The Ministers of Finance, Foreign Affairs, and War (Witte, Lamsdorff and Kuropatkin) all recognized the danger that would threaten us if we continued to defer fulfilment of our promise to evacuate Manchuria, and, more especially, if we failed to put an end to Bezobrazoff's activity in Korea. These three Ministers, therefore, procured the appointment of a special council, which assembled in St. Petersburg on the 5th of April, 1903 (April 18, N. S.), and took into consideration certain propositions which Bezobrazoff had made to its members separately in writing. These propositions had for their object the strengthening of Russia's strategic position in the basin of the Yalu. All three of the Ministers above designated expressed themselves firmly and definitely in opposition to Bezobrazoff's proposals, and all agreed that if his enterprise on the Yalu were to be sustained, it must be upon a strictly commercial basis. The Minister of Finance showed conclusively that, for the next five or ten years, Russia's task in the Far East must be to tranquilize the country and bring to completion the work already undertaken there. He said, furthermore, that although the views of the different departments of the Government were not always precisely the same, there had never been--so far as the Ministers of War, Foreign Affairs, and Finance were concerned--any conflict of action. The Minister of Foreign Affairs pointed out, particularly, the danger involved in Bezobrazoff's proposal to stop the withdrawal of troops from Manchuria. [Illustration: _Copyright, 1905, by Underwood & Underwood_ TWO VIEWS OF PORT ARTHUR LOOKING ACROSS THE OLD TOWN OF PORT ARTHUR AND ACROSS THE NAVAL BASIS, FROM A HIGH HILL TO THE NORTH OF THE CITY] [Illustration: _Copyright, 1904, by Underwood & Underwood_ TAKEN AT THE TIME OF THE WAR ON THE TERRACE JUST ABOVE THE WHARVES. THE HIGH PROMONTORY AT THE LEFT IS PART OF THE GOLDEN HILL, WHERE THERE ARE IMMENSELY STRONG FORTIFICATIONS, AND WHERE THE RUSSIANS MAINTAINED AN IMPORTANT SIGNAL STATION UNTIL STOESSEL's SURRENDER] _The Tsar Takes Action_