Japan’s policy toward Korea has since been unchanged; in other words, her object has always been to assist and befriend this country. It is true that at times incidents of an unpleasant nature unfortunately interfered with the maintenance of unsuspecting cordiality between the two nations. But I may conscientiously assure you that the real object of the Japanese Government has always been to render assistance to Korea in her noble endeavors to be a civilized and independent state. I am sincerely gratified to see that to-day Korea is independent and sovereign. Henceforth it will be Japan’s wish to see Korea’s independence further strengthened and consolidated; no other motive shall influence Japan’s conduct toward this country. On this point you need not entertain the slightest doubt. Japan’s good wishes for Korean independence are all the more sincere and reliable because her vital interests are bound up with those of your country. A danger to Korean independence will be a danger to Japan’s safety. So you will easily recognize that the strongest of human motives, namely self-interest, combines with neighborly feelings to make Japan a sincere well-wisher and friend of Korean independence. Let me repeat once more that Korea may rest assured of the absence of all sinister motives on Japan’s part. Friendship between two countries in the circumstances of Japan and Korea ought to be free from any trace of suspicion and doubt as to each other’s motives and intentions. In conclusion, allow me to express my heartful hope that you may long remain in office and assiduously exert yourselves for the good of your sovereign and country. With the coming of M. Pavloff to Korea as its Representative, in December, 1898, the diplomacy of Russia in this part of the Orient abandoned the traditional method of patient, persistent effort at advance, together with more or less perfect assimilation of the new tribes and peoples brought under its control, and adopted the more brilliant but dangerous policy of a swift promotion of obviously selfish schemes by a mixture of threats and cajolery. It is not even now certain how far this policy was supported by, or even known to, the home government of Russia. The war with Japan, to which these acts led steadily and irresistibly forward, seemed, only in its actual results, to reveal at all fully to this Government what its representatives had been doing in the Far East. Among the various attempts of M. Pavloff and his coadjutors to obtain concessions for themselves and for their country, those which looked toward the establishment of a Russian naval base in certain localities of the Korean coast were threatening to Japan. “But Russia’s conduct on the Northern frontier of Korea along the Tumen and Yalu rivers was”—to quote again from Hershey—“the greatest source of anxiety to Japan.”