2. I regarded the building of the main line of the trans-Siberian railway through Manchuria as a mistake. The decision to adopt that route was made without my participation (I was then commander of the trans-Caspian territory); but it was contrary to the judgment of the War Department's representative in the Far East--General Dukhovski. 3. The occupation of Port Arthur took place before I became Minister of War, and I had nothing to do with it. I regard it as not only a mistake, but a fatal mistake. By thus acquiring, prematurely, an extremely inconvenient outlet on the Pacific, we broke up our good understanding with China and made an enemy of Japan. 4. I was always opposed to the timber enterprise on the Yalu, because I foresaw that it might bring about a rupture with Japan. I therefore took all possible measures to have it made an exclusively commercial affair, or to have it suppressed altogether. 5. So far as the Manchurian question is concerned, I made a sharp distinction between the comparative importance to us of northern Manchuria and southern Manchuria. At first, I was in favor of removing our troops as quickly as possible from both; but after the Boxer uprising, in 1900, I recognized the necessity of keeping on the railway at Kharbin three or four battalions of infantry, a battery, and a hundred Cossacks, as a reserve for the boundary guard. 6. When our position in the Far East became difficult, and there seemed to be danger of a rupture with Japan, I was in favor of decisive measures, and proposed that we avert war by admitting the untimeliness of our attempt to get an outlet on the Pacific; by restoring Port Arthur and Kwang-tung to China; and by selling the southern branch of the Chinese Eastern Railway. When Adjutant General Daniloff returned from Japan, he told me that, at the farewell dinner given him there, General Terauchi, the Japanese Minister of War, said that General Kuropatkin and he had done everything in their power to avert war. And yet, even now, I sometimes ask myself doubtfully, "Did I do everything that was within the bounds of possibility to prevent it?" The strong desire of the Emperor to avoid war with Japan was well known to me, as it was to his other co-workers, and yet we, who stood nearest to him, were unable to execute his will. THE ROYAL TIMBER COMPANY