Realizing our military unreadiness on our western frontier, and taking into account the urgent need of devoting our resources to the work of internal reorganization and reform, I thought that a rupture with Japan would be a national calamity, and did everything in my power to prevent it. Throughout my long service in Asia I had not only been an advocate of an agreement with Great Britain on that continent, but I was also certain that a peaceable delimitation of spheres of influence between us and Japan was possible. In my opinion, the carrying of the main line of the Trans-Siberian Railway through Manchuria was a mistake. I had nothing to do with the adoption of that route, as I was then Commander of the Trans-Caspian Military District; it was also contrary to the opinion of General Dukhovski, representative of the War Department in the Far East. FOOTNOTES: [55] [August, 1900.—ED.] [56] [The German Field-Marshal commanding the Allied Forces of the Peking Relief Expedition.—ED.] [57] Which the occupation of Port Arthur had made of considerable military importance to us. [58] [The Maritime Province.—ED.] [59] Ying-kou. [60] [This ratio hardly seems correct.—ED.] [61] [The Royal Timber Company. For fuller details of this undertaking and Bezobrazoff’s connection with it, see Appendix I., p. 615.—ED.] [62] [The Russian Minister in China.—ED.] [63] [The Russian Minister in Korea.—ED.] [64] “Decisions of the Council on the Manchurian Question,” No. 10, July 11, 1903 (Port Arthur). [65] [On the Mekran Coast of Persia.—ED.] CHAPTER VII WHY THE JAPANESE WERE SUCCESSFUL The army we put in the field was unable to defeat the Japanese in the time allotted to it. Many historians will probably essay to solve the riddle of how a Power, which we regarded as belonging to the second class, and one which not long ago possessed no army, was able to crush us absolutely on the sea, and to defeat a strong force on land, and doubtless we shall eventually be furnished with the reasons in full. For the present I propose to mention only some general causes which contributed to Japan’s success. Broadly speaking, we underestimated her power, particularly her moral strength, and entered upon the war far too lightly.