The way in which the momentous _issues_ already discussed in the introductory chapter have been at work and have steadily culminated in the present conflict is with unusual clearness and in the most instructive manner illustrated by the _historic events_ which led up to the outbreak of the war. The study of these events also appears essential for an intelligent understanding of the situation, for, in this crisis, as in many another in history, the contestants do not seem to be always conscious of even the more important issues at stake, while the events, in their main outlines, are patent to every one. The former may be found only by an analysis of facts, some of which are obscure, but the latter are narrated dramatically, from time to time as they occur or are published, in the press and in the diplomatic correspondence, so that it is little wonder that the events are often taken for the causes, even the significance, of the supreme fact to which they seem to point. The student should investigate the issues if he would know the meaning of the war, but, if he wishes to see something of the conscious attitude which the belligerents take toward the situation, perhaps no more profitable way can be found than in a study of the events through which the issues have been writing history. The conflict of Russia and Japan was foreshadowed already in the middle of the past century, when the former began to claim some of the Kurile Islands and the whole of Sakhalien, upon parts of which Japan had long exercised vague sovereign rights.[117] Presently, in 1858, Muravieff “Amurski” succeeded in creating a common proprietary right with China over the vast territory lying between the Ussuri River and the sea.[118] The same territory was, only two years later, definitively annexed[119] to Russia through the skillful diplomacy of Ignatieff, Russian Minister at Peking, who, taking advantage of China’s defeat at the hands of the allied forces of England and France, had won the favor of the Chinese Government by acting as mediator between it and the allies. The Eastern naval headquarters of Russia, which had been transferred from Peterpavlofsk in Kamchatka to Nicolaiefsk at the mouth of the Amur, was now again moved further south to Vladivostok, founded in 1860, at the southern end of the new territory. No sooner did the remote but certain pressure from the expanding northern Power begin to be felt in Japan than, in 1861, a Russian man-of-war took possession of the Japanese islands of Tsushima in the Korean straits, from which it withdrew only at the instance of the British Minister, Sir Rutherford Alcock.[120] Half a dozen years after, the island of Sakhalien was placed under a common possession between Russia and Japan, while, in 1875, the island was surrendered to Russia, Japan receiving in return the chain of sterile Chishima Islands (the Kuriles).[121] This brought the presence of Russia still nearer home to Japan than before. On the other hand,