On January 1, 1898, when I took over the duties of War Minister, I found many schemes actually in progress, and numerous others—worked out and marked as urgent—for the execution of which money had not been available. Thanks to the ability and energy of my predecessor, the army was in a high state of efficiency as compared with former years, and I thus found myself in a favourable position to draw up a scheme of work for the next quinquennium.[7] But, as has been explained, the policy of my department was bound up with that of the Ministries of the Interior, of Finance, and of Foreign Affairs, and there had been a difference of opinion between the late War Minister and his colleagues on some most important points. As there was no co-ordinated programme between the War and Navy Departments, I was forced to spend my first two years in office in framing an exhaustive statement for our guidance. In this I traced out and summarized the achievements of Russian arms and what the tasks before them had been in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, showed which had been finished and which had been left over for completion to the twentieth century, and pointed out the sacrifices made by the nation towards this result. I reviewed the condition of each of our frontiers, indicated the numbers and organization that would be necessary for military operations in the different probable theatres of war, and estimated the power of offence of our most likely adversaries. Having thus arrived at some logical conclusions as to what had to be faced in the coming century, it remained to draw up definite proposals for the improvements necessary in the organization for war of the army.