Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/132

120 mean the loss of many of his most necessary assistants, protested against any such action and saved us. Still we remained under the surveillance of the political police, or secret service, which was used by the Government for the purpose of keeping in touch with, and suppressing the activities of, opponents of its policy among highly placed officials and others.

Some days after this event, in the course of an official visit to certain military establishments in western Manchuria and Siberia, I found myself aboard the Siberian express, headed westward and meeting with ever-increasing frequency more and more of the military trains, laden with fresh forces for General N. P. Linievitch, who had been appointed to succeed Kuropatkin, after the latter's dismissal as a result of the overwhelming catastrophe in the battle of Moukden, where the Russians lost one hundred and forty thousand men.

In my imagination this iron caravan moved as a great, sad critique upon the futility of what had already gone before in this age-long repercussion of the westward movement of the Tartar hordes. There were the battle of Sha Ho, the unsuccessful operations of Grippenberg, the requests of Kuropatkin for the formation of the third army and the loss of this at Moukden, the capitulation of the powerful fortress of Port Arthur and finally the mad voyage of Admirals Rozhestvensky and Niebogatoff with a fleet of old and weak men-o'-war from the Baltic to the fatal Straits of Tsushima—all these stirred up terror and awe in the more thoughtful elements of Russian society. But there were other events in course of enactment, even more dangerous and more thrilling, which were shaking the foundations of the immense conglomerate Empire. These deflected public attention from the