Excerpt from Japanese Intervention in the Russian Far East

The conflict between Tsarist Russia and Japan, which culmi usted in actual warfare, was brought about by the identity of the policies of the two countries in Korea and Manchuria, and in part in Mongolia. Both sides, although they professed to the outer world the principles of independence, were actually aiming not only to gain a foothold in those regions, but to establish themselves there both economically and politically. When J a pan, having acquired rights to Liao-tung as a result of the war with China in 1894, was obliged to return this district to China, after the protests of Russia, Germany and France, this step, in which the chief part was played by Russia, could of course not gain the sympathies of the Japanese. All the more was this the case, when Russia soon after (in 1896) obtained a valuable concession in Manchuria, namely, the zone for the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway, two years later obtained the lease of the aforesaid Liao-tung (port Arthur) and then, after a further two years, under cover of the Boxer uprising, ocen pied Manchuria. The effort of Russia in 1901 to legalize this seizure immediately encountered the opposition of Japan. The real threat involved of as successful an aggression on the part of Tsarist Russia in Korea, manifestly imposed upon Japan the ineluctable conflict with Russia unless Japan should be will ing to reconcile herself to defeat.

But the events following upon the defeat of Tsarist Russia revealed the fact that Japan, emboldened by her victory, already harbored desires of another kind: she not only was not satisfied with the victory in Korea and Southern Manchuria, not only had designs on Northern Manchuria, but began to display open tendencies to fortify herself on the Far Eastern shores of Rus sia itself.

These tendencies at first manifested themselves in two dirce tions: in the effort to obtain the dominating influence in the fisheries rights in the Far East and in the attempt to force a path, first, to the Chinese Sungari, then to the Amur, afterlam obtained navigation rights. In 1907 a fisheries con vention was concluded, in accordance with the terms of the Portsmouth treaty, but the Japanese were not satisfied with the rights granted to them to undertake fishing on the Russian shores of the Okhotsk Sea, the Japan Sea and the Behring Sea (excluding bights and rivers), on terms similar to those eu joyed by Russian citizens, but also desired to have fisheries rights in the Russian bights and rivers, where, in view of the weakness of Russian capital in the Far East, such rights would be equivalent to a complete predominance of the Japanese in Russian Far Eastern fisheries.

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