flanks east of the passes, was divided in two bodies, under Mischenko and Rennenkampf. West of Liao-yang was a small force under General Kossagovski, while five and a half battalions of the 1st Siberian Division lay at Mukden. At this time also, when the Viceroy returned to Port Arthur (after Admiral Makharoff’s death of April 13), the weakness of the place began to be shown up, and Alexeieff’s apprehensions as to its safety became acute. In a despatch of May 16 he questioned whether the place “would be able to hold out for more than two or three months, in spite of all the steps taken to strengthen its defences.” On April 25 the Chief of the Viceroy’s Staff telegraphed to me that, owing to the inadequacy of the garrison, Alexeieff considered it essential that if the fortress were attacked, the field army should support it as energetically and rapidly as possible. Alexeieff was not singular in his pessimistic views, for Stössel also gave up hope of a successful defence of Port Arthur directly after he had so unnecessarily abandoned the Chin-chou position on May 27. On the 28th I received a telegram from him urging me to support him speedily and in strength. This opinion was again endorsed by Alexeieff, who telegraphed on June 5 that “Port Arthur cannot strictly be called a storm-proof fortress, and it is a question whether it can even stand a siege of the length indicated in my telegram of May 16.” The result of this _volte-face_ on the part of Alexeieff as to the powers of resistance of the place was that he pressed me to send part of the army at once to assist it, though we were by no means ready for such an enterprise. On May 21 he wrote that he considered the moment in every way favourable for the army to assume the offensive in one of two directions—either towards the Ya-lu, with the object of defeating and throwing Kuroki back across the river, detaching a force to contain him there, and then moving on to relieve Port Arthur, or else direct on that place.