Chapter VIII: Reasons for Our Reverses (2)

“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.

The above memorandum, with the Tsar’s remarks on it, was sent to the War Minister for his guidance; but General Sakharoff either did not carry out some of the important recommendations I had emphasized most, or altered them, and carried them out too late. As regards the date of mobilizing the reinforcements, he did not share my view (1) as to the necessity for a simultaneous mobilization, and (2) as to the necessity for mobilizing immediately after Easter. In a memorandum drawn up by him, dated March 18, 1904, he asked permission to mobilize the reinforcements in three lots instead of at once. Six Cossack regiments were first of all detailed for mobilization in the end of April, then the 10th Army Corps on May 1, the 17th Army Corps on May 1 or a little later, and four reserve divisions of the Kazan Military District at the end of June. In a second memorandum (July 31) the question was again raised whether all the reinforcements should be mobilized simultaneously or at different times. The Headquarter Staff preferred the latter alternative. Besides the poor carrying capacity of the Siberian Railway, the reason given was that—

“... The political horizon might become so clouded as to make
the simultaneous mobilization of all the troops mentioned in the
statement inadvisable.”

Against this part of the memorandum I wrote the words, “It would be better to do it simultaneously.” On my way to the front I received a telegram from General Sakharoff, dated March 21, in which he said that my request for the troops guarding the line to Harbin to be supplied from one of the divisions of the Kazan Military District, and for this division to be mobilized together with the other reinforcing troops directly after the Easter holidays, could not be acceded to, owing to the inconvenience to which the people of that district would be put by so early a mobilization. He suggested that guards for the railway might be found from one of the divisions of the 4th Siberian Corps—in other words, that this corps should be broken up. The result of the reinforcements being mobilized at different dates, contrary to my wishes, was that when the leading units reached the front, they had not settled down properly; the men did not know their officers, and _vice versâ_. Few corps had been able to do a musketry course, the 2nd Category reservists did not know the rifle, and hardly any had been tactically exercised, or if they had, it had been only for a few days. Divisions and corps had not been practised with the three arms. The 6th Siberian Corps was mobilized under fairly favourable circumstances, the 55th and 72nd Infantry Divisions being sent into camp in 1904, but these divisions were trained without artillery or cavalry.[85]

In former days troops had to make long marches in full field-service order before they reached the battle-field. If properly conducted, these marches hardened the men, and enabled units to settle down; all superfluous baggage was discarded, the weaker men were left behind, and officers and men got to know one another. But nowadays, with railway transport, the results are very different. Going to the Far East, our men were crowded up in railway carriages for as long as forty days at a time, out of the control of their officers, who were in different compartments. In the old and well-disciplined units no particular harm resulted, but in the case of newly formed units, whose reservists—particularly those of the 2nd Category, just summoned from their homes—consisting of peasants and town-bred men, were all in carriages together, instead of with regulars, it was most harmful. If to this fact be added their original unwillingness to go to the front, their lack of military spirit, and the frame of mind induced by the seditious proclamations with which they were lavishly supplied, the small fighting value of these reinforcements can be easily imagined. Many commanding officers of such regiments told me that not only did they not know the men under them, but that, in spite of a journey of from forty to fifty days, even the company commanders had not got to know their companies.

The command of the various units of the field army was in a bad enough way, for, owing to the numerous changes in the staff, there were many newly appointed commanding officers; but among the reserve troops the case was worse, for almost all the commanders were fresh men. The value of even the regular units was still further diminished by the proportion and class of the reservists joining. For instance, in some companies of the 10th Army Corps there were only sixty regulars, of whom thirty were young soldiers who had hardly finished their recruits’ course; when 150 reservists from the Poltava province were added to this nucleus—all of them old men—a company lost almost all semblance of a regular one. The spirit of the Poltava reservists was at first specially bad, for a number of these men had taken part in the agrarian disturbances. Can it be wondered at that, in such circumstances, reinforcements which arrived from European Russia, and went into action straight from the train, were not so useful as they would have been had proper pains been taken with them?

What, then, were the motives which induced the War Minister (General Sakharoff) to act in this important matter contrary to the recommendations I had made, both as War Minister in 1903 and as Officer Commanding the Manchurian Army in 1904? In a memorandum written by him on March 18, after explaining his views as to the number of days which he considered the 10th and 17th Corps would take on their journey to the front, he stated that if the reserve units were mobilized in the middle of April, at the same time as the ordinary units, as I had asked, they would have to wait an unnecessarily long time before being despatched, and that it would be sufficient if reserve units,

“... having finished their mobilization, had two or three weeks
for field exercises.... The units mobilized at the beginning of
April would have to wait some three and a half months before
being despatched. This, besides taking the men away prematurely
from their spring work in the fields, would put the War Department
to great and unnecessary expense in maintaining some 60,000 men.
Mobilized units, of course, do not require so long to settle down.”

Thus, in spite of the importance of the matter, and of the fact that we could have trained well the men going to the Far East, my request was refused for financial reasons, and in order that men who were to be soldiers should not be taken away at sowing-time! The grounds for General Sakharoff’s opinion that newly raised reserve units only required two or three weeks to shake down instead of three and a half months are not obvious. Did he not know that the three-line[86] rifle now in the possession of the army was quite new to the 2nd Category reservists?

The Easter holidays were early in 1904, coming on April 10. I had asked that the general mobilization of all reinforcements should be ordered immediately after the holidays—_i.e._, in the middle of April—but General Sakharoff fixed the date for a month later; thus the reservists of the 10th and 17th Corps received a month’s less training before their departure for the front than I had stipulated for. The actual dates of mobilization were: 10th and 17th Army Corps, May 1, 1904; 5th Siberians, June 14. The leading échelons[87] entrained as follows: 10th Army Corps, May 18, 1904; 17th Army Corps, June 14; 5th Siberians, July 12. Thus those of the 10th Corps only had ten days to complete mobilization and get ready. If from this number be deducted the days on which reviews were held, it can be seen that the leading units of this corps could neither have gone through the shortest musketry course, nor have carried out any tactical exercises, while the rest of the corps had only about two weeks for this important work. The leading échelons of the 17th Corps were in a similar plight. The first units of the 5th Siberians, which was formed of reserve divisions, had one month from the day mobilization was ordered till it entrained. If review days and the time taken to mobilize be deducted, only a fortnight was available for instruction and shaking down, and the whole experience of the war has shown that this is insufficient, especially for 2nd Category reservists. Had the troops of the 5th Siberians only been mobilized at the same time as the 10th and 17th Corps, its leading units would have had about two and a half months for this process of preparation. In these circumstances the efficiency of its regiments would have been higher in the first fights than they were in General Orloff’s column at Liao-yang. Another result of the postponed mobilization was that the first échelon of the 10th Army Corps (9th Division), which arrived at the front on June 30, was much below strength, especially as regards officers. Not only had the Poltava reservists not settled down with the regulars, but in some companies they almost came to blows with them after the first fights. The regulars reproached the reservists for leaving the ranks in action, to which the latter replied: “You are soldiers; it’s your job; we’re peasants.” Feeling between the two classes of men ran so high that they were with difficulty restrained from actually fighting. I should in justice add that these peasants, under the command of the able and gallant General Hershelman, became hardened soldiers, and in later battles fought most gallantly, especially at Mukden. Units of the 5th Siberian Corps reached the front with their men in much the same state, and in the first battles some regiments of this corps did not display the steadiness they should have done, but later on, especially at Mukden, the 51st and 54th Divisions fought splendidly.

Although we had a large number of reservists at our disposal, instead of mobilizing the youngest, in some districts we took men of all ages, while in others we did not discard the elderly men. Directly they arrived at the front it was noticed that the older reserve men were both physically and morally less reliable than the others. Indeed, according to their officers, they were an actual source of weakness instead of strength to the units they joined. Nearly all the men who left the ranks in action were 2nd Category reservists. Of course, there were splendid exceptions, but the one idea of the majority of these men was to get put on non-combatant duties on the line of communication, on transport work, or appointed as hospital orderlies, and after the first fights they were given their desire. Our peasants generally put on fat, grow beards, and lose their soldierly appearance when they get over thirty-five. Naturally, also, they find the discomforts of campaigning harder to bear than younger men. The “Little Russian” 2nd Category reservists of the Poltava province were too heavy to scramble over steep slopes, and found the Manchurian hills very difficult to negotiate after the plains of their native country. The small active hillmen of Japan had indeed a great advantage over our soldiers in the July and August battles. It must also be remembered that villagers of over thirty-five are generally married men with large families. Our reservists were continually thinking of the homes and families they had left behind, which was not exactly conducive to the cheerful mind so necessary to the soldier. Added to all this, they did not understand the reason for the war, and far from being urged on by their country to deeds of gallantry, were fed with seditious proclamations, advising them to kill their officers instead of fighting. During the retreat from Mukden several units retired in disorder, and many men were met who had thrown away their rifles. One of these was heard by my staff to ask: “Where is the road to Russia?” On being told he was a cowardly cur, he answered: “Why should I have to fight? I have got six children to support.”

The partial mobilization proved unsatisfactory, but it was not merely an accident of the war. Owing to the enormous extent of our frontiers, we might have been drawn just as easily into a European struggle that would have necessitated a general mobilization as into a war which required only a partial one. Thus, in addition to having a plan for general call to arms, we had to work out different schemes for partial mobilization to meet certain contingencies. It was laid down as a basis for these schemes that their application should not interfere with a general mobilization if that also proved necessary, so certain areas had to be selected for the calling out of reserves which would not interfere with the general and more important scheme. The number of these areas could only be kept down by taking from them the maximum of reserve men—_i.e._, those of all categories irrespective of age. The first scheme for partial mobilization on these lines was drawn up and approved in 1896, when General Vannovski was War Minister, and when it was found necessary, in 1903, to work out fresh plans in case of complications with Japan, they were naturally based upon the old scheme. Having at that time complete faith in the reliability of the 2nd Category reservists, I (then War Minister) concurred in the general lines adopted, and submitted the new plan to the Tsar for approval, but only as regards the first reinforcements to be sent to the Far East. After I had seen the first consignment which actually reached the front, I asked that no more 2nd Category reservists or men with large families should be sent. When the second partial mobilization (54th, 61st, and 71st Divisions) took place, a half-hearted attempt was made to reject men with large families; but it was not till the fifth and sixth mobilizations that 2nd Category reservists and family men were, by the Emperor’s wish, left behind. Neither the people nor the reservists could understand why 2nd Category reservists with families were taken from one district or one set of villages, and bachelors who had only just passed into the reserve from the colours were rejected in others. Future schemes for partial mobilization must be drawn up on entirely different lines from those of 1896 and 1903. Although 2nd Category reservists were being sent to the front, we continued to allow men to pass as usual from the regular army into the reserve, even letting them go before they had completed their five years with the colours. This state of affairs was extremely harmful to the army, but can be partly explained as follows:—In the spring of 1904, just after the commencement of the war, the recruits of that year should have begun to join all units in European Russia. In peace, infantry soldiers are usually passed from the colours to the reserve at the end of the manœuvres when they have done only three years and a few months’ service out of five (four manœuvres and three winters). It did not occur to the Headquarter Staff to make use of these men for the army in the field, though there were more than 200,000 of them—young soldiers, splendidly trained—who might have been enrolled in reserve units and then sent as drafts to the front. In this matter Headquarters were guided by considerations quite unconnected with the war. The advisability of retaining in their regular units the men about to pass to the reserve was indeed considered, but it was put down as having many disadvantages. The political side of the matter was what carried most weight at Headquarters; moreover, questions of finance were involved, for the men so retained with the colours would, upon arrival of the recruits, have been supernumerary to the establishment. But, owing to the shortage caused by the formation of new corps, it was found difficult to carry out guard and other duties, and in some units the men due to leave were retained with the colours till the young soldiers had joined the ranks. General officers in command of districts gave various replies when asked for their opinions on this matter; some were for retaining the men, others for letting them go. In the summer of 1904 the War Minister asked the Tsar’s permission to authorize commanding officers to pass men of the infantry, field artillery, and engineers into the reserve if they thought fit, provided that men were not kept with the colours longer than March 31, 1905. The transfer in other arms of the Service was to be as usual. Thus the retention in the ranks of these time-expired soldiers was the exception, and was not dependent on the war. Always fearful of a European war, we replaced the troops sent from Russia to the front by forming a large number of new divisions from the reservists. This course was also necessary for the maintenance of internal order. On August 23, 1904, officers commanding districts were authorized to transfer men retained with the colours into the newly formed infantry and artillery units, and thus to get rid of the same number of 2nd Category reservists. Thus the reserve divisions formed for service in the interior of Russia began to be filled by good men and rid of 2nd Category men before the divisions at the front were. In the autumn of 1904, at the request of the authorities in the field, authority was given to transfer men retained with the colours up to March 31, 1905, into the units mobilized and expanded by the seven partial mobilizations, and to discharge from these units the 2nd Category reservists and men of large families. It was only on December 27, 1904, when the young soldiers joined the ranks, that arrangements were made to transfer the men retained with the colours into the units that were not mobilized or expanded. These men were available for despatch to the front as drafts in the summer and autumn of 1904, but they only arrived a year later, after the Mukden battles, when they were too late. These splendid men saw no fighting at all.

I have endeavoured to explain (Chapter VII.) on what a large scale the Japanese made use of their reserve troops, and how rapidly they replaced casualties. The organization of the reserve units in the Russian army, on the other hand, was not fully completed before the war, for we had only been able to go ahead as funds permitted. The number of reserve troops in the Far East corresponded to the small number of units stationed there in the first instance, but while we increased our numbers out there it was not considered convenient to increase the reserve units, the number of reservists living there and in Siberia being insufficient to fill them. But if we had had the cadres of a large number of reserve units there, it would have been easy to send the reservists to them from European Russia. The six reserve battalions stationed in Pri-Amur had lost most of their permanent cadres in the first fights. The army generally had to operate with a constantly decreasing establishment, due to a variety of causes:

1. Units arriving as reinforcements sometimes came with a shortage of 15 to 20 per cent. among the men, and 25 per cent. among the officers. The 10th Army Corps in particular arrived very short—a fact which I immediately reported to the War Minister.

2. Owing to the shortage of men in the administrative services and of the auxiliary troops, many duties had to be carried out by the regiments in the field—_i.e._, duties in rear, at camps, on the line of communication, at hospitals, in the commissariat and transport, as well as guards for the different store depôts. Advantage was taken of these duties to get rid of the 2nd Category reservists.

3. A large number of men had to be told off to guard property left in the staff quarters of the Viceroyalty, and the stores, supplies, and droves of cattle collected for the troops at work on the railways, bridges, and for other odd duties.

4. On the days of heavy engagements the shortage increased by tens of thousands, and even in periods of comparative quiet the number of killed and wounded in some units was very high.

5. Sickness.

All these reasons combined necessitated a continual stream of reinforcements to the front. But owing to the state of the railway there were intervals, and fairly long ones, when the army received no drafts—as, for instance, in July, August, and September, 1904, when, as I have already mentioned, we lost 100,000 men, and only received 21,000.

The advance at the beginning of October, 1904, was made when the army was much below strength, some regiments having only half, and even less, of their proper complement. And this shortage of men was increased on the eve of a battle by the large numbers left with the transport, at the staff quarters and as officers’ servants—men who were in reality combatants. Curiously enough, many commanding officers showed no particular anxiety to take their units into action as strong as possible. But what was most serious was the speed with which some units melted away as soon as they came under fire; directly casualties happened this dissolution commenced. Men were told off, with the knowledge of their commanding officers, to assist company and divisional stretcher-bearers in carrying the wounded out of action. If the number of wounded were large, an enormous number of unwounded men went to the rear. The cowardly and the skulkers did their best to get detailed for this duty, or went off with wounded men without orders, or left the ranks without any excuse. I have seen stretchers with wounded men accompanied by as many as ten unwounded soldiers. In some regiments the numbers thus voluntarily retiring from the field amounted to hundreds; in one regiment[88] more than 1,000 men left the ranks in the first fight in which it took part. These were generally reservists, and chiefly those of the 2nd Category. The men with the colours, as a rule, did most of the fighting, and fought magnificently; sometimes even when companies were reduced to a handful of men they continued fighting. Of course, there were some gallant men amongst reservists, but, as a rule, any brave deeds that were performed were done by the men with the colours and 1st Category reservists. Even for the drafts, the men sent to the front were not selected with adequate care, and many were quite unfit for active service. In 1905, of some 76,000 who arrived for the 1st Army, 4,100 were sick or otherwise unfit. The following statement by the Adjutant-General of that Army is interesting:

“The drafts sent to the Army before the battle of Mukden were
composed of 2nd Category reservists who left the colours about
1887. They were quite ignorant of the present rifle, and their
training was in other ways far below the level of the men forming
the permanent cadres of their units. Many of them were physically
quite unfitted to endure the hardships of a campaign or of any
military service, being chronic sufferers from diseases such as
rheumatism. But those who arrived after the battle of Mukden were
splendid. Reservists were sometimes drafted to an Arm of the
service in which they had not served before passing to the reserve;
for instance, men were put into the artillery who had done all
their colour service in cavalry or infantry, while to engineer
units were sent men who had served in the infantry. This, of
course, caused considerable complication as regards training, and
could not but militate against our field operations, especially in
the case of the technical troops.”

The above is an accurate representation of the facts. Until the battle of Mukden the drafts sent to the front were much less reliable than those arriving afterwards, when they were too late to see any fighting. Those which were composed of 2nd Category men were often so bad that if a fight were imminent, commanding officers asked to be relieved of them, as their steadiness could not be relied on. These officers felt that their more or less veteran units would do better in the field, even if weak in numbers, than if filled up just before a fight with these men. Such a request was made to me by the officer commanding the 1st Army Corps and many others.

The shortage of officers was also a bad feature of our arrangements. In spite of the stream sent out to replace casualties, many units went short of their proper complement of officers all through the war. Both the troops actually in the Far East and the reinforcements sent out were at their peace strength when hostilities commenced. Indeed, there were instances in the beginning of the war of companies going into action for the first time commanded by junior lieutenants. As things went on, this deficiency in leaders was found to exist even in those units whose muster rolls showed an excess above their proper complement, and after the first fights, owing to the specially heavy casualties among the officers, cases were quite common of battalions and companies in action which were commanded by captains and second lieutenants. This dearth at the front was increased by the number of officers absorbed in departmental and other duties in the rear, and, in the case of the reinforcements, by so many—both medical and combatant officers—being left at the different bases; the latter were, of course, intended, in case of a general mobilization, to be available for general or regimental duties with the newly formed units. These remarks apply more particularly to the infantry. In the cavalry and artillery the numbers, though less than the establishment, were generally sufficient to carry on with. This was due to the fewer casualties in those arms. There is no doubt that the question of providing officers for an army in the field is a very serious one, which is complicated by many extraneous circumstances. We found that when the period of great battles and consequent heavy losses amongst the officers commenced, the discrepancy between the number of them shown on paper and of those actually present with a regiment rapidly increased. The names of a large number of wounded and sick were kept on the rolls for a long time. Some of the wounded and sick who stayed in the theatre of war gradually drifted back to their regiments, but the great number who had gone to Russia remained there, and did not rejoin even after they had quite recovered. There were instances where commanders of regiments, who had gone to Russia convalescent and had not returned, were still shown as commanding, and were still drawing command pay. Several who went home sick or wounded loafed about the streets of our cities or large towns for months, and the curious thing is that no one seemed to question such behaviour. In spite of what was done to obviate this, the medical officers and the medical board were far too lenient to those who wished to return home, and gave them every facility. On the other hand, many who were considered incompetent for field service, and sent back to Russia on this account, appeared again as fit, and returned to their corps, thus squeezing out from the command of companies and battalions those who had honourably borne all the hardships of the campaign, had acquired war experience, and had earned accelerated promotion. An excellent article on this subject by M. Glinski, called “The Resurrected Dead,” was published in the _Razviedchik_ in 1906. It should be stated, in fairness to our officers, however, that if many remained absent who could have returned to the front, there were a very large number who, though they had been wounded, made every effort to rejoin, often, indeed, doing so before they had quite recovered. Several officers rejoined after having been wounded two and three times, and these gallant gentlemen would have been a credit to any army in the world. In the 1st Army Corps, over 837 officers who had been wounded rejoined. For all these reasons my requests that fresh officers might be sent to the army were frequent and persistent, but the War Ministry were not always able to comply. They had to collect officers stationed in European Russia, the Caucasus, and Turkestan—wherever they could be obtained, and were not always able to pick and choose. Some of them were quite useless owing to alcoholism, others to the irregular lives they had led, while several got drunk and became violent even on the way out. Such men stayed at Harbin as long as they could, did nothing but harm on joining the corps to which they were appointed, and were eventually removed. Our most reliable officers were the regulars, particularly those who volunteered for the front, many of whom greatly distinguished themselves. The least reliable were the reserve officers, who had been removed from the service, and had managed to squeeze into the reserve owing to our mistaken kindness.

When I was War Minister I had directed General Narbut, a member of the Military Council, to work out a scheme whereby a reserve of officers might be obtained in war. The essence of this scheme was that our cadet schools should, on mobilization, pass out a larger number of cadets as officers, and should then set to work to train as soon as possible those officers of the 1st and 2nd Categories who volunteered, and also the men of the regulars who were possessed of an intermediate standard of education, thousands of whom were good enough to be given the rank and duties of lieutenant. Why this scheme was not carried out during the war I do not know, but unless steps are taken to do something of this kind in future we shall be in difficulties. We did not take advantage of the possibility when war was declared, or even immediately afterwards, of passing out a greater number of the senior classes of the military and cadet schools. In 1902 these colleges supplied the army with 2,642 officers; we might, therefore, have received at the beginning of 1904 and 1905 more than 5,000 young officers wherewith to fill vacancies in the field. This is precisely what the Japanese did. Foreseeing how we should be placed, on March 19, 1904, I asked the War Minister that officers might be commissioned from the military and _yunker_ schools, before the manœuvres, at the rate of 2 per battalion, 1 per battery, 4 per Cossack regiment, and 100 to the reserve. This was not done. On my repeated representations as to the urgent necessity for increasing the supply, I received in 1904 a curt reply to the effect that the maintenance of the number of officers up to establishment was the duty of the War Minister, not that of the officer commanding the army in the field. When the output was eventually increased, we received only a comparatively small number of those who had just got their commissions. These formed a most desirable element in the army, and in the majority of cases behaved splendidly in action.

On the whole, our troops were, for the reasons explained, very short of officers in the greater number of actions. Although the War Department accomplished a great work in sending out the large number of officers that did go to the front, very little discrimination was shown in their selection. It must be acknowledged, also, that we made little use either of our non-commissioned officers in the way of preparing them to take the places of officers, or of the splendid material to our hand in the cadets of the military and cadet schools.

The behaviour of our troops in the field was, on the whole, excellent, but the further from the advanced positions they were the worse did their discipline become. Even at the actual front it varied with the different classes of men, as I have explained. Of course, had good discipline prevailed in the units in which the 2nd Category reservists served, they would never have been able to leave the field in action as they sometimes did. But men, even of the best regiments, when they saw looting all round them, and acts of violence being committed with impunity, were themselves liable to become tainted with the spirit of lawlessness, and to get out of hand. This especially applied to the lines of communications, for strict and uncompromising discipline was maintained in the advanced positions. In the time of Frederick the Great the saying went that the soldier should fear the corporal’s cane more than the enemy’s bullet, but nowadays, though of course the liability of all to serve has improved and raised the average moral condition of the rank and file, it is not easy to make our uneducated peasantry appreciate what discipline is. Belief in God, devotion to the Tsar, love of the Fatherland, are the factors which have, up till now, welded the mass of soldiers in each unit into one family, and have made them fearless and obedient; but these principles have latterly been much shaken amongst the people, and the result was, of course, felt in the recent war. It was chiefly noticeable in an increase in the number of men who were slack and insubordinate, who criticized their seniors, and generally exercised a bad influence on their comrades. Such men could only be controlled by severity, for fear is the only thing which appeals to them. But while this deterioration in the discipline of the whole nation has been going on, our defence against it has been weakened, for in the summer of 1904 corporal punishment had been abolished in the army even on active service. I supported its abolition in peace myself—indeed, conducted the measure for this through the Military Council; but many of us thought it unwise to alter the existing law which authorized its infliction in war, for the fear of it kept many bad characters from crime, and prevented the cowards leaving the ranks in action. However, our officers were deprived of this deterrent, and no substitute was given.

In war such minor punishments as confinement to barracks or in cells and extra duty are out of the question. We therefore had no summary and effective punishment for many offences, such as insubordination, etc. A certain number of crimes are punishable with death, but what is lacking is some adequate punishment between the capital award and nothing at all. To make the position worse in our case, men who had been sentenced to a term of service in the disciplinary battalions remained on in the ranks, and at the slightest show of gallantry on their part our kind-hearted officers asked that their sentence might be remitted or modified. As if this were not enough, insubordinate sailors used to be sent to the army for punishment! The action of the military courts was unsatisfactory, their procedure complicated and slow. The usual result of the withdrawal from commanding officers of the power to award a flogging was that they let a man off altogether or else took the law into their own hands. As a matter of fact, corporal punishment continued to be given in certain cases, sometimes on the verdict of the men and at their own suggestion; but the culprits were beaten with cleaning-rods instead of canes. Taking into consideration the peculiar conditions under which this war was conducted, owing to the want of national sympathy in the struggle, and to the anti-Government propaganda which permeated all ranks of the army, this weakening of the disciplinary powers of officers was on the whole very ill-advised, and was carried out without reference to the officers actually in command of troops.

The reasons for the unpopularity of the war also affected the steadiness of the troops in action. Amongst many instances of real gallantry, cases of cowardice in detachments, and particularly in individuals, were noticeable. Occasions when soldiers, and even officers, surrendered when still unwounded were only too frequent, and they were, unfortunately, not visited with the full severity of the law. Many officers, on returning after release from capture, were not tried by court-martial at once, but were straightway placed in command of units going to the front, and then took command of companies and battalions as soon as they rejoined. This attitude towards those of our people who had surrendered could not but cause bad feeling amongst the best elements in the army who had been doing good work all along. This feeling of disgust was particularly aggravated when it became known that various persons removed from the army for incompetence—even for cowardice—had received high appointments in Russia. Such action destroyed all discipline. For instance, the conveyance of General Grippenberg by special train after he had just thrown up his command was in itself sufficient to encourage insubordination on the eve of decisive battles; it certainly undermined the authority of the Commander-in-Chief. The wholesale criticism pronounced on all ranks by the Press, the abuse of the officers, particularly of those in high command, together with the underhand efforts made to tempt the men not to fight, but to mutiny and kill their superiors, undermined their faith in their commanders, destroyed discipline, and made the troops cowardly in action. Such a state of affairs was enough to discount all the efforts of the very best officers, and had the most evil effect on those who were already inclined to show the white feather.

War is terrible; therefore the methods of maintaining discipline amongst troops, to be effective, must be as terrible. We certainly desired success, yet how often did we not act so as to make success improbable, if not impossible? The very causes which were undermining authority in the army were those which kept victory from us. Peace reputations are no criterion of ability in war, and many commanders who had been noted throughout their career as “brilliant,” “above the average,” proved in physical strength and force of character of very little use. On the other hand, those who had remained unnoticed in the piping times of peace showed great strength of character and brilliant military qualities amid the stress of war. Amongst the latter was General Kondratenko, the hero of Port Arthur.

After the first engagements it was found necessary to remove from the army as rapidly as possible those officers who had shown themselves unfit for their duties, and, without attaching undue weight to mere seniority, to promote others who had proved themselves capable soldiers in the field. On June 3, I reported to the War Minister the unfitness of two generals commanding army corps then proceeding to the front, but no notice was taken. Every obstacle was put in the way of my efforts to get rid of incapable commanders of army corps and divisions, and amongst other things I was informed from St. Petersburg that I asked for commanders of corps to be changed far too often. My orders removing from duty a General Officer commanding an East Siberian Rifle Division, who was liable to attacks of nerves in action, and left his division before a certain great battle, drew a series of questions as to my reasons. As I have mentioned, persons who had left the army owing to incompetence, sickness, or even cowardice, sometimes received high appointments in Russia, and all my recommendations that gentlemen of this spirit should be removed from duty as speedily as possible were pigeon-holed. To turn to another point, some regiments were commanded for twelve months and more, by temporary commanders. A characteristic example of this kind is the story of the removal from duty of the officer commanding one of the Caspian Regiments, Colonel F―. This officer, who was slightly wounded (contusion) in the first fight in which his regiment took part, went in the beginning of October, 1904, to Russia to recover, and only rejoined after he had been absent nearly a year, during a considerable portion of which time he was quite well. In his absence the regiment was commanded by an excellent officer, a certain colonel, who was awarded the Cross of St. George for gallant behaviour when with the regiment at the battle of Mukden. During those twelve months I sent in ten recommendations asking that Colonel F― might be gazetted out of the command, and that it might be given to the colonel acting for him. When Linievitch was Commander-in-Chief he supported my request, adding his own recommendation to mine, and sending it on to the War Minister and the Chief of the Headquarter Staff. The latter, however, did not agree, and asked why Colonel F― [who had then rejoined] was not commanding the Caspian Regiment. I again sent in my recommendation, and again received a refusal. These absolute refusals of my request were the more inexplicable as I had already received information that the officer commanding the troops in the St. Petersburg Military District was not opposed to the appointment of my nominee. In the end the long-waited-for appointment was made, but the Chief of the Headquarter Staff informed me that it was made at the request of General Baron Meyendorf, lately commanding the 1st Army Corps! Several colonels commanding regiments specially distinguished themselves in the early engagements, and showed fine military qualities, and owing to the lack of brigade commanders I frequently asked that some of them then in command of regiments—for instance, Lesha, Riedko, Stelnitski, and Dushkevitch among others—might be promoted to Major-Generals, and I called attention to brigades in the army that were vacant. The Headquarter Staff delayed for a long time, continually asking for further information, and the end of the matter was that Colonel Ostolopoff, commanding the Omsk Regiment, a worthy officer, but one who had in no way distinguished himself in the field, and whose name came up in the ordinary way, was promoted before the above-mentioned colonels.