Sydney Tyler - The History of the Russo-Japanese War

Here the marvelous organization of the Japanese War Office came into evidence once more. All the preparations for acting upon this concession had already been made. The material which had been intended for the construction of some unimportant railways in Japan was at hand ready to be transferred to the seat of war, and the engineer and pioneer corps only waited for the conclusion of the necessary formalities to begin operations. On March 8th a body of 8,000 men started work on the line between Seoul and Wiju, and the enterprise was conducted at high pressure, the material being conveyed with all possible speed by steamers from Japan. The value of this railway for strategical purposes will be obvious to anyone who studies the map; and, more fortunate than the Russians, the Japanese, provided that they could hold the northern part of Korea at all, were not likely to be faced with the difficulties which had proved so embarrassing to their enemy, in the shape of brigands and train-wreckers, in Manchuria. The completion of the whole line as far as Fusan would furthermore make them practically independent of sea transport for men as well as supplies, except, of course, as far as the narrow Korean Channel is concerned.

It will thus be seen that, considering the inevitable delay due to the severity of the season, the preparations for a general advance by the Japanese army had been conducted with remarkable celerity and success, and that by the middle of March great progress had been made.

We must now turn to the Russian side of the war.

One of the first consequences of the reverses at Port Arthur was a change in the commands. The unexpected collapse of the Russian navy under the attacks of the despised Japanese caused grave searchings of heart at St. Petersburg, and there can be no doubt that the Czar himself was greatly shocked by the revelation both of the lack of readiness of his fleet and of the strange paralysis of enterprise on the part of the Admiral in command. It was not long before the Imperial displeasure was visited upon this officer, Admiral Starck. On the 16th of February he was formally superseded, and Admiral Makaroff, Commander-in-Chief at Kronstadt, and a sailor of proved energy and skill, was appointed to the command of the Pacific Fleet in his place. The official reason, indeed, which was given out for Admiral Starck's recall was "ill-health," but this ingenious euphemism deceived nobody, the less so because the same mysterious complaint simultaneously seized hold of Rear-Admiral Molas, his second Chief of the Staff, who was recalled in the same Imperial Ukase.

The Viceroy himself did not escape criticism at the hands of the Russian public, and in official circles at St. Petersburg keen censure was bestowed upon him for his share in the disasters which had befallen the fleet under his control; but he still appeared to retain the confidence of his master the Czar. It soon became apparent, however, that the military problem in Manchuria presented difficulties of its own hardly less embarrassing than those which were being experienced at sea, and as the magnitude of the task dawned upon the Czar and his advisers, it was deemed necessary to take drastic measures. On February 21st, therefore, the celebrated General Kuropatkin, Minister for War, and the first Russian military strategist of the day, was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the land forces in the Far East. It was carefully explained that Admiral Alexeieff, as a naval officer, could not be expected to conduct great operations on land, but it was apparent to everyone that as these land operations were now destined finally to decide the issue of the great conflict, the direction of the whole war on the Russian side had virtually passed to General Kuropatkin.

Some slight account of this famous captain may not be out of place here. Like so many of Russia's distinguished men, both in the past and in the present, Alexis Nikolaievitch Kuropatkin has owed his rise rather to merit than to influence. His family was indeed a noble one, but it was little known, and his early advancement in the service was due to his own ability and industry, and not to high connections. When quite young, however, he was fortunate enough to attract the attention of the celebrated Skobeleff, and he became a great favorite as well as a zealous disciple of that famous cavalry leader. His opportunity came in the Russo-Turkish War, where he displayed notable dash and gallantry, risking his life recklessly in the terrible conflict at Plevna. In crossing the Balkans he captured a large Turkish force, and was promoted to the command of a division. Towards the close of the war he became Chief of the Staff to Skobeleff, and in the campaign against the Turkomans, which followed, and which resulted in the conquest of Turkestan, he served that great General in the same capacity. His rise was indeed remarkably rapid; promotion came to him while he was young and active enough to make the best use of it; and although he had held the highest position in the army—the Ministry for War—for some years, his age was now only fifty-six. Like most successful men, he was not without his critics and detractors—it was said indeed that among these was to be found Admiral Alexeieff himself, and that there was no love lost between the two—but there can be no doubt of the General's immense popularity with the army. His appointment to the supreme command caused a universal feeling of relief to spread not only throughout the Service, but throughout all classes of society in Russia, while at the same time it proved that the real seriousness of the task which lay then in the Far East had at last been grasped by the Czar's Government.

For a time indeed the haughty disdain of their puny foe, which had characterized Russian official circles before the war, was succeeded by a feeling of acute pessimism. To prepare the public for the worst, an official communique was issued at St. Petersburg, in which, after an outburst of well affected indignation against the so-called treachery of the enemy, the people were warned that much time was necessary in order to strike at Japan blows "worthy of the dignity and might of Russia," while the state of unpreparedness on land as well as at sea was revealed in the phrase, "the distance of the territory now attached and the desire of the Czar to maintain peace were the causes of the impossibility of preparations for war being made a long time in advance." Simultaneously with the issue of this extraordinary confession came the news that Admiral Alexeieff with his staff had left Port Arthur and proceeded to Harbin, at the junction of the Manchurian railway and the branch line to Vladivostock, there to effect a concentration of all the available Russian forces.

These facts combined were generally taken as indicating the intention of the Czar's Government to abandon Port Arthur and Southern Manchuria, for the time being, to their fate, and to make the first real stand against the enemy on the borders of Eastern Siberia. Desperate, however, as the situation appeared to be in these early days of the war, it undoubtedly improved somewhat in the next few weeks, and the delay which the severe climatic conditions imposed upon the Japanese advance necessarily aided the Russians. General Linevitch, commander of the Siberian Army Corps, to whom the direction of military affairs was entrusted pending the arrival of General Kuropatkin, made desperate exertions to collect an effective force as far south as possible, and it was regarded as highly probable, from such scraps of news as were allowed to creep through the censorship, that by the third week of March he had at his disposal in Southern Manchuria a force of about 50,000 men, the bulk of which was concentrated at Liao-Yang, some forty or fifty miles below Mukden.

At the same time a smaller body of troops held the Yalu River, and patrols were sent southwards. As early as February 28th, one of these patrols, consisting of three Cossacks under the command of Lieutenant Lonchakoff, came into touch with a Japanese patrol outside Ping-Yang. The Japanese retreated, and the Russians, after advancing within 700 paces of the town, retired also before the sharp fire directed upon them from the walls. This was the first land skirmish of the war; it was a small affair of outposts only; and a long interval was to elapse before a more serious conflict could become possible.