While they had hundreds of secret as well as avowed agents studying our military and naval forces in the Far East, we entrusted the collection of information to one officer of the General Staff, and unfortunately our selection was bad. One of the so-called “Japanese experts” declared in Vladivostok before the war that we might count one Russian soldier as being as good as three Japanese. After the first few fights he modified his tone, and acknowledged that one Japanese soldier was as good as one Russian. A month later he affirmed that if we meant to win, we must put three men into the field for every Japanese! In May, 1904, one of our late military attachés at Tokio predicted, as an expert, that Port Arthur would very soon fall, and Vladivostok immediately after it. I reprimanded this cowardly babbler, and threatened to send him away from the front if he could not restrain his ill-timed and mischievous remarks. After the Chino-Japanese War, which I had studied with great care, I, personally, was inspired with great respect for the Japanese army, and I watched its growth with considerable alarm. The behaviour of their troops which fought alongside ours in the Pei-chih-li province in 1900 only confirmed my opinion as to their value. In the short time I spent in Japan itself I was unable to get to know the country and its troops, but what I saw was sufficient to show me how astounding were the results attained by the Japanese in the previous twenty-five to thirty years. I saw a beautiful country filled with a numerous and industrious people. Great activity was visible on all sides, and underlying everything could be felt the national happy nature, love of country, and belief in the future. The system of education I witnessed in the Military School was of a Spartan nature, the physical exercises of the future officers being like nothing I had ever seen in Europe; it was really fighting of the fiercest kind. At the end of a bout with weapons the competitors got to hand grips, and fought till the winner had got his opponent down and could tear off his mask. The exercises themselves were performed with the greatest possible keenness and determination, the men hitting one another with wild shouts; but the moment the combat was over or the signal to stop was given, the usual wooden, impassive expression again came over the faces of the combatants. In all the schools military exercises were very conspicuous, and the children and boys were greatly interested in them. Even their walks out were always enlivened by tactical tasks adapted to the localities; turning movements as well as surprise attacks were practised and performed at the double. The study of Japanese history in all the schools had strengthened the people’s love for their native land, and filled them with a deep-rooted conviction that it was invincible. Their successes in war were everywhere sung, the heroes of those campaigns continually