A GREAT WAR CLEARING PORT

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2602, 26 October 1915, Page 8

A GREAT WAR CLEARING PORT

VLADIVOSTOK TO-DAY ENORMOUS TRAFFIC IN MUNITIONS (New York "Evening Post.") The Russian army corps on the GermanAustrian battle line need guns, rifles and ammunition; Vladivostok will supply them. They need armoured ears, many hundreds of them, and Vladivostok will givo tliem these. They need dynamite; they need pig lead and pig copper; they need cotton to be made into clothing; they need food—and Vladivostok Lopes to see to it that tliey get it all. The guns and rifles and ammunition are arriving from Japan and the United States by the steamer load. The armoured motor-cars are coming by the hundreds from the United States. Tliey aro being mado at Detroit and Cleveland and otber points, and ihey aro coming out here mostly by way of Seattle on vessels which sail direct to Vladivostok. So also are the lead, copper, and dynamite.

Cotton by Way of Panama. As for tlio cotton —it is coming out from New York by way of Panama in such vast quantities, that more than anything else it lias caused this terrific congestion of supplies which has forced Russia to place rush orders for. locomotives and cars to get them off to tlie front. It is piled high 011 tho hills back of tho city waiting for its turn to be forwarded to Moscow and other cities to bo manufactured, into blankets and uniforms for the soldiers. From Grea-t Britain have come guns for the navy. They arrive by steamer and then they aro shipped by railroad to the Black Sea to be mounted on the warships Russia is building. From France has come ammunition. From the United States has come several nineinch .guns—also to find their place on Russian warships in the Black Sea. And above all is coming uarbed wire from America—an amazing quantity of it, to protect the trenchcs of the Russian armies.

Enlarging tho Port. Ships bringing these vast supplies aro arriving in such number and with such rapidity that they cannot be accommodated at the docks. A plan of permanent enlargement of the port has been temporarily put aside in favour of provisional enlargement. Hugo gangs of men are building pontoon piers and make-shift docks. Vessels unable to squeeze into tho piers aro transhipping their cargoes to lighters, but a shortage of lighters has retarded even that means of discharging. So the Russians are building moro lighters. Vladivostok, they believe, is to save tho day for the Russian armies, and every possible human effort is made to forward these supplies to tlieir destination at the front. The feverish activity at the waterfront is duplicated elsewhere in Ulis great port, which, while peaceful in itself, is the very incarnation of war. New Armies Each Month. Every month new "armies are sent away to the west. For five hundred miles to the north of tho fortress of Vladivostok proper extends a series of fortified placos. All these, when not used as prisons for German prisoners of war, serve as drill grounds for Russian recruits. Th<; reservists come in from ail points in the eastern part of the empire and within six months arc turned into soldiers. Then they aro hurried off across Siberia, Tho mushroom war growth of Vladivostok as a port of commerce, together with the extra- occupation of looking after detained civilians and the interests of the prisoners of war, has given the American Consulate great prominence and responsibility as well as work.