me to go about unchallenged. I mixed freely with officers and men.
The expenditure of a few rubles on _vodka_, in the case of the men,
and the never-rejected invitation on the part of most officers to join
in a jamboree, made me a very popular figure indeed. Through them I
learned that the provisions of Port Arthur were in a most deplorable
state. To use but one instance: Out of 1,420,000 pounds of flour,
nearly one-half was bad with sour cords, which caused part of the
enormous amount of sickness even then prevailing in the Port Arthur
garrison. During the war forty-five per cent. of the troops were
incapacitated because of unsanitary food. I found 600,000 pounds of
maize were wormy and over 700,000 pounds of corned beef were putrid.
Women and wine, however, abounded.

Never in any place--and I know all the gayest and fastest places on
earth--have I seen, comparatively speaking, such an enormous amount of
wine in stock, or such a number of demi-mondaines assembled. Most of
the officers had private harems. I often sat in the Casino and
watched the officers of the First Tomsk Regiment, the Twenty-fifth and
Twenty-sixth Siberian Rides practicing with their newly supplied
Mauser-pistols on tables loaded with bottles containing the most
costly vintage wines and cognacs. At such times the place literally
ran ankle deep in wine. There were over sixty gambling houses and
dancing halls supporting more than a thousand _filles de joie_. In
fact, the general intemperance was such that on the night of Admiral
Togo's attack more than half the complement of the Russian fleet was
ashore, dead drunk, in honor of one of the tutelary Russian saints.

The harbor defenses comprising submarine mines and searchlight
stations, etc., I found to be in the worst condition. In pottering
around, I visited many of the switchboard stations controlling the