[EDITOR'S NOTE.]--Among the first questions suggested by General Kuropatkin's narrative and the editorials, reports, and official proceedings that he quotes, are: Who was State Councillor Bezobrazoff? How did he acquire the extraordinary power that he evidently exercised in the Far East? Why was "everybody"--including the Minister of War--"afraid of him"? Why did even the Viceroy respond to his calls for troops, and why was his Korean timber company allowed to drag Russia into a war with Japan, against the opposition and resistance, apparently, of the Tsar, the Viceroy, the Minister of War, the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Port Arthur council, and the diplomatic representatives of Russia in Peking, Tokio, and Seoul? No replies to these questions can be found in General Kuropatkin's record of the events that preceded the rupture with Japan, but convincing answers are furnished by certain confidential documents found in the archives of Port Arthur and published, just after the close of the war, in the liberal Russian review _Osvobozhdenie_ at Stuttgart.[8] Whether General Kuropatkin was aware of the existence of these documents or not, I am unable to say; but as they throw a strong side-light on his narrative, I shall append them thereto, and tell briefly, in connection with them, the story of the Yalu timber enterprise, as it is related in St. Petersburg. In the year 1898, a Vladivostok merchant named Briner obtained from the Korean Government, upon extremely favorable terms, a concession for a timber company that should have authority to exploit the great forest wealth of the upper Yalu River.[9] As Briner was a promoter and speculator, who had little means and less influence, he was unable to organize his company, and in 1902 he sold his concession to Alexander Mikhailovich Bezobrazoff, another Russian promoter and speculator, who had held the rank of State Councillor in the Tsar's civil service, and who was high in the favor of some of the Grand Dukes in St. Petersburg.