Russia's occupation of Port Arthur in March, 1898, led, in the spring of the following year, to the further construction being begun of a southern branch of the Chinese Eastern Railway from Harbin, a station on the Chita-Vladivostok line, to the extremity of the Liao-tung peninsula.
It was these two railways, the Trans-Siberian and the Chinese Eastern, terminating at Vladivostok in the one direction and at Port Arthur in the other, which came into special consideration in the war of 1904-5. It was on the Trans-Siberian line, more especially, that Russia was mainly dependent (as the German official report on the war points out) not only for the concentration and maintenance of her army but even for the raising and organisation of most of its units.
When the Trans-Siberian was first built, the desire to avoid undue expenditure on a line which must necessarily involve a huge expenditure, with little or no prospect of yielding a return sufficient for the payment of interest thereon, led to the adoption of an economy which was to hamper very materially the transport capacity of the railway. Only a single line of rails was allowed for; a limit was placed on the breadth of the embankments; the curves were greater than considerations of speed and safety should have permitted; the gradients were either dangerously varied or so excessive that divisions of the trains were necessary; the rails used were of no greater weight than from 42 lbs. to 47 lbs. per yard, and they were badly laid, even then; the bridges across the smaller streams were made of wood only; the crossing-places and the railway stations were few and far between, while all the secondary constructions were provided on what was almost the cheapest possible scale.
These conditions necessitated the limitation of the traffic, when the line was first opened, to the running of three trains a day in each direction. The length of the trains was restricted to sixty axles. It was thus impossible to meet the demands even of the ordinary traffic in peace time, apart altogether from any question as to military requirements in time of war. No sooner, therefore, were the main portions of the line ready, in 1898, than there was set aside, for a railway which was already to cost over £350,000,000, a further sum of £9,130,000 for relaying those portions of the line with a better quality of rails and sleepers, the reconstruction of sections dangerous to traffic, the provision of more stations and more rolling stock, and other improvements. It was expected that this additional work would be completed by 1904, by which time the line was to be equal to the running of thirteen pairs of trains daily.
Reporting on the condition of the Russian railways in 1900 (at which date the Eastern Chinese line was still unfinished), General Kuropatkin, then War Minister, afterwards Commander-in-Chief in Manchuria, did not hesitate to declare that it was still impossible for them to cope with heavy traffic.
Relations between Russia and Japan became strained towards the end of 1903, though the Government of the former country were desirous that any outbreak of hostilities should be avoided until they were better able to undertake them. In his account of "The Russian Army and the Japanese War" General Kuropatkin says concerning the position at this period:—
Our unreadiness was only too plain, and it seemed at that time that we should be able, with two or three years' steady work, so to strengthen our position in the Far East, and improve the railway, the fleet, the land forces, and the fortresses of Port Arthur and Vladivostok that Japan would have small chance of success against us.
Regarding war as inevitable, and disinclined to give Russia an opportunity of first strengthening her position in the directions here suggested, Japan broke off diplomatic relations with Russia on February 6, 1904, this being the immediate prelude to the hostilities that followed.
In anticipation of a possible rupture, Russia had already despatched reinforcements and stores to the Far East by sea; but the rupture, when it did come, found her quite unprepared to send further large reinforcements by land, while her forces in the Far East were scattered over the vast area extending from Lake Baikal to Vladivostok, and from Port Arthur to Nikolaievsk. No orders for mobilisation had been issued; the army was in the midst of rearmament and reorganisation, and the unreadiness of the railways had prevented the drawing up of time-tables for the concentration of the troops. Ten days after the outbreak of war the Russian Government issued a statement in which they said:—