38              RUSSIAN TROOPS,  ETC.
at war strength would give nearly 10,000 men ; adding the six batteries of frontier guard artillery, we should find a total of between 24,000 and 25,000 men told off for the guard of the line of communications along the railway. It may also be noticed that the five Cossack voiskos in East Asia, presuming all classes liable to serve are called out, can supply 60,000 men and nearly 50,000 troop horses; certain categories of the reserve and of the opoltchenie or landsturm in non-Cossack territories would also give an additional number to be drawn upon in case of emergency, without calling up fresh troops from the west.
One of the points of greatest interest in the Peking telegram is the proof it appears to afford that a smaller number of Russian troops has been despatched from the west than was believed. Confirmation of this is given by The Times correspondent on the Russian side, whose letter of January 12 from Khailar, an important station on the Manchurian railway, makes it clear that he has so far found little evidence of special preparation for war: and he states that he learns on excellent authority that only 15,000 men have passed eastward since June last, and that several thousand time-expired men have been sent home. All this gives the measure of the amount of reliance we can place on statements which have been made in the Continental press respecting the flow of Russian troops eastward, and serves to confirm the impression that the Russian War Office, at all events, have neither desired nor intended to make war. It is clearly Russia's interest to avoid war at almost any cost until the railway round Lake Baikal is completed, the carrying power of the Trans-Siberian Railway improved, the Port Arthur docks built, and the battleships now on the stocks in the Baltic made ready for sea. When these things are done the whole conditions of a struggle with Japan for supremacy in the East will become radically altered.
So far as concerns communications by land, the strangulation at Lake Baikal is a serious disadvantage