JUST BEFORE THE WAR.

Western Star, 3 May 1904, Page 3

JUST BEFORE THE WAR.

Just before the fighting began in the Far East a special correspondent of the 'Express' was directed to travel to Europe over the Trans-Siber-ian Railway. He landed at Dalny on February 5, and was in the neighborhood of Harbin when war broke out. Describing the early pa.t of his journey, he says :—A colonel who was returning to St Petersburg after bringing out a draft of troops upon a transport told me that the railway guards in Manchuria number 25,000 picked men. This I believe to be accurate. I notice that their number has been estimated at 50,000, but this ia an absurd exaggeration. They are fine soldiers, and many of them wore the cross of St Vladimir, which is bestowed for good service in the field. From the time that we crossed the Manchurian frontier to our arrival in European Russia we encountered a series of troop trains, which I computed, must have held 100,000 men. In one unending stream the armies of the Czar were pressing forward to the front. Even now I shudder to think of the miseries that they endured. We first met the Siberian recruits who were pushing on to raise their battalions in Manchuria to war strength. I do not speak with bias. I relate only what I saw. But, frankly, they were wretched specimens of humanity altogether different from the magnificent railway guards that I have mentioned, or from the old reservits that we met hastening up further west. They had not been long under discipline, and seemed entirely out of band. Orders had been issued that they were not to leave their trainsorders the meaning of which we understood on passing several wrecked stations, where they had plundered the food supplies and smashed the windows. I saw no rifles among them. The colonel I have mentioned explained this by saying that the rifles were with their regiments at Port Arthur and Harbin. 'lt appeared to me rather a risky scheme of mobilisation which left the rifles so far fi'om the troops who were to use them. If the Japs had intercepted them these reinforcements would have had to wait until fresh arms came from the west. Beyond Biikal prices began to jump iamine high. Bread doubled and sugar rose to five times its ordinary value. No peasants brought in food from the wayside stations. Supply trains not intended for the use of troops lay buried in snow on the sidings. Starvation! That is what civilian Siberia has to dread. Most of the grain is sent into European Russia to be ground, returning as flour; but there is no chance now of the flour trains coming eastward.