“While we must be prepared to defend our interests upon the Pacific Ocean, in Afghanistan, Persia, and Turkey, and also to fight at sea, we cannot afford either the men or the money to be at the same time equal in power to our western neighbours. We have given to Germany and Austria a decided advantage by directing our attention to the Far East. This disturbance of the balance of power menaces the integrity of the Empire, and I sincerely believe that it will not be permitted to continue by the Tsar. As the War Department’s first task, therefore, I propose to develop the efficiency of our forces on the western frontier, and to formulate a definite plan of operations for them.” From our Ally’s point of view, also, it was only right to attend to this at once, for our comparative weakness on this side would in case of war allow the Powers of the Triple Alliance to contain us with quite a small force on our frontier and to crush France by overwhelming numbers. 14. Our land forces bore the brunt of the national struggles during this period. After Peter the Great’s time the rôle of the Russian fleet in all the wars in which we were engaged was insignificant. In the last two great wars of the last century we particularly needed the co-operation of the fleet, but our sailors at Sevastopol fought on land, owing to our naval inefficiency. In the war of 1877–78 the Turks had no fleet on the Black Sea. Russia is undoubtedly a land Power; the small part played in the past by the fleet, therefore, was not accidental, but natural. If we had spent large sums in this period on our navy, we should only have made our position worse, for it was only by immense expenditure on the army that we were able to win. History has taught us that we should follow in our fathers’ footsteps, and, considering the army as Russia’s right arm, spend upon it the larger part of the sums allotted by the Ministry of Finance for general military needs. But our active ventures in the Far East forced us into naval expenditure, which was arranged for in the last years of last century by starving the army finances. The result is alarming. On this point I wrote in my report of 1900: “If in the future the fleet is to be increased at the expense of the army, and if the increase of our forces on the eastern frontier is to be made at the expense of those stationed on the western, then our already weak position in regard to Germany and Austria will become still worse. With the growth of our navy will arise questions of coaling stations and ports, and as our expenditure on these as well as on our ships grows heavier, it will entail retrenchment on our most important frontier—that in Europe. Once our fleet had destroyed the Turkish sailing fleet at Sinope, it became impotent, despite its high _moral_, for it then had to contend against steam, against which it was powerless.”