Russia, while at the same time it proved that the real seriousness of the task which lay then in the Far East had at last been grasped by the Czar's Government. [Sidenote: Confessions of Weakness] For a time indeed the haughty disdain of their puny foe, which had characterized Russian official circles before the war, was succeeded by a feeling of acute pessimism. To prepare the public for the worst, an official _communique_ was issued at St. Petersburg, in which, after an outburst of well affected indignation against the so-called treachery of the enemy, the people were warned that much time was necessary in order to strike at Japan blows "worthy of the dignity and might of Russia," while the state of unpreparedness on land as well as at sea was revealed in the phrase, "the distance of the territory now attached and the desire of the Czar to maintain peace were the causes of the impossibility of preparations for war being made a long time in advance." Simultaneously with the issue of this extraordinary confession came the news that Admiral Alexeieff with his staff had left Port Arthur and proceeded to Harbin, at the junction of the Manchurian railway and the branch line to Vladivostock, there to effect a concentration of all the available Russian forces. [Sidenote: Desperate Efforts] These facts combined were generally taken as indicating the intention of the Czar's Government to abandon Port Arthur and Southern Manchuria, for the time being, to their fate, and to make the first real stand against the enemy on the borders of Eastern Siberia. Desperate, however, as the situation appeared to be in these early days of the war, it undoubtedly improved somewhat in the next few weeks, and the delay which the severe climatic conditions imposed upon the Japanese advance necessarily aided the Russians. General Linevitch, commander of the Siberian Army Corps, to whom the direction of military affairs was entrusted pending the arrival of General Kuropatkin, made desperate exertions to collect an effective force as far south as possible, and it was regarded as highly probable, from such scraps of news as were allowed to creep through the censorship, that by the third week of March he had at his disposal in Southern Manchuria a force of about 50,000 men, the bulk of which was concentrated at Liao-Yang, some forty or fifty miles below Mukden. [Sidenote: On the Yalu]