The History of the Russo-Japanese War. Sydney Tyler

It proved that in less than twenty years Japan had earned for herself an established position in the community of progressive nations. The war also made it possible for the first time to estimate the influence and effect in warlike operations of the tremendous engines of destruction with which modern science has equipped the fleets and armies of to-day. The navy of Japan had been organized on the latest model, and her officers had been trained in British schools; and though China's equipment was not to be compared with that of her antagonist, she possessed several powerful armorclads of the latest type, officered and engineered by experienced Europeans.

      The salient features of the war were, at sea, the battles of the Yalu River and of Wei-hai-Wei; and on land, the rout of the Chinese at Ping-Yang, the passage of the Yalu and storming of Port Arthur. The first of these in order of time was the battle of Ping-Yang, a town situated near the north-west coast of Korea. Here the Chinese troops under General Tso attempted to prevent the advance of the Japanese towards the Yalu. By a series of skilful movements carried out on September 15th and 16th, 1894, the Japanese Commander-in-Chief, Marshal Yamagata, completely surrounded the Chinese and defeated them with great slaughter, their General himself falling dead upon the field. On the next day the Chinese fleet stationed at the mouth of the Yalu, which had proved entirely ineffective in preventing the landing of the enemy's forces upon Korea, gave battle to the Japanese. The ships of the latter Power were mainly cruisers, but the extraordinary skill with which they were manœuvred and the rapidity of their fire completely outweighed the advantage possessed by the Chinese Admiral in battleships. He sustained a crushing defeat, and eight of his best vessels were destroyed. In the meanwhile Marshal Yamagata continued his march to the North, and after a bloody but indecisive conflict near Wiju on October 22nd he succeeded in crossing the Yalu River and driving his antagonists in rout before him. The Japanese now proceeded to overrun Manchuria and the Liao-tung Peninsula, capturing all the principal positions one after the other with unvarying success. A great army under Marshal Oyama invested Port Arthur in November, and on the 20th and 21st he took that powerful fortress by storm, the defenders being massacred to a man. The final and decisive act of the war was the bombardment of Wei-hai-Wei and the island fortress of Leu-Kung-tan by the combined naval and military forces of Admiral Ito and Marshal Oyama. The operations lasted from January 30th, 1895, till February 12th, when, unable to hold out any longer against the terrific assault, Admiral Ting, the Chinese Commander, surrendered his fleet and the forts under honors of war. A closing touch of tragedy was the suicide of Ting and his principal officers, unable to bear the shame of their defeat. On March 19th negotiations for peace were opened at Shimonoseki, and the final treaty was signed on April 17th. The Treaty of Shimonoseki gave Japan unqualified possession of that Peninsula and also, of course, of Port Arthur—a very moderate territorial prize, considering the absolute character of her victory over China, and the sacrifices she had made to obtain it. But Russian susceptibilities were alarmed, and the Government of St. Petersburg decided upon a drastic step to avert the calamity which threatened to render its ambitions futile. Gaining the support of both Germany and France, it compelled Japan, by threats of force which that Power could not resist, to retire from Port Arthur and the Liao-tung Peninsula, and to restore the territory to China. The reason alleged for this high-handed action was the specious plea that the presence of the Japanese on the Asiatic mainland would endanger the independence of China and Korea, and would be a constant menace to the peace of the Far East. Naturally enough the indignation of Japan was intense, but defiance of three such powerful antagonists was impossible for her at that moment, isolated as she was and exhausted by the exertions of a great war. Great Britain was asked by the other three Powers to act jointly with them in this matter, but she refused to assist in depriving the gallant Island people of their rightful spoils of victory. The attitude of Lord Rosebery's Government on this occasion, although it gave no positive aid to Japan, undoubtedly led to a better understanding between the two countries, and paved the way ultimately to the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Alliance, which, by rescuing Japan from her position of isolation, enabled her to enter effectively into the momentous and complicated game which the European diplomatists were playing, with varying fortunes, at Peking.

      Meanwhile, however, Japanese aspirations received a check from which they were to take several years to recover. The statesmen of the Mikado were even unable to obtain a pledge from China that the territories yielded back to her by Japan would never be alienated to a third Power. Russia's delicate sense of honor, it appeared, revolted against the imputation implied, and therefore China must give no pledge. On the other hand, Russia would be so generous as to give an assurance on her own account that she had no designs upon Manchuria. Forced to content herself with the cold comfort of this empty and meaningless declaration, and baffled upon all essential points, Japan sullenly withdrew her troops from the mainland and settled down to nurse her just wrath, and prepare for the inevitable day of reckoning.

      JAPANESE INFANTRY ATTACKING A CHINESE POSITION.

      The centre of interest was now shifted to Peking, where began that amazing scramble among the European Powers for commercial, and especially for railway, concessions in China, which, by unmasking the ambitions of some countries, and revealing the community of interests of others, has led ultimately to important modifications of international policy, and to a re-arrangement of alliances. The complexity of the game, the swiftness of the moves, and the ignorance of the average man, not only of the issues involved, but even of the main geographical and economic features of the immense country which was the object of the struggle—all contrived to puzzle the mind and to darken the understanding; but a vague feeling, only too clearly justified by the events, arose in this country that England and America were not getting the best of the conflict, and that Russia and Germany were making all the running. In truth, there is no doubt that the skill, or perhaps, to speak more correctly, the duplicity, of the Russian diplomatists both in Peking and in St. Petersburg left their competitors completely behind. Foremost among them there emerges at this time the sinister figure of M. Pavloff, the Minister of the Czar at the Chinese Court. The tortuous diplomacy of the Muscovite has produced no more characteristic tool. M. Pavloff has been the stormy petrel of the Far East. Intrepid, resourceful to a degree, unscrupulous beyond the average, he is ever in the forefront of the diplomatic battle line. His appearance in any part of the field is the signal for new combinations, fresh aggressions, the stirring up of bad blood between nations, and the unsettlement of apparently settled questions. A man whose god is the Czar; a man with whom the expansion of the Empire of the Little White Father is an ideal cherished with almost religious fervor; a man who indeed in all probability honestly regards the extension of the Russian autocracy over the world as essential to the due progress of higher civilization—he is thoroughly typical of the class of agents whose devoted services Russia has always managed to secure for the spread of her Empire and the gradual but steady absorption of fresh territory all over Asia, whether in China, Persia, Turkestan or Tibet.

      Such was the instrument possessed by the Government of the Czar at the Court of Peking, and he was not likely to neglect the unique opportunity which lay ready to his hand. By her action in restoring Port Arthur to the nerveless grasp of China, Russia naturally assumed the character of a powerful friend whose smile was to be courted and whose frown was to be proportionately dreaded. What more natural, in the circumstances, than that the Emperor should grant to the subjects of his brother and ally, the Czar, peculiar commercial privileges in the country which had been so generously rescued from the grip of Japan and restored to the Empire of the King of Heaven?

      The first result of M. Pavloff's policy of disinterested friendship became manifest in 1896, when the Chinese Government concluded an agreement with the Russo-Chinese Bank, providing for the formation of a company to be styled the Eastern Chinese Railway Company, the ownership of which was to be vested solely in Russian and Chinese subjects and which was to construct and work a railway within the confines of China, from one of the points on the western borders of the province of Heh-Lung-Kiang to one of the points on the eastern borders of the province of Kirin; and to the connection of this railway with those branches which the Imperial Russian Government would construct to the Chinese frontier from Trans-Baikalia and the Southern Ussuri lines. The institution, which went by the plain, solid, commercial name of the Russo-Chinese Bank, was, of course, merely a sort of Far Eastern annex of the Finance Bureau of M. de Witte, and the line thus modestly