The Russo-Japanese Conflict
Its Causes and Issues
9781465622563
330 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The issues of the conflict that forms the topic of this little volume are bound inevitably to influence the future of the civilized world for many years. Dr. Asakawa presents them with a logical thoroughness that reminds us of the military operations of his countrymen now in evidence elsewhere, and recalls very pleasantly to my own mind the sane and accurate character of his scholastic work while a student at Yale. It is the sort of presentation which a great subject needs. It is content with a simple statement of fact and inference. It is convincing because of its brevity and restraint. The generous and almost passionate sympathy of our countrymen for Japan in this crisis of her career has aroused some speculation and surprise even amongst ourselves. The emotion is, doubtless, the outcome of complex causes, but this much is obvious at present: the past half-century has brought both America and Japan through experiences strikingly similar, and their establishment at the same moment as new world Powers has afforded both the same view of their older competitors for first rank among nations. Both have earned their centralized and effective governments after the throes of civil war; both have built navies and expanded their foreign commerce; both have arrested the belated and rather contemptuous attention of Europe by success in foreign wars. No state of Christendom can appreciate so well as America the vexation of enduring for generations the presumption or the patronage of those European courts who have themselves been free for less than a century from the bonds that Napoleon put upon the entire Continental group; and Japan has suffered under the same observance. With the acknowledgment of the existence of these two Powers of the first class on either shore of the Pacific, the bottom drops out of that system whereon was based the diplomacy of nineteenth-century Europe, and the jealousy with which they are both regarded establishes a certain rapprochement between the two newly arrived nations. The attitude of the American people does not appear to me to be greatly influenced by prejudice against Russia. It is likely, indeed, that we had less to fear directly from the ambition of the Great Colossus than any other state. Yet we have been among the first to discern that Japan is doing the world’s work if, by reducing the pressure of Russia’s assault upon Eastern Asia, she removes China in the crisis of her awakening from the list of those derelict states whose present decrepitude offers such deplorable temptation to the military nations of the West. There would seem to be fresh need, moreover, of convincing modern statesmen that a policy of conducting diplomatic intercourse by means of tergiversation and lies is unprofitable in the long run, and therefore unjustified by the most cynical school of political ethics. Without debating the righteousness of her pretensions, it is obvious that Russia cannot proceed further in her headway without materially affecting the legitimate ambitions of other peoples of proved vitality, nor can her characteristic diplomacy secure success without debauching the political morality of Christendom. While apprehension of Russian aims need not involve dislike of the Russian people, we have an abiding idea in this country that both alike lie under a necessity of chastisement, and that Japan, as the only nation now really at home on the Pacific, is the hand to hold the rod. In conclusion—if I may be allowed to extend these reflections a little further—the situation before us suggests the possibility that Asia may at this moment be passing the threshold of a renascence similar to that which awakened Europe at the opening of the sixteenth century from the lethargy of her dark ages.
