THE FALL OF PORT ARTHUR.

Otago Witness, Issue 2815, 26 February 1908, Page 19

THE FALL OF PORT ARTHUR.

" VERDICT OF THE COURT-MARTIAL. STOESSEL CONDEMNED TO DEATH. ST. PETERSBURG. February 19. The verdict of the Port Arthur courtTaartial is expected to-day. General Stoessel said that he assumed the entire responsibility for the surrender of Port Arthur, declaring if that required expiation by blood let it be his blood alone. Port Arthur could only have held out a few hours longer with the sacrifice of 20,000 lives. General Reuss declared that he merely obeyed the orders given, to him. If that ■was wrong he declined to sue for mercy. February 21. The court-martial has condemned General Stoe&sel to death, but without the locs of rights of honour. Owing to the heroic defence made by the Port Arthur garrison and General Stoessel's personal bravery, the court will ask the Czar to commute the sentence to 10 years' imprisonment in a fortress. The court reprimanded General Fock, and acquitted Generals R-euss and Smirnoff. LONDON, February 21. The Times eajs that the condemnation ■was deserved, as General Stoessel con- * «picuously failed in his duty, and lacked r the requisite indomitable moral courage. Our St. Petersburg correspondent, writing on December 19, said:— "The " most important day so far of tho Stoessel ' trial was December 18, when tho question of Stoessel having insisted on retaining his command after Kouropatkin had told him ' thrice in two weeks to leave the fortress came up for discussion. Kouropatkin was in the witness box throughout almost the whole sitting; and before going into the details of his evidence, I might as well Bay that it convicts Stcesscl of a serious Act of disobedience, and that, while it raises our opinion of Kouropatkin as a far-sighted military man, j(j proves that the man has no will of his own, and that his far-sightedness was absolutely useless to him and to his country. " The reader will remember how, on the occasion of Kouropatkin's visit to Port Arthur after he had been in Japan, about a year before the war, the papers were full of telegrams describing the proceedings of the great council of generals that was held for several day« in the fortress under Kouropatkin's presidency. None of ihe correspondents that sent those telegrams really knew what was going on;' nevertheless they made a very shrewd guess when they said that Alexeieff and the civilians wanted war, while Kouropatkin and the ' military men wanted peace, for at the trial • yesterday Kouropatkin said : ' When I visited Port Arthur after my trip to Japan and considered all its drawbacks, from a . military point of view, I came to the condusion that this fortress would b© on the - whole disadvantageous to us, and proposed — principally, however, with Hie object of avoiding war with Japan — to give back Port Arthur to the Chinese, to sell them the town of Dalny and the southern •half of the Chinese railway for 250 milsion roubles/ to acquire for ourselves spec'al rights in Northern Manchuria, and to spend those 250 million roubles in strengthen i""- our position -in the Far jEa.«<- ' I " -itkin also added some very in- | +er - statements regarding Dalny. ' A he blow.' said he, 'to the importance of Port Arthur was dealt by the founda- j 4ion of the town of Dalnv, which was created on the initiative of the Ministor of (Finance (M. D~e Witte, now Count Witte) •without any preliminary discussions on the subject with Admiral Alexeieff or with the (Minister of War.' (Witte has since protasted &K&inet this statement in the columns jpf the Novoe Vremya, on whose report I tbaso this article.) "This interesting disclosure Droves to PS what we all alonjr suspected, that Russia Snstead of being directed straight to its goal by one autocratic mind, is ruled in Jfche most haphazard way by different ministries, which are often at war with one another. As to Kouropatkin, if he saw so felearly that Dalny was ruinous to Port he should have insisted on the place feeing abandoned, and if he saw that the retention of Pont Arthur was a strategic tod a. political miatai« of the first magnitude, then it was bis duty, as Minister of Waf, i<y evacuate it or else to resign, bis • KJBtion. We notice the same weakness of ih&raoter jn his dealing with Stoessel, Grip- , toriberg, Kaulbars, and throughout all the ! (lanohurian campaign, but rcost of ail do 'Hr& notice it in the yean that preceded the i tor, when, this amia-ble War Minister i verse to creaMng eui agitation in tie fenny, averse to aWminsr the court and enemies of influential offpi&le, [ Weakly retxtinea from reforming jhe jarmy ■

1 ewn from ridding it o.( those laixn<lre<l£ of useless officers who were its ruin in Manchuria KOUROPATKIN AND STOESSEL. " Le+ U3 take Kouro parkin's evidence *,bout his dealings with Stoessel. The two had been schoolboys together, so that when, on the occasion of Kouropatkin's visit to Port Arthur, Alexedeff recommended thait Stoesse'. be made com r nand<ant of this j second-class fortress with the pay apper1 taining to the commandant of the firstclass fortress, Kouropatkin concurred, though all he could see good in his olid schoolmate was a knowledge of the local topography and the local cutiboms. ' After the battle of Kinchou I began to discover, partly from the reports of General Stoessel and partly from the accounts given me by persons coming from Port Arthur, that there was a serious fall in the spirits of General Stoessel. He found the situation of Port Arthur dangerous. He bojrgetl for strong and immediate help. He declared that an extreme'.y limited quantity of shells was left although as a matter of fact not a single shot had up to this time been fired by the landward batteries. I communicated my suspicions to the Viceroy, and begged him to inquire about Sftoessel's suitability from the commander of the fleet in Port Arthur. The Viceroy accordingly aaked tho opinion of Admiral Vitgeft, and Vitgeft's ajiswer was not favourable to Stoessel, whose authority, it was saijd, rested entirely in his seniority. On June 1,8 Kouropatkin therefore wrote to Stoessel telling him to leave the fortress and to join tihe Manchurian army, where a corps would be g-iven him at the earliest opportunity. This order was .repeated three times "in two w«ek3. Buit Stoessel evidentlyknew how weak was the amiable gentleman with whom he had to do, for he remained in Port Arthur, pending by way of Teply to his superior's letter one of the most extraordinary epistles ever written iby a disobedient subordinate to a ccun-mander-in-clhief in the field.' " ' I received your secret despatoh.' he says, ' late yesterday evening while standing in tho"*forefront of our artillery position, on the battery of Captain Puzanoff. Here we have now contested two days in succession for pc6°cssion of the heights adjacent to Kuinsan. To tell you the truth, the contents of your despatch thunderstruck me. . . All the soldiers know me well and trust me, the European and especially the Chinese population also know me well, and though my measures may appear to them scyeie, they all see that it is only by .such measures that order can be maintained at such a time, ily departure would produce a general despondency which would at this juncture be extremely dangerous, and a, fall of spirits which by all possible measures I am trying to keep up.' "Throughout the rest of this letter Stoe«sel harp? again and again on these reasons for not leaving. He had previously asked the Viceroy, he said, to let him leave, but the Viceroy refused, and now 'when all depends on me, at is impossible 4o leave . . . now, when after two days' glorious fighting I have extended the region of my activity' — which is quite false, for he did not drive back the Japanese during the fighting at Kuinsan. Finally, Stoessel passes judgment on Smirnoff, ' he may be a fine man, but he is rather a professor than a soldier.' " Kouropatkin's conduct on receipt of this letter was worthy of his wavering character. After consulting with the Viceroy he decided to let Stoeseel remain, 'and the further course of events in Port Arthur up to December 15 only strengthened me in the opinion that the trust which the Viceiov and I reposed in Stoessel was merited.' When asked why he didn't answer Stoeesel he said : ' Because I could not write to Stoessel withou.t tolling him mv opinion of the contents of hia reply.' He thought it was Alcxeieff's business to withdraw Stoessel, whereas Alexeieff thought it. was Kouropatkin's. Questioned as to why he made no attempt to communicate direct with Smirnoff, Kouropatkin said : ' I don't think I had the right to do so while Stoessel, who had been appointed by Imperial decree, remained and till he informed me of his departure. Kouropatkin blames Smirnoff for not having written him. " Smirnoff, on his side, cent an oral message to Kouropatkin by two officers of the General Staff, but Kouropatkin thinks it was wrong of him to do co. Port Arthur officers came to him every day with long stories, and he didn't know whom to believe. Smirnoff's position was certainly difficult. He was a stranger _in Port Arthur. He had never got direct communication from Kouropatkin until the siege was half over, yet Kouropatkin thinks that, being commandant of the fortress proper while Stoessel was only commandant of the outer zone, he ought to have insisted on taking chief control as soon as that outer zone was lost— that is, on July 30, when the 4th Division entered the fortress. 'In my opinion,' said General Kouropatkin, 'General Smirnoff might in the last resort even arrest Stoessel, if he saw that this would be for the benefit of the garrison, if he perceived that Stoessel's conduct would not conduce to Russia's honour and glory.' " Kouropatkip further "declared that the disobedience of Stoeesel would have been overlooked if that commander had not surrendered Port Arthur but had held it till it was carried bj assault &c gertainlj

seems to have temporarily o\ eilookotl it himself, for on the occasion of the CzaieI itch's birth he was aeked to recommend thiee generals to be raised to the lank of general-adjutant, he mentioned Stoesbel among the three. " At the beginning of the war there were a. good many stories in circulation regarding disputes between the Viceroy and tho Commander-in-Chief, but the temper of the latter wa6 far too soft to permit of his disputing with anybody. ' Strange,' he remarked on one occasion, while giving evidence, but I, the coinm.ander-in-ch.ief, didn't know that Port Arthur was provisioned for a year and a-half. But the staff of the Viceroy knew of this. "When questioned as to what use Port Arthur was for the concentration of the troops, Kouropatkin said that it would be beat of all to give it to the Japanese. He came to change hi 6 opinion, however, as the war went on, for he said that ' it finally proved a powerful support to the Manchurian army by obtaining a large Japanese army before it for six months.' " Asked if he had ever tried to throw more provisions into Port Arthur, he said that General Guber, of the Field Commissariat Department, had tried at an early stage to do ao, but that th© Viceroy's staff told him not to interfere. When the Japanese had landed they desired Guber to please proceed, but then Guber refused. ' I wasn't mixed up in the matter,' remarked Kouropatkin, ' but from the accounts General Guber can give you you'll see that there was friction between the staff of the Viceroy and that of the Intendant. From which remark one would hardly think that General Guber was a member of Kouropatkin's staff. I " The most sensational evidence came at ' the close of the day's proceedings, when Colonel Golovau, Stoessel's adjutant, was asked if he had received the letter for Smirnoff which was sent by Kouropatkin to Stoessel's staff in the packet containing I the famous letter asking Stoessel to leave I the fortress. Golovan said he had received I that letter, had deciphered it, and had j handed it over to General Reis, the chief lof the staff. Reis went outside with it to | consult Stoessel. and, on returning, told j Gclovan that Stoessel's orders were that that letter was to be regarded as not having been received. When Reis and Stoessel here interrupted to deny that the letter had ever been received, Golovan produced a,. 1 diary in which its receipt was duly noted ,on June 26.' This is the biggest sensation we have had since the day that Kouropatkin convicted Stoessel of a deliberate lie by reading- hia (Stoessel's) account of his personal heroism at the battle of Chinchiao, a battle during which he remained all the time in Port Arthur."