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
submarine mine fields. Everywhere the eye met evidences of defective
work--rusty contacts, open insulations and exposed connections. There
were carelessly exposed buoys betraying to the naked eye supposedly
invisible submarine mines. The whole mine field was so badly laid
that the Japanese were subsequently able to drag and explode three out
of every five mines. This explains the astounding fact that during
Admiral Togo's five dashes, some of them lasting thirty-six hours, all
that he lost from torpedoes and mines was one ship, the _Hatsuse_,
which struck a floating mine.
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