Not only were the available Russian forces ill prepared for meeting the agile and ready Japanese, not only was their equipment ponderous and unwieldy, their knowledge of the strategic difficulties and advantages of the country in which the fighting was to be done scant and inaccurate, but the big fact which put Russia at a disadvantage during the early months of the war was the immense distance between her military bases and the front. Across the trackless wastes of Siberia the only path was a single-track railroad—a line of communication none too well equipped in times of peace, and open to complete and immediate disablement should the enemy succeed in cutting it at any point along a comparatively vulnerable stretch of many hundreds of miles. By sea—that is to say, by the way of the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, and the route round the southern coast of Asia—Russian ships and soldiers were over 12,000 miles, or about fifty-one days, away from the seat of hostilities. When to these material difficulties were added the dissensions, jealousies, and shifting policies of St. Petersburg, the effective strength of Russia in these early days of the war could in no way be measured by her vast extent and apparently illimitable power. In Japan, on the other hand, preparedness was the keynote of the situation. Although nominally at peace, Japan had been practically on a war footing for months, yet so secretly was this preparation made that even after war was declared a casual and incurious visitor in Tokio would have seen little to indicate that he was in one of the great military centres of the world, and that all round and about him was being planned one of the greatest struggles of modern times.