presence of a complete Russian regiment from Port Arthur. I have it on the very best authority that the project of providing a Russian garrison for Seoul in order "to protect" the Emperor was not only debated but actually settled on several weeks before the war.

The diplomatic battle began in the spring of 1903 with some outpost work which failed to attract attention over the lease of Yongampho at the mouth of the Yalu, all of which has already been referred to at such great length that further mention is unnecessary. By October of 1903, Russian troops had begun to slip across the Yalu in respectable numbers, and to establish themselves along the banks of the waterway in pursuance of the AlexeieffPavlow policy. By December their arrangements were so complete that Russian confidence rose, and the entire programme was definitely settled. There was to be a neutral zone along the Korean side of the Yalu, which no one could fortify or occupy, but in which lumber companies, whose charters were of old date, might do much as they pleased. Some time in 1904 there would be an émeute in Seoul which would be magnified into a coup d'état; the Emperor would call for help, and a regiment of Eastern Siberian Rifles would suddenly appear from Port Arthur in the Chemulpo anchorage and land and entrain for Seoul. The Russian fleet, outnumbering the Japanese fleet in vessels of the line, would make an overpowering demonstration off the Korean coast.

The English Press might perhaps

shout blood and thunder for a while; Ministries would tremble and quake; but, as had been the case with Manchuria, it would all blow over, because the continent of Europe is solid behind Russia in the Far East, and because, if neither England nor America would fight, Japan would certainly not dare to do so. In such vague fashion were plans first laid; but it was no astonishment for those who knew the Russians that in the hurry and skurry everything went wrong, and the biter was bit.

Meanwhile the Japanese negotiations, instead of continuing so peacefully and so slowly that they made no progress at all, as Admiral Alexeieff and his entourage, esteeming they knew something of the ways of the East, thought would be the case, became more and more insistent and peremptory in their tone; until by January, 1904, there were times when they completely monopolised the attention of Admiral Alexeieff, and forced him to pay only a secondary attention to the most important work of

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consolidating." By the beginning of January Port Arthur regiments were breaking camp regularly and marching off to the Yalu, as a matter of course, because there was nothing else for it. From Seoul came the persistent tick of the telegraph: "Insist, insist, and stand firm over Korea." And thus Japan's last despairing offer to consider Manchuria within the Russian sphere of influence, if Russia, on her part, would acknowledge that Korea was beyond her control, was absolutely rejected. Russia, indeed, had already made up her mind not to sacrifice, once

and for all, her hold over the timorous Korean Court, and was also just as determined to hold both banks of the Yalu in order that plans long settled on might be prosecuted. So Russia refused point blank, and was beginning to formulate counterproposals in the usual leisurely fashion characteristic of the Slav, when suddenly, to her immense surprise and consternation, the Japanese Minister at St. Petersburg informed her that negotiations were at an end. On the sixth of February the Japanese fleet left Sasebo, and by nine o'clock of the next morning the first act of war had been committed.

It will perhaps be understood how isolated is Korea from the rest of the Far East, in spite of the nominal opening-up of the country. Although there is steamer communication between Shanghai and Chemulpo and between Chemulpo and Chefoo, such steamers are few and far between, and are celebrated locally for their irregular running. Shanghai and the rest of China, in fact, may be generally called about two weeks from Korea, calculating the average time it takes for letters and newspapers to reach their destination from the coasts of China. The Russian steamers of the Volunteer and Chinese Eastern Railway Company's fleets, it is true, had opened up regular services many months before the war; but these steamer services aimed rather at uniting the Russian Far East (ie. Port Arthur, Dalny, and Vladivostok) with the long Korean seaboard than at establishing regular communication between the great commercial ports of the extreme

Orient. Because Russian coal is rather an unknown quantity, Nagasaki had to be taken generally en route, and at this Japanese port Russian interests were important. It may be, therefore, said that communication between Korea and the rest of the Far East rested with Japan; and that this communication was almost entirely in the hands of the only two large Japanese steamship companies, the Nippon Yusen Kaisha and the Osaka Shosen Kaisha. By January almost every important vessel of the fleets of these companies had been requisitioned by the Government for possible transport work; by the beginning of February Japanese communication with Korea had practically ceased to exist. If the Russian lines could be interrupted, Korea would be effectively isolated and anything might be done.

At half-past eleven on the 6th February, the first news that something had happened reached Seoul. It was nothing but a bald telegram from the Englishman in charge of the Masampo Customs, addressed to the Chief Commissioner of Customs, and read: "Heavy firing heard to seaward. Will keep you informed." Its contents did not shake the Chief Commissioner, for everybody had lived on war, or the immediate prospect of war, for many years in Korea. So he took up a telegraph form and replied in code, curtly, "Telegraph hourly." At two o'clock the Englishman in charge at Masampo attempted his second message. It was refused, the operators pointing to their useless

instruments. Japanese cavalry and gendarmes, springing from nowhere, had seized the telegraph office and cut the wires of all excepting the old Japanese military line of the 1895 war. The heel of the Korean boot was completely isolated twenty hours after Mr. Kurino, the Japanese Minister in St. Petersburg, had expressed the regrets of diplomacy that there was no further need for his presence at the Russian capital. The Japanese were working quickly.

Meanwhile at Fusan, but twenty miles from Masampo, excitement was at fever heat, and had paralysed everyone on the fatal sixth. The Moukden, a regular trader belonging to the Russian Chinese Eastern Railway Company on the run between Shanghai and Vladivostok via Nagasaki and Fusan, had entered the harbour early in the morning. The firing at sea had been faintly heard at Fusan, and the Russian captain was on shore conferring frantically with the Russian Consul and asking what it meant. A small Japanese coaster, one of those baby vessels carrying a cargo of miscellaneous merchandise, steamed in an hour or two later and brought the news that she had met a Russian vessel flying the Japanese flag, which seemed quite inexplicable. At half-past two,

Japanese sailors were seen by the look-out at the Korean Custom House rowing over from a destroyer, which had crept into the harbour; and to the general astonishment they hurriedly boarded the Moukden, and presently the signal flags fluttered