MANAWATU EVENING STANDARD POHANGINA GAZETTE. Circulation, 3,000 Copies Daily. THURSDAY, SEPT. 29, 1904. RUSSIA THE UNREADY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XL, Issue 7921, 29 September 1904, Page 4

MANAWATU EVENING STANDARD POHANGINA GAZETTE. Circulation, 3,000 Copies Daily. THURSDAY, SEPT. 29, 1904. RUSSIA THE UNREADY.

Mr. Hales, a well-known journalist, who lias returned from the Par East, has written a number of articles on the war, chiefly, one imagines, from.facts gathered second hand in Japan, Tientsin and elsewhere. He says that the cause of most of Eussia's troubles has been her unreadiness. " The whole system of supply in Manchuria," he says, " has been proved to have been corrupt. Eobbery, jobbery, and rascality have been rampant. The soldiers', clothing has not been .looked after as it should have been. They have been kept short of heavy clothing in winter and light clothing in summer. Their boots have been brown paper, and their great coats flimsy shoddy. The men who have been guilty of this rascality have made millions of roubles, and live in stately houses. But the hand of the Czar will fall upon them, and when that hand falls in anger it crashes into the dust, for he who sits upon the Eussian throne to-day is no weakling, though he is a I lover of peace where peace is possible, and his will paramount." The artillery, Mr. Hales goes on, was for the 'greater party old and out of date. The sxipply of shells was short and those available were so old as to be entirely worthless. It .would be. difficult to imagine a more pitiful spectacle than this exhibition of \itter unreadiness. Mr Hales says that it was because of his poor and short supplies and his inadequate equipment that Kuropatkin determined not-to measure his strength against the Japanese in a'pitched battle during the earlier part of the campaign, preferring to wait until fresh guns and stores could be hurried over the railway to Harbin and Mukden." Competent critics are not all so positive as Mr Hales is concerning the condition of the Manchurian stores. The Far Eastern depots had been well stocked in times of peace, and there had been plenty of leisure for testing the qualities of the supplies. "Where, the corruption was evident was in the fresh supplies ordered from Eussia on the outbreak of hostilities. The Manchurian stores, however, were far below the quantities shown on paper, and there is abundant evidence that the artillery was'for the most part old and bad