It is not our purpose to discuss in detail the question of rights, as involved in these negotiations, whether from the political or the moral point of view, or to consider whether Japan’s method of initiating hostilities was in accordance with law, or with precedent as established, if such it can be said to be, by the usage of civilized nations. In both regards we believe, however, that the claims of Japan to have the right upon her side are in all important particulars defensible. But having begun the war with Russia it can be seen that to secure free passage for her troops through Korea, and to secure Korea in the rear of her troops as they passed to the front, were necessities imposed upon Japan in a yet more absolute and indisputable fashion than was the undertaking of the war itself. If it was necessary in order to maintain the integrity and free, peaceful development of Japan that, all other means having failed, she should resort to arms in the effort to check the dangerous encroachments of Russia in Manchuria and Korea, it was immediately and essentially necessary for any measure of success in this last resort, that she should gain and hold control over the conduct of the Korean Court and the Korean populace during the war. What were the nature and the habitual modes of behavior of both Court and people has already been made clear; more information on these subjects will be afforded in subsequent chapters. As to danger of treachery we may note in passing that, while friendship was being protested to the face of the Japanese in Korea, a boat was picked up in the Yellow Sea, late in January, 1904—that is, a few days before the outbreak of the war—which bore a Korean messenger with a letter to Port Arthur asking for Russian troops to be sent to Korea. The resort to valuable concessions as a bribe for foreign influence became at once, on the beginning of hostilities, more active even than before. On this latter point we quote the words of Mr. D. W. Stevens: