THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR
The war between Japan and Russia was inevitable, because, as already pointed out in this volume,[185] the two countries represented different and naturally hostile interests. Ever since Russia, shut out from an open port on the European or Western Asiatic seaboard, began to spread eastward through Asia to seek an outlet into the Pacific Ocean, it had been inevitable that the two powers would some day come into collision. And it can be confidently affirmed that the Russians did nothing, while Japan had done much, to avert the conflict. Russia not infrequently committed overt acts to provoke Japan, and had generally treated the latter in an overbearing and insolent manner.
In 1875, Japan was forced to give up Sakhalin for the bleak and barren Kurile Islands. It was just twenty years later (1895) that Russia committed her most unjust act of interference and provocation. Japan, after her successful conflict with China, by the treaty of Shimonoseki, had obtained the cession of the Liaotung Peninsula, of which Port Arthur was then the most important port. “Hardly was the ink dry on it [treaty] before the three great European powers—Russia, France, and Germany—stepped in, and, in order to justify their interference, declared that any holding of Manchurian territory by Japan would constitute a menace to the peace of Asia.”[186] Japan, exhausted by her first foreign war under the new régime, was in no position to offer any opposition to three of the greatest World Powers, when they tendered her kindly(?) advice. The only two powers who might have assisted her against this combination were neither sufficiently interested nor far-sighted enough to interfere; and they (Great Britain and the United States) kept silent. Therefore, Japan had nothing to do but to submit and accept a monetary consideration for giving up her claim to the Liaotung Peninsula.
This in itself was not a casus belli, but it was enough to arouse to almost fever-heat the excitement of an intensely patriotic and naturally militant nation. The Government was able to hold in check the indignant people; but nothing could prevent the development of a not unnatural desire for revenge. From that time it was definitely and positively known that a war with Russia was inevitable in the not-distant future; and calmly and carefully the Japanese went to work to prepare themselves for that conflict. It is not necessary to go into the details of that preparation, the thoroughness of which has been surprising the civilized world.
But even then war might have been averted, for the spirit of revenge would have faded away in the multitude of other interests and sentiments that have been pressing upon Japan’s attention within the past decade. Indeed, during the Boxer troubles of 1900 and 1901 in China, when the troops of Japan were marching, in company with those of Russia, Germany, France, Great Britain, the United States, et al., to the relief of the beleaguered foreigners in Peking, it almost seemed like a harbinger of continued peace in the Far East. But this harmony was only apparent, not real,—only temporary, not permanent.
In fact, it was that very campaign which enabled Russia to complete her practical possession of Manchuria. She had, in the meantime, obtained from China a lease of that very territory which she had forced Japan to give up. She had also obtained permission from China to extend the Siberian Railway through Manchuria to Port Arthur and Dalny, and thus obtain an outlet to the Pacific Ocean. Measures of material expansion might not have alarmed Japan, if it had not been that Russia sought to obtain permanent possession of Manchuria through a military occupation ostensibly for the purpose of protecting her commercial interests. She marched her troops in large numbers into Manchuria in order to protect the railway from the depredations of Chinese bandits; she fortified Port Arthur and built up Dalny, the great “fiat city,” and in every way showed no intention of letting Manchuria slip out of her control. All such acts did not tend to allay the spirit of revenge in the hearts of the Japanese, but of course made them more and more indignant.
Nor was this all. Russia began to show most evident signs of encroaching upon Korea. “Japan watched all these things with profound anxiety. If there were any reality in the dangers which Russia, Germany, and France had declared to be incidental to Japanese occupation of part of Manchuria, the same dangers must be doubly incidental to Russian occupation of the whole of Manchuria; the independence of Korea would become illusory ...; an obstacle would be created to the permanent peace of the East.”[187]
If Russia succeeded in maintaining her position in Manchuria, her next step would take her into Korea, for whose safety and independence there would be no guarantee; and still another step would bring her over against Japan. Thus would be endangered, not only the influence of Japan on the continent, but even her very existence. She would sink at least into the position of a third-rate power, and would be completely isolated from all opportunities for expansion.
But, even in spite of insults and provocations, Japan set herself to resist the Russian encroachments by peaceable means and measures, in which she at last had the support of Great Britain and the United States. It was to be presumed that Russia would keep her promise to give up her military occupation of Manchuria and restore to China the administration of the “Three Provinces” on the dates specified in a convention with China signed April 8, 1902. According to this, Russia agreed to withdraw her troops gradually from Manchuria and entirely resign her control thereof within one year.
But when the time came for the final evacuation, Russia showed no sign of intending to carry out her agreement. After futile protests from Japan, Great Britain, and the United States, Japan suggested to Russia to open up negotiations concerning their respective interests in the Far East; and to this Russia assented. It is scarcely profitable to follow the devious windings of these negotiations, which were delayed by Russia on one pretext or another. It is sufficient to state that Japan invited Russia to nothing more than “to subscribe to the policy enunciated by the United States and Great Britain,—the policy of the ‘open door’ and of the integrity of the Chinese and [the] Korean Empires.”