The Truth About Port Arthur

by E. K. Nozhin

While the Fort Commander, Admiral Grigorovitch, was telephoning their arrival to the Commandant, they informed the officers around them that Kuropatkin had been defeated at Liao-yang and that the Baltic Fleet had returned to Libau. We had received no news for a long time from outside, and this, of course, quickly spread throughout the Fortress, producing an overwhelming impression.

The Commandant at once ordered an aide-de-camp to meet the new-comers and take them to the Fortress Staff Office to be examined, and he requested the Chief of the Staff to let him know the result. He then busied himself with his work. Not hearing of them for two or three hours, he telephoned to the Staff Office for information, and was told that they had been met on the road to the Office by Stössel's aide-de-camp, and had gone to his quarters. Before half an hour had passed in came the orderly with the cards of X.—— and Y.——! The correspondents were inspecting the Fortress, accompanied by Lieutenant Malchenko, and, happening to pass the Commandant's house, they thought they ought to pay him a visit! He did not receive them, needless to say, but rang up the Staff Office.

Colonel Khvostoff arrived, and reported that the foreigners had been with Stössel, had lunched, and had been sent round the Fortress works with Malchenko. They had shown no papers when asked for them by the Port authorities, but had produced a letter they had brought for Stössel, the address of which was most ungrammatically written. Having arrived at Stössel's, they gave him this, which turned out to be a letter from Christoforoff (Christoforoff and Prince Radzivill had brought Stössel the telegram about his appointment as Aide-de-Camp to the Tsar). Stössel asked them to lunch, and after the wine the conversation became intimate. He openly told them the condition of the Fortress, the shortage of ammunition and of supplies. After the feast he gave them permission to go round the works. Excusing himself on the grounds of work at the front which could not be postponed, and to which he had personally to see, he went for a walk in the town (instead of his usual after-lunch snooze).

The Chief of the Staff finished, and every one was for the moment silent. A whirl of ideas flashed through the Commandant's brain. Stössel was interfering in his arrangements, and would make the defence of the place impossible, and his authority was being undermined at every step. This state of things must be stopped.

'Gentlemen, I am going at once to General Stössel, and will try to persuade him that suspicious correspondents must not be allowed to stroll about the town and Fortress. They must be arrested and examined.'

Having reached Stössel's, he pointed out that the arrival of these men, apparently with the blessing of the Japanese and without any papers, necessitated our looking upon them with suspicion, and that they must on no account be permitted to inspect the defences. Stössel replied it was nonsense; that they had brought a letter to him. When it was remarked that this letter was so very badly written that it was hard to believe that a Russian officer could be the author, he replied that neither Christoforoff nor Prince Radzivill were great scholars!

Smirnoff, feeling that Stössel might not wish to compromise himself in the eyes of foreigners, said:

'If, sir, it is inconvenient or awkward for you to arrest them after they have been your guests, I will undertake it as Commandant, and will have them examined. Let all the unpleasantness fall on me. Later, when we find out there is no reason to suspect them, they will blame me, and not you, and will take me for the Russian barbarian.'

'Pooh! they will see very little of the Fortress. There is no harm in it. They will go back and write that we are not yet eating earth, as most of the foreign press seems to think, and that bands are always playing. How could they be spies, when they asked me to let them enlist in the volunteers that they might bark at the Japanese?'

On the 29th, loaded with letters and requests, they left the hospitable shores of Arthur, and when they had gone a short way they were taken up by a Japanese destroyer.