PEACE.

Feilding Star, Volume XXVII, Issue 32, 31 August 1905, Page 2

PEACE.

Thb news received yesterday to the effect that terms of peace had been arranged between Russia and Japan was received with the most lively satisfaction. This happy result of tbe meeting of plenipotentiaries at Portsmouth (U 8.A.) appears to have been brought about by mutual concessions and the exercise of tact and statesmanship on both sides. To President Roosevelt much honour is due, because practically it was hie initiative which made it possible for a oeßsation of hostilities on condi tions honourable to both belligerents France and England, no doubt, cast the weight of their influence into the scale, especially tbe first named, for the indebtedness of Russia to France is something enormous, running into hundreds of millions sterling, and her losses during the war can only be conjectured, because even the Government cannot yet know tbe amount approximately. It is also possible that tbe expected failure of the rice crops influenced the Japanese Government in agreeing to modified conditions. It was early in February, 1904, that the diplomatic relations between Japan and Russia were broken of!, and at midnight on the Bth of that month (he Japanese fleet attacked the Russian fleet, which was lying outside of Port Arthur. The war has lasted eighteen months and three weeks.