REFORMS IN THE ORGANIZATION OF THE RESERVE TROOPS.
We have already seen (Chapter VI.) how, when the war began, we found it necessary, in the absence of any assurance arranged by diplomacy against other contingencies, to be ready for any military eventuality on our Western frontier. Consequently, too great a number of reserve units were included amongst the troops told off to take the field in the Far East. Another reason for this was that we did not really know the qualities of different sections of our army. Our crack troops, taking both officers and men together, of three Guard and three Grenadier divisions, six divisions in all, were left in European Russia, while newly formed corps composed of reserve units were sent into the field. I have already mentioned how my recommendation to mobilize the reinforcements being sent to us immediately after Easter was for various reasons rejected, how they were mobilized a month later than they should have been, and arrived in Manchuria unsettled, untrained, knowing scarcely anything of the new rifle, without having fired a course of musketry, and not having done any combined tactical operations with the other arms.
The troops of the 6th Siberians, which certainly had been in camp for a short time before starting, had not been given a gun or a squadron to enable them to practise combined operations. Of the 4th Siberian Corps, which mobilized under most favourable conditions, only the Omsk Regiment had been trained in artillery, and this was of an old pattern; yet it had to go into action with quick-firing guns. Cavalry were hardly seen. Indeed, if we consider the haphazard selection of commanding officers, the lack of any community of thought amongst the officers generally, the almost complete absence of proper tactical training, the large number of 2nd Category reservists, general dislike of the war, and, finally, the absence of military spirit, it will be evident why some units of the reserve troops failed. In the first battles the troops of the 4th Siberian Corps won a good reputation in the army. The reasons for this were:
1. The splendid character of the men in them. Bluff, surly fellows of Siberia, they were strong in body and stout of heart, and understood better than others the reasons for which we were fighting in the Far East.