WITH THE JAPANESE ON THE ADVANCE TO THE YALU [Illustration: SCREENS WHICH HID THE MOVEMENTS OF THE JAPANESE ] General Kuroki not only misled the Russians as to the point at which he would probably cross the Yalu, but masked the march of his forces to the point north of the Wiju, where the crossing was made, by these grass screens and by marching behind hills. The Russians knew that some movement was going on, but could not make out the extent of it [Illustration: GENERAL KUROKI AND HIS STAFF AT THEIR FIELD HEADQUARTERS IN ANTUNG ] On the left of General Kuroki sits General Fuji, his chief of staff, on the right Prince Kuni. Next to Prince Kuni is Colonel Hageno, the Russian scholar of the staff. One of Kuroki’s absolute prohibitions to correspondents was the mention either of the general’s name or of the place from which they wrote, lest news of the army’s location should be brought to the Russians CHAPTER V THE RUSSIAN ADVANCE TO THE FRONT The supreme difficulty under which Russia labored during the early months of the war was the enormous distance from her military base to the battle front. The only line of land communication between Russia and Manchuria was the single-track Siberian railroad, and when war began this line was broken by the ice-locked Lake Baikal. Russia had need of 300,000 men in Manchuria as soon as they could be rushed there, and with Lake Baikal frozen to the depth of nine feet, less than four thousand and more often not more than one thousand men could cross it in a day. Lake Baikal, this weakest link of a very weak chain, is the largest body of fresh water in the Old World, except the Victoria Nyanza in Africa. It is nearly 15,000 square miles in extent, and therefore inferior only to Superior and Huron among the great American lakes. It is 600 versts long, with a width varying from 27 to 85 versts. It is 3,185 feet deep. The railroad was broken by the southern end of this lake, where it is about 40 miles wide. This is the gap that disastrously impairs the utility of the Trans-Siberian for the moving of troops and war supplies to the Manchurian and Korean frontier.