A-Readin’, an’ I Keep on A-Wukkin’ on de Paff’

Once in a generation the intimate and vital secrets of a great nation may be made public through one of the little circle of men to whom they are entrusted; but rarely, if ever, till the men are dead, and the times are entirely changed. Beginning next month, McClure’s Magazine will present to the reading world a striking exception to this rule. It will print for the first time a frank and startling official revelation of the present political plans and purposes of Russia—the great nation whose guarded and secret movements have been the concern of modern European civilization for two centuries.

General Kuropatkin—Minister of War and later Commander-in-Chief of the Russian forces in the great and disastrous Manchurian campaign—became a target for abuse at the close of the Russo-Japanese War. He returned to St. Petersburg and constructed, from the official material accessible to him, an elaborate history of the war, and a detailed statement of the condition, purposes, and development of the Russian Empire. Documents and dispatches endorsed “Strictly Confidential,” matters involving the highest officials, information obviously intended for no eyes but those of the innermost government circles, are laid forth with the utmost abandon in this work. No sooner had 364 it been completed, than it was confiscated by the government. Its manuscript has never been allowed to pass out of the custody of the Czar’s closest advisers.

An authentic copy of this came into the hands of McClure’s Magazine this spring; it is not essential and obviously would not be wise to state just how. George Kennan, the well-known student of Russian affairs, now has it in his possession and is engaged in translating and arranging material taken from it for magazine publication. A series of five or six articles, constructed from Kuropatkin’s 600,000 words, will be issued in McClure’s, beginning next month. These will contain astonishing revelations concerning matters of great international importance, and accusations that are audacious to the point of recklessness.

LETTERS TO THE CZAR

Remarkable among these are the letters to the Czar. Kuropatkin’s correspondence with him is given in detail, documents which naturally would not appear within fifty or a hundred years from the time when they were written. And upon the letters and reports of the General appear the comments and marginal notes of the Emperor. The war was forced against the will of the sovereign and the advice of the War Department. It was ended, Kuropatkin shows, when Russia was just beginning to discipline and dispose her great forces, because of the lack of courage and firmness in the Czar.

Japan certainly would have been crushed, says Kuropatkin, if war had continued. At the time of the Treaty at Portsmouth, the military struggle, from Russia’s standpoint, had only begun. She was then receiving ammunition and supplies properly for the first time; her men were becoming disciplined soldiers; and the railroad, whose service had increased from three to fourteen military trains a day, had now, at last, brought the Russian forces into the distant field. For the first time, just when treaty negotiations were begun, Russia had more soldiers in her army than Japan. There were a million men, well equipped and abundantly supplied, under General Linevitch, who succeeded General Kuropatkin as Commander-in-Chief; and he was about to take the offensive when peace was declared.

Beyond the individual conflict General Kuropatkin shows the Russian nation, a huge, unformed giant, groping along its great borders in every direction to find the sea.

“Can an Empire,” he asks, “with such a tremendous population, be satisfied with its existing frontiers, cut off from free access to the sea on all sides?”

RUSSIA’S SECRET NATIONAL PROGRAM

There are in existence in the secret archives of the government, Kuropatkin’s work discloses, documents containing the definite program of Russia, fixed by headquarters years ago, for its future growth and aggrandizement. Results of campaigns and diplomacy are checked up according to this great program, and decade after decade Russia is working secretly and quietly to carry it out. The Japanese War constituted a great mistake in the development of this national plan.

During the twentieth century, says Kuropatkin, Russia