taking into account also the urgent need of devoting our resources
to the work of internal reorganization and reform, I thought that a
rupture with Japan would be a national calamity, and I did everything
in my power to prevent it. Throughout my long service in Asia, I was an
advocate of an agreement with Great Britain there, and I was satisfied
that there might also be a peaceable delimitation of spheres of
influence in the Far East between Russia and Japan.
2. I regarded the building of the main line of the trans-Siberian
railway through Manchuria as a mistake. The decision to adopt that
route was made without my participation (I was then commander of the
trans-Caspian territory); but it was contrary to the judgment of the
War Department's representative in the Far East--General Dukhovski.
3. The occupation of Port Arthur took place before I became Minister
of War, and I had nothing to do with it. I regard it as not only a
mistake, but a fatal mistake. By thus acquiring, prematurely, an
extremely inconvenient outlet on the Pacific, we broke up our good
understanding with China and made an enemy of Japan.
4. I was always opposed to the timber enterprise on the Yalu, because
I foresaw that it might bring about a rupture with Japan. I therefore
took all possible measures to have it made an exclusively commercial
affair, or to have it suppressed altogether.
5. So far as the Manchurian question is concerned, I made a sharp
distinction between the comparative importance to us of northern
Manchuria and southern Manchuria. At first, I was in favor of removing
our troops as quickly as possible from both; but after the Boxer
uprising, in 1900, I recognized the necessity of keeping on the railway
at Kharbin three or four battalions of infantry, a battery, and a
hundred Cossacks, as a reserve for the boundary guard.
6. When our position in the Far East became difficult, and there seemed
to be danger of a rupture with Japan, I was in favor of decisive
measures, and proposed that we avert war by admitting the untimeliness
of our attempt to get an outlet on the Pacific; by restoring Port
Arthur and Kwang-tung to China; and by selling the southern branch of
the Chinese Eastern Railway.
When Adjutant General Daniloff returned from Japan, he told me
that, at the farewell dinner given him there, General Terauchi, the
Japanese Minister of War, said that General Kuropatkin and he had
done everything in their power to avert war. And yet, even now, I
sometimes ask myself doubtfully, "Did I do everything that was within
the bounds of possibility to prevent it?" The strong desire of the
Emperor to avoid war with Japan was well known to me, as it was to his
other co-workers, and yet we, who stood nearest to him, were unable to
execute his will.
THE ROYAL TIMBER COMPANY
[EDITOR'S NOTE.]--Among the first questions suggested by General
Kuropatkin's narrative and the editorials, reports, and official
proceedings that he quotes, are: Who was State Councillor Bezobrazoff?
How did he acquire the extraordinary power that he evidently exercised
in the Far East? Why was "everybody"--including the Minister of
War--"afraid of him"? Why did even the Viceroy respond to his calls
for troops, and why was his Korean timber company allowed to drag
Russia into a war with Japan, against the opposition and resistance,
apparently, of the Tsar, the Viceroy, the Minister of War, the Minister
of Finance, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Port Arthur council,
and the diplomatic representatives of Russia in Peking, Tokio, and
Seoul?
No replies to these questions can be found in General Kuropatkin's
record of the events that preceded the rupture with Japan, but
convincing answers are furnished by certain confidential documents
found in the archives of Port Arthur and published, just after the
close of the war, in the liberal Russian review _Osvobozhdenie_ at
Stuttgart.[8] Whether General Kuropatkin was aware of the existence
of these documents or not, I am unable to say; but as they throw a
strong side-light on his narrative, I shall append them thereto, and
tell briefly, in connection with them, the story of the Yalu timber
enterprise, as it is related in St. Petersburg.
In the year 1898, a Vladivostok merchant named Briner obtained from
the Korean Government, upon extremely favorable terms, a concession
for a timber company that should have authority to exploit the great
forest wealth of the upper Yalu River.[9] As Briner was a promoter and
speculator, who had little means and less influence, he was unable to
organize his company, and in 1902 he sold his concession to Alexander
Mikhailovich Bezobrazoff, another Russian promoter and speculator, who
had held the rank of State Councillor in the Tsar's civil service, and
who was high in the favor of some of the Grand Dukes in St. Petersburg.
Bezobrazoff, who seems to have been a most fluent and persuasive
talker, as well as a man of fine personal presence and bearing, soon
interested his Grand Ducal friends in the fabulous wealth of the Far
East generally, and in the extraordinary value of the Korean timber
concession especially. They all took stock in his enterprise, and
one of them, with a view to getting the strongest possible support
for it, presented him to the Tsar. Bezobrazoff made upon Nicholas
II. an extraordinarily favorable impression and, in the course of a
few months, acquired an influence over him that nothing afterward
seemed able to shake. That the Tsar became financially interested in
Bezobrazoff's timber company is certain; and it is currently reported
in St. Petersburg that the Emperor and the Empress Dowager, together,
put into the enterprise several million rubles. This report may, or may
not, be trustworthy; but the appended telegram (No. 5) sent by Rear
Admiral Abaza, of the Tsar's suite, to Bezobrazoff, in November, 1903,
indicates that the Emperor was interested in the Yalu enterprise to the
extent, at least, of the two million rubles mentioned. Bezobrazoff's
"Company," in fact, seems to have consisted of the Tsar, the Grand
Dukes, certain favored noblemen of the Court, Viceroy Alexeieff,
probably, and the Empress Dowager possibly. Bezobrazoff had made
them all see golden visions of wealth to be amassed, power to be
attained, and glory to be won, in the Far East, for themselves and the
Fatherland. It was this known influence of Bezobrazoff with the Tsar
that made "everybody" in the Far East "afraid of him"; that enabled him
to enlist in the service of the timber company even officers of the
Russian General Staff; that caused Alexeieff to respond to his call
for troops to garrison Feng-wang-cheng and Shakhedze; and that finally
changed Russia's policy in the Far East and stopped the withdrawal of
troops from southern Manchuria.
General Kuropatkin says that the Russian evacuation of the province of
Mukden "was suddenly stopped by an order of Admiral Alexeieff, whose
reasons for taking such action have not, to this day, been sufficiently
cleared up." The following telegram from Lieutenant Colonel Madritoff
of the Russian General Staff to Rear Admiral Abaza, the Tsar's personal
representative in St. Petersburg, may throw some light on the subject.
(No. 1.)
TO ADMIRAL ABAZA,
HOUSE NO. 50, FIFTH LINE,
VASSILI OSTROFF, ST. PETERSBURG.
Our enterprises in East meet constantly with opposition from
Dzan-Dzun of Mukden and Taotai of Feng-wang-cheng. Russian
officer-merchants have been sent East to make reconnaissance
and examine places on Yalu. They are accompanied by Khunkhuzes
whom I have hired. The Dzan-Dzun, feeling that he is soon to be
freed from guardianship of Russians, has become awfully impudent,
and has even gone so far as to order Yuan to begin hostile
operations against Russian merchants and Chinese accompanying
them, and to put latter under arrest. Thanks to timely measures
taken by Admiral, this order has not been carried out; but very
fact shows that Chinese rulers of Manchuria are giving themselves
free rein, and, of course, after we evacuate Manchuria, their
impudence, and their opposition to Russian interests, will have
no limit. _Admiral_ (_Alexeieff_) _took it upon himself to order
that Mukden and Yinkow_ (_New Chwang_) _be not evacuated_.[10]
To-day it has been decided to hold Yinkow, but, unfortunately, to
move the troops out of Mukden. _After evacuation of Mukden, state
of affairs, so far as our enterprises are concerned, will be very,
very much worse which, of course, is not desirable._[10] To-morrow
I go to the Yalu myself.
(Signed) MADRITOFF.
Shortly before Lieutenant Colonel Madritoff sent this telegram to
Admiral Abaza, Bezobrazoff, who had been several months in the Far
East, started for St. Petersburg, with the intention, evidently, of
seeing the Tsar and persuading him to order, definitely, a suspension
of the evacuation of the province of Mukden, for the reason that "it
would inevitably result in the liquidation of the affairs of the timber
company." From a point on the road he sent back to Madritoff the
following telegram, which bears date of March 26, 1903 (April 8, N. S.
)--the very day when the evacuation of the province of Mukden should
have been completed, in accordance with the Russo-Chinese agreement of
March 26 (April 8, N. S.), 1902:
(No. 2.)
TO MADRITOFF,
PORT ARTHUR.
There will be an understanding attitude toward the affair after
I make my first report. I am only afraid of being too late, as
I shall not get there until the 3rd (April 16, N. S.) and the
Master (Khozain) leaves for Moscow on the 4th (April 17, N. S.).
I will do all that is possible and shall insist on manifestation of
energy in one form or another. Keep me advised and don't get
discouraged. There will soon be an end of the misunderstanding.
(Signed) BEZOBRAZOFF.
On April 11, 1903 (April 24, N. S.), Bezobrazoff sent Madritoff from
St. Petersburg a telegram written, evidently, after he had made his
first "report" to "the Master." It was as follows:
(No. 3.)
TO MADRITOFF,
PORT ARTHUR.
Everything with me is all right. I hope to get my views adopted
in full as conditions imposed by existing situation and force of
circumstances. I hope that if they ask the opinion of the Admiral
(Alexeieff), he, I am convinced (sic), will give me his support.
That will enable me to put many things into his hands.
(Signed) BEZOBRAZOFF.
General Kuropatkin says that Admiral Alexeieff gave him "repeated
assurances that he was wholly opposed to Bezobrazoff's schemes,
and that he was holding them back with all his strength"; but the
Admiral was evidently playing a double part. While pretending to be
in full sympathy with Kuropatkin's hostility to the Yalu enterprise,
he was supporting Bezobrazoff's efforts to promote that enterprise,
Bezobrazoff rewarded him, and fulfilled his promise to "put many things
into his hands" by getting him appointed Viceroy. Kuropatkin says that
this appointment was a "complete surprise to him," and it naturally
would be, because the Tsar acted on the advice of Bezobrazoff, von
Plehve, Alexeieff, and Abaza, and not on the advice of Kuropatkin,
Witte, and Lamsdorff. It will be noticed that von Plehve--the
powerful Minister of the Interior--is never once mentioned by name in
Kuropatkin's narrative. Everything seems to indicate that von Plehve
formed an alliance with Bezobrazoff, and that, together, they brought
about the dismissal of Witte, who ceased to be Minister of Finance on
the 16th of August, 1903 (August 29, N. S.). Anticipating this result
of his efforts, and filled with triumph at the prospect opening before
him, Bezobrazoff wrote Lieutenant Colonel Madritoff, on the 12th of
August, 1903 (August 25, N. S.), as follows:
(No. 4.)
The great saw-mill and the principal trade in timber will be
transferred to Dalny, and this in copartnership with the Ministry
of Finance. The Manchurian Steamship Line will have all our ocean
freight, amounting to twenty-five million feet of timber, and the
business will become international (mirovava). From this you will
understand how I selected my base and my operating lines.
In view of the complete defeat of such clear-sighted statesmen and sane
counsellors as Kuropatkin, Witte, and Lamsdorff, there can be no doubt
that Bezobrazoff's "base and operating lines" were well "selected."
The document that shows most clearly the interest of the Tsar in the
Yalu timber enterprise is a telegram sent to Bezobrazoff at Port
Arthur, in November, 1903, by Rear Admiral Abaza, who was then Director
of the Special Committee on Far Eastern Affairs, over which the Tsar
presided, and who acted as the latter's personal representative in
all dealings with Bezobrazoff and the timber company. In the original
of this telegram, significant words, such as "Witte," "Emperor,"
"millions," "garrison," "reinforcement," etc., were in cipher; but when
Bezobrazoff read it, he (or possibly his private secretary) interlined
the equivalents of the cipher words, and also, in one place, a query as
to the significance of "artels"--did it mean chasseurs, or artillery?
The following copy was made from the interlined original:
(No. 5.)
From Petersburg, Nov. 14-27, 1903.
TO BEZOBRAZOFF,
PORT ARTHUR.
Witte has told the Emperor that you have already spent the whole
of the two millions. Your telegram with regard to expenditures
has made it possible for me to report on this disgusting slander
and, at the same time, contradict it. Remember that the Master
counts on your not touching a ruble more than the three hundred
without permission in every case. Yesterday I reported again
your ideas with regard to the reinforcement of the garrison and
also with regard to the artels (chasseurs or artillery?) in the
basin. The Emperor directed me to reply that he takes all that
you say into consideration and that, in principle, he approves.
In connection with this, the Emperor again confirmed his order
that the Admiral telegraph directly to him. He expects a telegram
soon, and immediately upon the receipt of the Admiral's statement,
arrangements will be made with regard to the reinforcement of the
garrison, and, at the same time, with regard to the chasseurs
in the basin. In the course of the conversation, the Emperor
expressed the fullest confidence in you.
(Signed) ABAZA.
General Kuropatkin refers, again and again, to the Tsar's "clearly
expressed desire that war should be avoided," and he regrets that His
Imperial Majesty's "co-workers" "were unable to execute his will."
It is more than likely that Nicholas II. did wish to avoid war--if
he could do so without impairing the value of the family investment
in the Korean timber company--but from the above telegram it appears
that, as late as November 27, 1903--only seventy days before the
rupture with Japan--he was still disregarding the sane and judicious
advice of Kuropatkin, was still expressing "the fullest confidence" in
Bezobrazoff, and was still ordering troops to the valley of the Yalu.
THE AMERICANIZING OF ANDRÉ FRANÇOIS
BY
STELLA WYNNE HERRON
ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR G. DOVE
"I Wonder," said Andrew F. Biron, manager of the White Star Mine, to
his sister, as he watched, with drawn brows, André François, immaculate
in a white flannel suit, bare-kneed and sailor-hatted, go down the
street attended by the ministering Angélique, "what Providence had
against me when it picked me for the father of Andrew François?"
"He is certainly the strangest child I have ever known," answered his
sister irrelevantly, "and I have had experience with a good many--an
old maid always does, you know."
"What he needs is to mix up with the other boys--to become
Americanized. There is too much European varnish on him. It needs to be
rubbed off so that the real boy underneath will show through."
"He needs something," assented his sister shortly, for she had looked
with none too gracious an eye upon the advent of André François and
his _bonne_, the volatile Angélique. "He thinks of nothing except how
he is dressed--a miniature fop! He is now ten years old and he is
absolutely helpless. He seems never to have learned to do anything for
himself. There is no manliness nor independence in him--nothing but a
head full of foolish, old-world notions about what is due a gentleman
of his standing. As for Angélique, one moment she runs his errands
and the next bullies him. Who ever heard of a big boy of ten with a
nurse, anyway?" Miss Biron stopped a moment to catch her breath, then
continued:
"To be frank with you, Andrew, I think you have been little less than
criminal to take so little interest in him as to leave him for eight
years in an environment of which you knew nothing. You should have had
him home immediately after your wife's death, and not have waited until
his grandmother died and the responsibility of your son was literally
forced upon you."
"The responsibility of his son." All through a busy morning at the
office the phrase remained subconsciously in Mr. Biron's mind. At noon
hour, when the work slackened up, he set himself to face and thresh
it out, for it was his policy to face and thresh out at the first
opportunity any difficulty which confronted him.
For half an hour he paced his office, his hands thrust hard down into
his pockets, in his mouth a black, unlighted cigar of the stogie
species, upon which he chewed with all the concentrated violence which
he would have liked to expend upon the problem in hand. His son--how
well he remembered the little two-year-old codger, with his serious
blue eyes and his fleece of yellow hair, whom he had taken tight in his
arms and told not to forget his daddy, as he bid goodby on the steamer
to his pretty, pale French wife going back on a visit to her native
land.
After her death, little André François had at once found snug quarters
in the home of his aristocratic Parisian grandmother, Madame Fouchette,
a grand dame of the old régime. She wrote and begged to keep him.
She said he would be placed in a good school--the best, indeed, in
France--where, as a rule, none except the sons of noblemen were
admitted. Year after year had drifted by, and the busy mine-manager
in Colorado, occupied with a thousand and one matters of daily
importance, had sent a monthly check of generous figure, together with
a quarter-page of hurriedly type-written, kindly words, accompanied at
Christmas, and at what he approximately made out to be André François'
birthday, by a great miscellaneous box of toys. He religiously
selected these as his wife had advised him to select them on that
first Christmas--for he instinctively mistrusted his own judgment in
such matters--and varied them only in the matter of quantity, which he
increased each year in allowance for the boy's growth.
Perhaps it was because he always pictured him as a tyro of two,
unsteady on his legs, principally experimental in his speech, that he
was so unprepared for the real André François, the above, plus eight
formative years of growth in the French capital, an aristocratic
grandmother's idolatry, and the training of a school where, "as a rule,
only the sons of noblemen were received."
Mr. Biron recalled with a rueful smile that first meeting with his
son and heir. André François, self-possessed, slim, and aristocratic,
cultivating already the airs and graces of the young boulevardier,
greeted the manager of the White Star with a careful--for he was none
too sure of where the accent fell in his mother-tongue----
"I am delighted, my father," and kissed him ceremoniously, first on one
cheek, then on the other. After which he devoted himself to directing
Angélique--who had been his _bonne_ ever since his mother's death and
in whose care he had come across the ocean--in the disposal of his four
trunks. Madame Fouchette, during her life, had spared neither time nor
attention in providing André François with as many new suits and caps
as his blue-blooded playmates.
The little raw town of fifteen hundred inhabitants, still half
mining-camp, was not prepared for the youthful scion of the Old World,
and regarded him as a huge joke. As for Angélique, in her high heels
and infinitesimal aprons, with her coquettish airs and her showers
of exclamations, nothing like her had ever been seen, except in an
overnight show, where the traditional French maid, between a song and
dance, whisked imaginary dust off parlor chairs.
At school André François was under a double disadvantage. In the
class-room, he not only knew more than any other boy, but frequently
and authoritatively corrected the teacher. In the yard his white
flannel sailor suit, with its embroidered anchor and immense soft, red
silk bow in front, his jaunty round sailor hat and dainty shoes--it
had become the mode in Paris at that time to follow the English style
in children's dress--were regarded with derisive and hostile looks by
the sturdy blue- and brown-overalled town boys. Indeed, the little
transplanted Parisian, as he stood in line with his fellows, looked
very much like a lonely orchid in a bunch of dusty field-flowers.
In the yard André François did not shine. His attitude was marked in
the eyes of the indigenous youth by a supercilious stupidity. He
neither knew nor cared for baseball, football, or any of the lesser
sports which excite young America at playtime. He had, indeed, at first
extended tentative invitations to a chosen few of his class-mates to
engage in a fencing bout, but, finding that art entirely unknown, he
contented himself, during recess, with sitting on the bench and reading
from a French book, over the top of which he sometimes stared at his
hot, excited school-mates with insolent superiority.
They returned his contempt with full measure. One and all looked upon
André François as a special brand of "Dago"--under which general head
they classified all things Latin--protected from their scorn and
patriotism by an arbitrary higher power in the form of a father who was
a mine manager.
André François, in turn, confided to his father that nobody but
ignorant peasants, with whom no gentleman could associate, attended the
school.
So matters stood without a change in either direction two weeks after
André François' arrival in town. No change of environment seemed
strong enough to move him from his accustomed ways of thought. Every
morning he started out for school at a quarter of nine followed by the
omnipresent Angélique. Every afternoon he returned at three o'clock,
still followed by Angélique.
"Angélique! A nurse! A _bonne_!" As the manager of the White Star
thought of her, he nearly bit the cigar, upon which he was chewing, in
half. All the militant Americanism in him rose in revolt. He remembered
his own bare-footed, swaggering youth, independent as the wind,
insolent as a king. And now his son----. He stopped short in his pacing
and stared wrathfully out into the street, which, like all the streets
of the town, ended abruptly, without any preliminary slopes, in a sheer
wall of rock which went up and up and up into a rugged mountain peak.
It chanced that school had just let out for the noon hour, and down the
middle of the street, whistling to the full of his lungs, swinging in a
circle around his head a long leather strap with a blue calico-covered
book at the end for a weight, swaggered a sturdy specimen of young
America. Mr. Biron gazed at him with an envious eye and sighed. Then
a thought, sudden and sharp, popped into his head. He hesitated for a
moment. But why not? Anything was worth trying.
The manager of the White Star was a man of action, so, without
wasting further time in debate with himself, he beat a loud tattoo
with his knuckles on the window glass. The whistling stopped. He
crooked his finger and motioned, and the deed was done. A moment later
the ground-glass door opened, and a chunky, red-haired boy, with a
belligerent eye, stood expectantly before him. The newcomer placed
himself so that the big iron office safe furnished a background for
him, and as he stood there with his feet wide apart, his hands in
his pockets, he seemed as solidly planted as it. A shaft of noonday
sunlight, coming through a side window, struck his hair and made a
rubescent halo around his freckled face. The manager of the White Star
looked him up and down, and the boy eyed him back look for look. At
length Mr. Biron cleared his throat.
[Illustration: "'I'D BE GLAD TO DO IT AS A FAVOR,' HE SAID"]
"What is your name, my lad?" he asked.