Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
MAP SHOWING “THE REGIONS WHERE THE INTERESTS OF THE TWO POWERS MEET”
THE RUSSO-JAPANESE CONFLICT
ITS CAUSES AND ISSUES
INTRODUCTION
The issues of the conflict that forms the topic ofthis little volume are bound inevitably to influencethe future of the civilized world for many years.Dr. Asakawa presents them with a logical thoroughnessthat reminds us of the military operations ofhis countrymen now in evidence elsewhere, and recallsvery pleasantly to my own mind the sane andaccurate character of his scholastic work while astudent at Yale. It is the sort of presentation whicha great subject needs. It is content with a simplestatement of fact and inference. It is convincingbecause of its brevity and restraint.
The generous and almost passionate sympathy ofour countrymen for Japan in this crisis of her careerhas aroused some speculation and surprise evenamongst ourselves. The emotion is, doubtless, theoutcome of complex causes, but this much is obviousat present: the past half-century has brought bothAmerica and Japan through experiences strikinglysimilar, and their establishment at the same momentas new world Powers has afforded both the sameview of their older competitors for first rank amongnations. Both have earned their centralized andeffective governments after the throes of civil war;both have built navies and expanded their foreignvicommerce; both have arrested the belated andrather contemptuous attention of Europe by successin foreign wars. No state of Christendom can appreciateso well as America the vexation of enduringfor generations the presumption or the patronageof those European courts who have themselvesbeen free for less than a century from the bondsthat Napoleon put up