to send 200 trucks in April and 201 in May, or a total of 401, he was of opinion that “the whole amount could not possibly be guaranteed earlier than the autumn.” The extent to which the despatch of these was delayed is evident from the fact that out of 1,000 vans, only 60 had been sent off by May 18, and out of 355 engines, only 105. By July 30, 120 more engines had been sent, but it was not proposed to forward the remaining 130 till a good deal later.

Owing to three regiments of the 1st Siberian Division being detained in Harbin during the whole of April, the Manchurian army was not augmented by a single battalion. Meanwhile we had been defeated on May 1 at the Ya-lu, and on the 6th Oku’s army had begun to disembark at Pi-tzu-wo.

Though the 2nd Siberian Division reached Liao-yang in the second half of May, we were still very weak. On May 23 General Jilinski brought me a letter from the Viceroy, in which Admiral Alexeieff wrote that the time had come for the Manchurian army to advance towards the Ya-lu or Port Arthur. In spite of my opinion as to our unreadiness for any forward movement, in spite of the fact that out of twelve divisions of reinforcements only one had arrived, in spite of the inefficiency of the railway, an advance with insufficient numbers was ordered and carried out. The result was the disaster on June 14 at Te-li-ssu. The leading units of the 10th Corps did not reach Liao-yang till June 17; thus it took more than three months from the beginning of hostilities for our troops in the Far East to receive reinforcements from European Russia. During this prolonged and particularly important period the burden and heat of the campaign was borne by five East Siberian Rifle Divisions, whose two-battalion regiments had been expanded into three-battalion regiments as late as March and April; the 4th Siberian Corps, which arrived in May, did not take part in any fighting. Taking advantage of our inferiority in numbers, and especially the inaction of our fleet during these three months, the enemy disembarked their three armies on the Liao-tung Peninsula and in Kuan-tung. The 1st Army, under Kuroki, moved from Korea into Southern Manchuria, and Japan won three battles on land—at the Ya-lu, Chin-chou, and at Te-li-ssu. Had the railway only been ready at the beginning of hostilities, even to run only six through military trains, we should have had three army corps at Te-li-ssu—namely, the 1st and 4th Siberians and the 10th Army Corps, instead of only the 1st Siberian Corps. The issue of this battle would have been different, and this would undoubtedly have affected the whole course of the campaign, for we should have secured the initiative.

The arrival of the first units of the 10th Army Corps was more than opportune, but events did not permit us to await the concentration of the whole of it. Kuroki’s army was advancing, and the line Sai-ma-chi, An-ping, Liao-yang, on which he was moving in force, was only covered by our cavalry and one regiment of infantry. Consequently, as soon as the leading brigade of the 9th Division arrived at Liao-yang, it was sent off in that direction. Similarly, troops of the 17th Army and 5th Siberian Corps went straight into action from the train without waiting the concentration of their corps. It was only on September 2—i.e., after seven months—that the three army corps (10th, 17th, and 5th Siberian), sent from Europe to reinforce the field army, were all concentrated in the Manchurian theatre. During the decisive fighting at Liao-yang, the 85th Regiment was the only unit of the 1st Army Corps which had arrived, and it went straight from the train into the battle. If, at the beginning of the war, we had had only one more military train a day, we would have had present at the battle of Liao-yang the 1st Army Corps and 6th Siberian Corps, and with these sixty extra battalions must certainly have defeated the enemy. But the railway fatally affected us in other ways, for while we were feeding our army with fresh units as reinforcements, we were unable at the same time to find carriage for the drafts for the advanced troops, which had suffered heavy losses in killed, wounded, and sick. For example, in the fighting of five long months, from May 14 to October 14, the Manchurian army lost in killed, wounded, and sick, over 100,000 men, to replace which, during that period, it only received 21,000. The enemy, on the other hand, were making good their casualties quickly and uninterruptedly.

By the beginning of October the 1st Army Corps and the 6th Siberian Corps had arrived. Taking advantage of these reinforcements, I ordered an advance. In the bloody battle on the Sha Ho, where we lost about 45,000 men, killed and wounded, neither side could claim a decisive victory. During the four months immediately preceding the February (1905) battles the army received drafts to replace wastage, and was reinforced by the 8th and 16th Corps, besides five brigades of Rifles, but in that month it was still short of its establishment by 50,000 men—i.e., two whole army corps. In other words, as regards numbers, the 8th and 16th Corps might be said merely to have made up the wastage in the others. It is true these corps brought us additional artillery; but looking at it purely from the point of view of their fighting value, I should have preferred to have received them in the shape of drafts; I could then have incorporated them in the battle-tried corps, instead of having them as separate inexperienced units. Even with these considerable reinforcements our position in February, 1905, was worse than before, for the fall of Port Arthur enabled the Japanese to be augmented by Nogi’s army. Immediately after the 16th Corps the field army was to have received two Rifle brigades, one Cossack infantry brigade, and the 4th Army Corps; but their despatch was delayed for more than a month, in order to allow a quantity of stores which had collected on the line to be railed up. It was only on March 5—i.e., five weeks after the arrival of the last units of the 16th Army Corps—that the leading battalions of the 3rd Rifle Brigade (the 9th and 10th Regiments) reached Mukden, and they at once went into action. But for this break we should have had at the battle of Mukden a main reserve of more than sixty battalions, which, even allowing for our mistakes, might have turned the balance in our favour. In a full year, from the beginning of March, 1904, till the beginning of March, 1905, we railed up eight army corps, three Rifle brigades, and one reserve division to the front. Thus each corps on the average required, roughly, one and a half months to perform the journey. These figures indicate the peculiar disabilities under which we laboured in massing superior numbers. Owing to our far too slow concentration, our forces were bound to be destroyed in detail, as we were obliged to accept battle. With the transit of troops, the materials necessary for the work of improving the railways had to be railed up, and from August onwards the progress made in this work was remarkable. In October, 1904, I received a message from General Sakharoff to the effect that, according to the Minister of Ways and Communications, the Siberian main line would have a carrying capacity, after October 28, of twelve pairs of military trains. But this promise was not carried out for almost a year, though the traffic in October and November was heavy. Altogether, in one and a half months (forty-seven days), from October 28 to December 14, there arrived in Harbin 257 military, 147 goods (commissariat, artillery, red cross, and railway service), and 23 hospital trains (total, 427), which gives an average of nine pairs in the twenty-four hours, of which only five and a half carried troops. In ten months of war the railway had increased its traffic from three military trains to nine, so it took on an average more than one and a half months to add one pair of trains to the traffic. Finally, in the summer of 1905, after sixteen months of war, the railways worked, I believe, up to a rate of twelve pairs of military trains on the main line and eighteen on the southern branch—i.e., on the main line we did not even then get so high as the number (fourteen pairs) which I had asked for on March 7, 1904, when leaving for the front.

From all I have said it must be amply clear what a decisive factor the railway was. Every extra daily train would have enabled us to have at our disposal one or two corps more in the decisive battles. Thus a very great responsibility—that of not losing a single day in improving the lines—lay with the Ministries of Ways and Communications, of Finance, and, to a certain extent, with the Ministry of War. Looking back to what was done by these departments, it must be confessed that the results attained were very great, and that the railway employés did magnificent service. By the end of the war we had within the limits of the Viceroyalty an army of 1,000,000 men, well supplied with everything necessary for existence and for fighting. As this army was conveyed while work was being simultaneously carried out on the railway-line, the result, though largely attained by forced labour, was, for a badly laid single line of railway, somewhat striking. By means of good lines of railway, mobilization and concentration are very quickly effected nowadays. Germany and Austria can throw about 2,000,000 soldiers on to our frontiers in from ten to fourteen days, and their rapid concentration will enable them to seize the initiative. Our forces reached the front, so to speak, by driblets, which resulted in paralysis of all initiative on our part.

Thinking that the information with regard to the railways, sent by the War Minister in October, 1904 [which reached me on November 8], meant the realization of my recommendations of February, 1904, I considered it time to submit to the Tsar my views as to the necessity for further work, for I considered it most necessary that the line should be at once doubled over its whole length. I expressed my opinion on this question in a letter to the Tsar, dated November 12, 1904. As there is nothing in this letter that can be regarded as secret, I will quote it literally:

“YOUR MAJESTY,