'I never expected the Commission to accuse me of such a thing, and I was so agitated that I could not reply calmly. How could I keep cool when I heard the defenders of the fort so unjustly accused by General Roop, the very officer whose words, twenty years ago, had been law to me and all other combatant officers, when for hours together we used to listen to his appreciations and criticisms of manoeuvres? He still spoke as well as ever, weighing every word, but spoke with a sarcastic smile; and now that I have read or heard the evidence of all the General Officers who have been examined, I understand that it is possible even for him to have been led astray. 'The accusation levelled by General Smirnoff against the brave garrison was supported not only by General Officers who took no part in the defence and had not seen it, but even by General Nickitin, to whom the state of the fort was so well known that he refrained from accompanying General Kondratenko along the forts after the Japanese had mined the parapets. (It is to this that we owed his presence in our midst.) As to General Mekhmandaroff, he even asserted that after the explosion of three mines he could still see sentries standing by the parapet. And General Irman, who was at the time on the western front, based his statement on that given by Mekhmandaroff. The evidence given by the other officers was of equal value. 'But however varied the evidence, it all pointed to one thing--that the garrison failed to do its duty, that it did not crown the crater in the parapet. This being so, I should point out that it is usually the attackers who crown craters. At Sevastopol our sappers certainly distinguished themselves by themselves crowning the craters of the unsuccessful attack, but they had not been charged with some fifty hundredweight of pyroxyline, as was the case in Fort No. 2.' Thus to divert the blame on to the garrison of the fort in order to parry the blow against himself was not creditable. The men did their duty gallantly to the last; they fought till they were ordered to withdraw; they did everything possible, and were in no way to blame for the surrender and had no need of Fock to defend or praise them. If they had not been able to crown the crater by five o'clock, it was Fock alone who was to blame; firstly for having weakened the garrison, secondly for not reinforcing it in time. 'The evidence of the Generals above mentioned was, on the whole, so absurd and so little supported by facts that it does not merit serious attention.' The evidence of the Generals was founded on facts. They were men who throughout the siege were rarely absent from the attacked front. They were men of honour, whose names are the pride of the army; but this is no reason for treating their evidence as undeserving of attention.