“The Awakening of Japan” (Okakura); “The White Peril in the Far East” (Gulick); “Dai Nippon” (Dyer), chap. xix.; “The Spirit of the Orient” (Knox); and “The Future of Japan” (Watson). [Illustration: THE NAVAL HERO OF THE WAR ADMIRAL TŌGŌ] 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.