To Madridoff,
Port Arthur.
Everything is all right with me. I hope to get my views adopted in full as conditions imposed by existing situation and force of circumstances. I hope that if they ask the opinion of the Admiral (Alexeieff), he, I am convinced (sic), will give me his support. That will enable me to put many things into his hands.
(Signed) Bezobrazoff.
General Kuropatkin says that Admiral Alexeieff gave him “repeated assurances that he was wholly opposed to Bezobrazoff’s schemes, and that he was holding them back with all his strength”; but the Admiral was evidently playing a double part. While pretending to be in full sympathy with Kuropatkin’s hostility to the Ya-lu enterprise, he was supporting Bezobrazoff’s efforts to promote that enterprise. Bezobrazoff rewarded him, and fulfilled his promise to “put many things into his hands” by getting him appointed Viceroy. Kuropatkin says that this appointment was a “complete surprise to him”; and it naturally would be, because the Tsar acted on the advice of Bezobrazoff, Von Plehve, Alexeieff, and Abaza, and not on the advice of Kuropatkin, Witte, and Lamsdorff. It will be noticed that Von Plehve—the powerful Minister of the Interior—is never once mentioned by name in Kuropatkin’s narrative. Everything seems to indicate that Von Plehve formed an alliance with Bezobrazoff, and that together they brought about the dismissal of Witte, who ceased to be Minister of Finance on August 29, 1903. Anticipating this result of his efforts, and filled with triumph at the prospect opening before him, Bezobrazoff wrote to Lieutenant-Colonel Madridoff on August 25, 1903, as follows:
(No. 4.)
“The great saw-mill and the principal trade in timber will be transferred to Dalny, and this in co-partnership with the Ministry of Finance. The Manchurian Steamship Line will have all our ocean freight, amounting to 25,000,000 feet of timber, and the business will become international. From this you will understand how I selected my base and my lines of operation.”
In view of the complete defeat of such clear-sighted statesmen and sane counsellors as Kuropatkin, Witte, and Lamsdorff, there can be no doubt that Bezobrazoff’s “base and lines of operation” were well “selected.”
The document that most clearly shows the interest of the Tsar in the Ya-lu timber enterprise is a telegram sent to Bezobrazoff at Port Arthur in November, 1903, by Rear-Admiral Abaza, who was then Director of the Special Committee on Far Eastern Affairs, over which the Tsar presided, and who acted as the latter’s personal representative in all dealings with Bezobrazoff and the timber company. In the original of this telegram significant words, such as “Witte,” “Emperor,” “millions,” “garrison,” “reinforcement,” etc., were in cipher; but when Bezobrazoff read it he (or possibly his private secretary) interlined the equivalents of the cipher words, and also, in one place, a query as to the significance of artels—did it mean mounted riflemen or artillery? The following copy was made from the interlined original: