“Before leaving to join the army, I was permitted to give my opinion as to our principal requirements to insure success in the war. My opinion was submitted in a memorandum dated 7th March, and was marginally annotated by Your Majesty. Eight months ago I expressed in this memorandum the opinion that, for a successful concentration and rapid transport of all the supplies necessary to an army in the field, the running of 30 pairs of military trains in the 24 hours was essential. As a first step I considered the improvement of the Siberian and Eastern Chinese lines should be taken in hand, so as to bring up the number of trains to 14 pairs in the 24 hours along the main line, and 18 pairs along the southern branch. Against the words ‘up to 14 pairs in 24 hours’ Your Majesty was pleased to note, ‘Very necessary.’ In a message reaching me on the 8th November the War Minister has informed me that from the 28th October the Siberian and Trans-Baikal lines will have a carrying capacity of 12 pairs of trains in the day, and that it is proposed further to work up the Siberian main line to 14 pairs, and that the Minister of Finance[82] has been approached with regard to the urgency for improving the Eastern Chinese lines so as to correspond with the Siberian. Thus, we have not, in eight months, reached the number indicated as necessary in my former memorandum. I now earnestly request that as a first step the whole Siberian main line and the Eastern Chinese line as far as Harbin should be worked up to a carrying capacity of 14 pairs, and on the southern branch to 18 pairs. I know that this is no easy matter, but it is absolutely essential, and admits of no delay. These 14 pairs will by no means supply all our requirements. The larger number of men in the field has increased the demand for transport. It is calculated that, to supply the army with everything necessary, and to carry back what is not required, not 30 pairs of trains, but 48, are essential. This is not exaggerated; it is the minimum under normal conditions. Each Manchurian army should have its own line (like the Bologoe-Siedlce)[83] giving 48 pairs of trains in 24 hours. We must bow, of course, to the impossible, but we shall have to pay in human life and in money for a prolonged war. The urgency of every extra train can easily be seen. If we had had one more pair of trains available at the beginning of the war, we should have had 2 extra army corps—the 1st and 6th Siberian Corps—in the August fights at Liao-yang, and our success would practically have been assured. This one extra train could have brought in drafts during September and October an extra 50,000 men, of which we are now in such urgent need.
“In the future, every month will increase the necessity of strengthening the line still more. When the field army was small, we drew our supplies almost entirely from local sources (wheat, barley, hay, straw, fuel, and cattle), but these will soon be exhausted, and the provisioning the army will depend on supplies from Europe. When we move forward our position will become worse, for we shall be moving into a part of Manchuria already devastated by war, and into a hilly tract which was never rich in supplies. The daily transport of provisions (flour, groats, oats, hay, and meat) for our present establishment takes up 5 trains, and we soon shall have to provide carriage for live-stock. But the army cannot live from hand to mouth. A quantity of supplies must be collected, sufficient to form a reserve for the force for some months, besides satisfying current requirements, and this must be distributed in the advance and main depôts. It will take 5 additional trains a day for one month to collect one month’s reserve. Only by having a large number of trains can we organize our advance depôts with necessary rapidity, and move them to fresh points. The demand for trains is greatest on those days when fighting is in progress. A number of urgent demands—amounting sometimes to hundreds during two or three days—are made, not only for supplies, but for the carriage of military and engineer stores, troops, parks, and the transport of drafts and of wounded. The needs of an army in war are so varied and so vast that it is considered necessary in Europe to have for each army corps a special line of rails (single track), capable of running 14 to 20 pairs of trains in the 24 hours. For our 9 army corps we have only one single line of rails running (in the last few weeks) from 8 to 10 pairs of trains. The inability of the line to cope with the necessities of the war is the main reason for the slow and indecisive nature of the campaign. Our reinforcements arrive in driblets. Supplies despatched from Russia in the spring are still on the Siberian line. Waterproofs sent for the summer will arrive when we want fur coats; fur coats will be received when waterproofs are wanted. But so far, during all these months that we have been in contact with the enemy, have fought and have retired, we have not been hungry, because we have been living on the country. The situation is now altogether changed, for local resources will last only for a short time longer. Our horses will soon have to be fed on hay and straw, and if we do not make extraordinary efforts to improve the railway and concentrate a large quantity of supplies at the advanced base, our men, who are concentrated in great numbers on small areas, will, after the horses, begin to suffer hardship and hunger, and will fall sick. Any accidental damage to the railway will be sorely felt.
“I am expressing my firm conviction with complete frankness as the officer in command of three armies, that, for their successful operations, we must at once start laying a second track throughout the whole Siberian trunk line and on the Eastern Chinese Railway. Our army must be connected with Russia by a line capable of running 48 pairs of trains in the day.
“I have some experience of my profession, and was for eight years in charge of the management of the Trans-Caspian Railway, and I am convinced that all these difficulties can be overcome if Your Majesty is pleased to order it. Possibly the war will be finished before we shall have laid the second line of rails over more than a fraction of the whole distance; on the other hand, it may continue so long that only a double track will save the situation. Only with a double line also shall we be able at the end of the war to send back rapidly all the troops which came from Russia and to demobilize. We are living in the midst of events of immense importance on which depends the future, not only of the Far East, but, to a certain extent, that of Russia. We must not shirk sacrifices that will insure victory and subsequent peace in the Far East. Neither a conquered Japan nor a sleeping China will permit such peace unless Russia possesses the power to despatch army corps to the Far East more rapidly than she can at present. A double line alone will enable this to be done. While keeping this as our main ultimate object, we should make every effort now to work the railways up to a traffic capacity of 14 pairs of trains as far as Harbin, and 18 beyond.
“Having set to work to double the line, we must try to arrange that one section will give us 18 pairs of military trains a day (perhaps it will be best to begin from the hilly portions). As the second line is laid, we shall be able to work up to a running and carrying capacity along the whole line to Harbin and southwards of at first 24 pairs of trains, then 36, and eventually 48.”
Upon receipt of this letter from me, the first thing that the St. Petersburg authorities did was to work out the details of the preliminary arrangements for doubling the line. They tried to formulate some scheme whereby the necessary construction material could be carried on the railway without cutting down the number of troop trains. It was suggested that the rails should be sent via the Arctic Ocean, and apparently some attempt to do this was carried out, but later all idea of doubling the line during the war was abandoned. It was a pity, for the earth-work might have been carried out without interfering with the traffic. Had we carried out this important measure, we should have made our position in the Far East far stronger than it is now.
While they were making ready for war with us, the Japanese concluded a treaty with Great Britain, by which they were assured of the non-interference of any other Power. We, on the contrary, had not only made no preparations for war in the east, but did not even consider it possible to weaken to any great extent our frontiers on the west, in the Caucasus, or in Central Asia. Our diplomats neither steered clear of war with Japan, nor insured against interference in the west. The result was that, while Japan advanced against us in her full strength, we could only spare an inconsiderable portion of our army in European Russia to reinforce the Far East. We had to fight with one eye on the west. The army corps stationed in Western Russia were in a much higher state of preparation than those in the interior as regards the number of men in the ranks and the number of guns, horses, etc., and they were armed with quick-firing guns. We, however, took corps that were on the lower peace footing (the 17th and 1st), and gave them artillery from the frontier corps; while the efficiency of some of the units we took, which had companies from 160 to 100 strong in peace-time, varied a great deal. It was due to this quite natural fear for our western frontier that of five army corps sent to the Far East, three were composed of reserve divisions. We had to keep troops back for the maintenance of internal order; Japan did not have to do this. Our picked troops—the Guards and Grenadiers—were not sent to the front; on the other hand, the Japanese Guards Division was the first to attack us at the Ya-lu. Thus, though we had a standing army of 1,000,000 men, we sent reserve units and army corps on the lower establishment to the front, and entrusted the hardest work in the field, not to our regular standing army, but to men called up from the reserve. In a national war, when the populace is fired with patriotism, and everything is quiet in the interior of the country, such a course might be sound; but in the war with Japan, which was not understood, and was disliked by the nation, it was a great mistake to throw the principal work on to the reserves. In the summer of 1905 we corrected this mistake, and filled up the army with young soldiers, with recruits of 1905, and drafts from the regular army. These young soldiers arrived at the front cheerful and full of hope, and in a very different frame of mind to that of the reservists. It was a pleasure to see the drafts of regulars proceeding by train to the front—they were singing and full of spirit. The majority of them were volunteers, and they would undoubtedly have done magnificently if they had had a chance, but more than 300,000 of them saw no service owing to the hasty peace.
In her war with France in 1870, Prussia, assured of our neutrality, had nothing to fear from us, and was able to leave only an inconsiderable number of men on our frontier and to enter upon the struggle with all her strength. Similarly, Japan was able to throw her full strength into the struggle from the very commencement. We, on the other hand, considered it advisable to keep our main forces in readiness in case of a European war, and only a small part of the army stationed in European Russia was sent to the Far East. Not a single army corps was taken from the troops in the Warsaw Military District, our strongest garrison. Even my request to send the 3rd Guards Division to the front from there was not granted, while our numerous dragoon regiments were represented by a single brigade. We kept our dragoons on the western frontier, and sent to the war the 3rd Category regiments of the Trans-Baikal and Siberian Cossacks, consisting of old men mounted on small horses. They reminded one more of infantry soldiers on horseback[84] than of cavalry. In my report to the Tsar on March 7, 1904, I requested that the reinforcements from Russia might be mobilized simultaneously and immediately after the Easter holidays, and I gave the following reasons:
“By this measure the units, especially the reserve ones, will get time to settle down. It will also be possible to put them through a course of musketry and some military training, and it will give time to organize the transport, parks, and hospitals.”
I considered it important that units detailed for the Far East should have as long as possible to shake down, and to receive some training before starting for the front.