THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1904. RUSSIA AND JAPAN

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 6, 11 February 1904, Page 17

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1904. RUSSIA AND JAPAN

f I SSI A and Japan have got to the end of the resomces of diplomacy. Negotiation^ are ended, ambassadors withdrawn, and by this time the two nations arc probably spitting at each other, at long range, the iron aigumenK of war. In the old Roman daysi a foimal declaration of war was required to legalise hostilities. The practice settled 1 down into an international tradition longt after the. legal enactment on which it was based had ceased to occupy a place upon the statute-books of thei nations. Till the close of the seventeenth century formal declarations of hostilities continued to be made' Sometimes— as in the uiptuie between Spain and France in 1635 and in England at a much later date— the function was performed by the herald-at-arms to the accom.naniment of some of the quaint and picturesque cereI .nonies of mediaeval chivalry. Nowadays, formal'declara-

tioms of war are no longer in vogue. Their place is commonly taken l>y more or less turgid manifestoes addressed to their respective subjects and to the friendly Powers. In this way each belligprent announces the* opening) of hostilities and throws upon the other the whole and sole responsibility for the resort to the last argument of kings— the dread arbitrament of shrapnel shell and armoc-piercing projectiles. In the case of Russia and Japan, actual hostilities were deemed to bei in order ast soon as their respective ambassadors- had withdrawn, and they were free to pound each other with lead and iron without violating the letter or the spirit of modern international law. * The circumstances i that have led to the present war might have tjeen predicted, in a broad and general 1 way, at any time during the past fifty years. They have come about as the natural and necessary result of the policy of eastward expansion which Russia has been pursuing as steadily as the tramp of time or the march of fate ever since 1725. Southward, the eastern sweep of her conquering march has for its objective the rich resources and the teeming millions of India. It has &one on in bold and successive strides since 1725, but it has assumed its swiftest and most menacing phase since 1856. On the north, the swarming Russian legions are walled off from India by the impassable rampart of the Himalayas. For the time being, she is shouldered off from India's vulnerable western frontier by the somewhat wobbly buffer State of Afghanistan. But the fateful strides towards India made by the Empire that has never turned back are well calculated to gave anxioius nights and sleepless pillows to British statesmen ; and unless some effective check is offered to her ever-forward policy, Cossacks may yet cross the Indus and quaff their measures of vodka under the gorgeous dome of the Taj Mehal. More northward), no serious human obstacle offered itself to Russia's advance. She swept over the, forehead of the Eastern Hemisphere till, from the s far-extending ramparts of Vladivostock and from the decks of her clustering ships of war, she cast menacing looks across the narrow sea at the long and ill-defended shores 1 of Japan. All this was merely another day's march in Russia's conquest of Asia. Japan herself unconsciously furnished the pretext for the next. It was in 189&. China and Japan had rival interests in Korea — a giant nose ol land running out from Manchuria, with an area of 82,000 square miles and a population of some 10,000,000 souls, and separated by a strait from southern Japan. China, like Russna, regards treaties, where she saflelyj may,, as temporary expedients. She serenely occupied Korea with her troops of comic-opera soldiers, in flagrant violation of the convention entered into wittt Japan in 1881. War ensued. The Chinese were caught by the Japane&e squadron in the very act of transporting troops to the Korean coast. A naval battle ensued The Chinese troops were sent to feed the sharks of the Yellow Sea. The great naval battle of the Ydlu and the occupation of the Liaotung Peninsula by the- Japanese ended one of the swiftest wars in history. China, with her parti-colored troops and their, museum of ancient muskets and bows and arrows, cut a miserable figure beside the smart and dashing Japanese, with their European drill and weapons by Krupp and Armstrong. Japan broke the back of China. But in dome; so she innocently precipitated the crisis in the foit unos of the Flowery Land which has indirectly led to the present war. Fallen China was treated by the four CJreat Powers as a wounded wolf is treated by a pack of its hungry fellows They — in the words of a rattling rhymester — ' knocked spots off her, and each retained a spot ' ' Spheres of influence ' were created in the hapless and helpless country by Great Britain, Russia, Germany, and France — the four Powers that rulo her destiny. Armed occupation and formal dismemberment were tabooed, but each extorted the fullest mea-

sure of ' concessions ' that it dared from the ' Son of Heaven ' who in barbaric splendor nominally rules over thato huge and disjointed empire. Through Russia's. successful intrigue, Japan was deprived of the fruits of her victory. Except in the British ' sphere of influence, ' she is practically shut outi from her nearest and best markets— a serious blow to a thickly-peopled industrial nation, only one-twelfth of whose territory consists of arable land. Russia took — ' on lease '—and holds the positions in the Liaotung Peninsula which were won from China by the blood and treasure of Japan. She holds Manchuria in military! occupation, and her refusal to guarantee the withdrawal of her troops from that province— a withdrawal stipulated by treaty— was one of the matters that led to the present war. Her attempt to control Korea and the menacing attitude of her troops along its borders were unfriendly acts that were to the last degreef menacing to Japan, whose paramount interests in ' The Hermit Nation ' Russia had formally acknowledged. Korea is to Japan what Afghanistan is to India and Belgium to northern France— its buffer State. With, Korea under Russian domination, Japan could no more retain a separate national existence than could Ireland/ with the flag of Muscovy flying over every town-Hall and barrack in Great Britain. Russia's eastward march of conquest across the forehead of Asia now meets wath its first check, simply because Japan, through its swift and marvellous renaissance of the past thirty years, has got the men and the ships to bar the way— for a time at Least. Russia fights for fresh markets and territorial aggrandisement. Japan fights for her markets, too. But she is chiefly drawing the sword for her menaced national independence. Her back is to the wall and her fight is for dear life. What the upshot of it all will be, no man can at present say. There looms up, even in these early days of the fray, the uneasy prospects of further international complications that may fan into a fiercer flame the ' dead coals of war ' thiat Russia's too aggressive imperialism, has set aglow