'Is it true, sir, that the Fortress has been surrendered?' 'I know nothing about it. Stössel has done everything without reference to me. Go and ask him.' Irman went at once to Stössel, and having ascertained that the Fortress had been given up, he asked leave to go to Chifu on a destroyer: he wished to break through to the army in the north. But Stössel flatly refused permission, saying: 'Good heavens! what are you talking about? What are we to do with all the gold vases? How am I to get them away? Why, the Japanese might get them; we must save them.' 'If you want to make certain that the Japanese don't get them, sir, I should throw them into the sea,' was Irman's answer. Stössel was referring to the gold vases, goblets, spoons, etc., looted from the Pekin Palace which were kept in Arthur. The gold plate had been kept under special arrangements in the quarter-guard of the 12th Regiment, but when this corps left for Manchuria the plate was left behind. On the evening of January 3 a mysterious cart arrived at the quarter-guard, and disappeared in the dark of the night. Some of the questions put to Stössel later at the Commission of Inquiry, and his replies to them, may help to show how he was occupied at this time. When asked by Major-General Roops why he, contrary to all military regulations, took out of Arthur some thirty-eight cartloads of his own property, he replied: 'I did it with the permission of the Emperor of Japan.' On being asked why he did not share the fate of the garrison and go into imprisonment, he answered: 'I was ordered not to by Her Imperial Highness the Tsarina.' He had indeed received a telegram from the Empress in which she had said she would be glad to 'see him in Russia.' The Emperor and Russia did not at that time know what Stössel was! When he was asked by the Commission why he surrendered Port Arthur on his own responsibility, and did not summon the Council of War to consider the question, he said: 'There was no time for that. I forestalled the Japanese, and did not give them the possibility of breaking into Arthur; I was thus able to prevent a street massacre.' And this was the cry of all the whole Stössel clique before the Committee of Inquiry. One extract from the diary and I have finished: '_January 2, 1905._--On the way to the rendezvous of the Japanese Commission appointed to take over, we met an officer of the Japanese General Staff who greeted us in Russian. Ribnikoff at once recognized him to be a man called Ito, who had been in Arthur for several years as a watchmaker!' Small wonder they beat us! So it ended--so ended Russian Port Arthur. From its loss--from this mighty struggle, this long-drawn-out nightmare of suffering, this death of all our aspirations--new hope is born to our nation, a hope of better days. _Salus patriæ. Suprema lex est._ FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 44: The text of this capitulation was drawn up two years before by one of the most able Japanese lawyers.]