JAPAN AND RUSSIA IN CONFLICT.
From the night of the murder of his consort until his escape, four
months later, to the Russian legation, the sovereign of Corea was to
all intents and purposes a prisoner in his own palace. Unable to trust
anybody and feeling in constant danger, he sought the American
missionaries for food, for companionship, and even for protection. [61]
To him the new Government consisted of his jailers. The Corean people,
sympathizing with their King, hated the Japanese all the more, for they
felt that their sovereign was a virtual prisoner in the hands of the
Tai-wen Kun and the pro-Japanese conspirators. Under these
circumstances, he determined to break the palace jail. On the morning
of February 11, 1896, according to a plan elaborated by the women and
arranged with the Russians, he entered one of the ordinary box chairs
in which female servants are carried. A few minutes later, pale and
trembling, the King of Corea knocked at the north gate of the legation
of Russia and was promptly admitted. It has been insisted that “no
Russian had been to the palace or near it, nor had any Russian been to
any of the public offices,” yet by some curious coincidence the Russian
legation guards had been increased on the evening of the 10th by nearly
one hundred men from the Czar’s men-of-war at Chemulpo. Furthermore,
the Russians welcomed not only the King but later also the Crown Prince
and the Queen Dowager.
His Majesty was scarcely within the walls of his new shelter before he
issued an edict against his “rebel cabinet,” ordering his soldiers to
“cut off their heads at once and bring them,” but in the afternoon
another edict decreed that the six traitors should be degraded and
delivered to the courts for trial. This royal order was the signal for
another outburst of riot, savagery, and bloodshed. The Corean prime
minister and the Minister of Agriculture were killed and their corpses
mutilated and dragged round the streets. The prisons were emptied and
the innocent and guilty alike released. Sixty-six Japanese, mostly
workmen on the telegraphs, were murdered and the line partially
destroyed.
The pro-Japanese party, beginning with the bloody morning of October 8,
1895, when Queen Min was murdered, had been in power during four
months, during which time a tremendous blow was dealt to the prestige
of Japan in Corea. For eleven months the King transacted the national
business in the Russian legation buildings, going only occasionally to
the palace to give audiences to the foreign envoys. One of these from
the Mikado presented a claim of indemnity for $146,000 for his subjects
slain during the riot.
The flight of Corea’s sovereign was like that pictured in the proverb
“from the frying pan into the fire.” In fierce reality, it was escape
from bloody to inky tyranny, from an iron to a silken chain; but in
both cases it was humiliation and slavery. While the guest of the
Russians, the King paid well his bill as tenant by signing a concession
to his hosts, permitting them to cut timber “in the Yalu valley.” The
Russian Government liberally interpreted this document, according to
the vast scale of Muscovite geography, as meaning the whole basin
drained by the Yalu and its tributaries, that is, a region half as
large as Corea. The Russians thus obtained for a year’s rent of part of
their legation buildings a lien on Corean property valued at fifty
millions of dollars.
Revolutions do not go backward, and the general proceeding of the
Government was along the line of progress. The external reforms are
particularly noticeable in the capital, in which Corean officers
trained in Washington have greatly improved the streets, the methods of
cleaning and the drainage. The police and soldiery were uniformed and
disciplined, and preparations made for a national census. The
untrustworthy “census” of Seoul showed a population of 144,626 in
27,527 houses, and in the suburbs 75,189 in 18,093 houses, or a total
of 219,815, and of houses 45,350, in which district are 36 Buddhist
temples with 442 priests and 204 nuns. The original width of the
streets, as laid out in 1392, of 55 feet, has been regained over many
miles of the city thoroughfares. Foreign trade steadily increased.
American capital and energy helped to make what was once one of the
filthiest and most unprogressive cities of the Far East a clean and
attractive place, bright with electric lights and railway and modern
water-works. A railroad was built from the seaport to the capital and
opened for traffic September 1, 1899. The steel bridge, made at
Chattanooga, Tenn., spanning the Han River is nearly a mile long. The
electroliers give light to the palace and to part of the city of Seoul.
The trolley line, besides traversing the city, runs to the mausoleum of
the Queen, which has been built in superb style. There her scant
remains, escorted by a vast procession characterized in all its
features by the old barbaric grandeur of Corea, were laid with
appropriate ceremonies.
In the spring of 1896 the Independence Club, with a membership of over
2,000, was formed. It was composed entirely of natives actively
interested in social and material development as well as in the
independence of Corea. On October 21st the cornerstone of Independence
Arch was laid on a site but a few yards distant from the old Chinese
Gate under which the ambassadors of China had for centuries received
the vassalage of the Corean sovereign. It is a structure in stone,
alike of architectural beauty and of political significance. The
subsequent history of this club and of the general movement, in which
the publication of a daily newspaper in both English and native script,
The Korean Independent, were prominent features, is not a happy one. It
showed clearly that independence or freedom must be something more than
a word, in order to bring forth the fruits seen in America or among the
nations that have most cultivated liberty, safeguarded by law. In this
Seoul movement the seed may have been good, but good and well prepared
soil did not exist. Rock, brambles, and the beaten road of bad
precedent, in which Corea is so rich, received the sower’s hopes. The
movement ended in sedition or evaporated. Nevertheless, it was vastly
better than the Seoul mobs that so often dictated imperial policy to
the ministers of the Government. As late as May, 1902, the former
members of the Independence Club were being arrested and executed. More
promising in ultimate results was the celebration on September 2d of
the forty-fifth birthday of the King by a great gathering of Corean
Christians in the pavilion near the old Chinese Gate.
After a stay of one year and nine days, the King left his Russian
quarters and took up his residence in the new palace of Kyeng-wun,
built in 1896 in the western part of the city, where are gathered the
foreign legations and residences, some of them very handsome and
substantial.
Corea, being now free and independent, between the two great empires of
Japan and China, and Corean conceit of national history and antiquity,
real or supposed, being never at any time lacking, it was thoroughly
appropriate and financially very profitable for the yangban and palace
officials to take measures to proclaim the once “little outpost state”
an “empire,” and their sovereign an “emperor.” Besides suffering from
imperialism in an acute form, the Corean office-holders knew well the
significance of this nominally political act, in relation to their own
fortunes; for in the assumption of the King of Corea of the title of
Emperor, $100,000 was taken out of the treasury to celebrate the event,
most of which, as a matter of course, went into the pockets of the
King’s faithful servants. His Majesty protested in vain against the
proceedings, but finally yielded gracefully. At 3 A.M. on October 12,
1896, with great pomp and state, before the altars of the Spirits of
the Land, the King assumed the title of Emperor of Ta Han, or the Great
Han—in distinction from the ancient San Han. “The King is dead, long
live the Emperor.”
This, too, was the time of Russia’s political dominance, when a Russian
military commission of fourteen were drilling the Corean military and
when the Minister of Foreign Affairs at Seoul and the Russian envoy,
Mr. Speyer, signed an agreement, November 5th, by which Dr. McLeavy
Brown, the Englishman in charge of the national finances—able,
faithful, and unterrified—should be ousted and a Russian, Mr. Kuril
Alexieff, put in his place. Mr. Brown’s contract not having expired, he
refused to vacate his post, and a large British and Japanese fleet
having appeared off Chemulpo, he was able to maintain his ground. The
three countries, Russia, Great Britain, and Japan, made an agreement
that Mr. Brown should remain in office and that a Russian and a
Japanese commissioner of customs should share in the collection of
foreign duties at the ports. On December 23, 1897, a telegram was
received from the Czar of Russia recognizing the Emperor of Corea,
whereat the imperial party in Seoul was greatly elated. This whole
incident illustrates the rather theatrical methods of Russian diplomacy
in Corea during the past twenty years, showing how entirely her
interests were military and strategic, but not commercial, she having
usually scarcely a score, and never at any time a hundred, of subjects
in the empire commercially engaged, and only a few fishermen who are
whale hunters on the coast. One Baron Guntzburg was busy as a promoter
of Russian interests, and the wife of the Russian minister was not
inactive in social affairs and even as an influencer of political
action.
It was not long before there were signs of a popular reaction against
Russia. On January 22, 1898, an attempt was made to assassinate Kim,
the native Russian interpreter. By March 10th this feeling had taken
form in a great anti-Russian demonstration, which ended in the
apparently total though not real withdrawal of Russian influence in the
peninsula. The military commission soon after departed and the
Russo-Corean Bank was closed. After much excitement, Russia and Japan,
on April 25th, agreed on a modus vivendi, both recognizing the
sovereignty of Corea and engaging to refrain from direct interference
in her internal affairs. No military or financial adviser was to be
nominated without mutual agreement, and Russia bound herself not to
impede the commercial relations between Japan and Corea. It was evident
(probably in large measure on account of Russia’s new interests in
Manchuria) that she considered Corea for the present beyond her sphere
of influence. No serious revival of the claims of Russia to any part of
Corea were made again openly until 1903. When the correspondence
between Tokio and St. Petersburg, leading to the war of 1904, opened,
the ambitions of Russia were seen to be serious and all-embracing.
The first year of the Corean empire was completed after the celebration
of the King’s birthday with unusual demonstrations of loyalty. The
founder’s day (that of Ki-tsze, or Ki-ja, whose tomb and temple are at
Ping-an and which suffered during the war of 1894) and the 506th
anniversary of the establishment of the dynasty, as well as the
celebration of the coronation, were honored with unusual
demonstrations, including the illumination of the capital. This year
was noted for a revival of Confucianism among the yangban, Buddhism
having already enjoyed a “recrudescence”—both systems being galvanized
into a similitude of life by the powerful induction, and evidences,
both in leaven and bloom, of the new faith. On the whole, the year 1898
was characterized by an intense conservative reaction in the Government
and by an absence of important diplomatic or political events, except
the chronic local rebellions in the provinces and the plots of rivals
and partisans in the capital. Notwithstanding that the solar calendar
had been adopted in 1895, and had been officially observed, the people
still celebrate New Year’s Day with a fortnight of oldtime rejoicings,
merrymakings, and customs according to the lunar calendar.
The year 1899 was one of comparative quiet in the capital and
provinces. During the Boxer agitation in China, there was danger of
eruptions across the border which were duly guarded against, and a
Russian escort of fifty soldiers to the refugee Danish missionaries
from China was given free passage. Corea virtually joined the allies
marching to Peking, by giving aid and comfort in the form of a thousand
bags of cleaned rice, two thousand bags of flour, and several hundred
cases of cigarettes.
In August, 1899, the written constitution of the kingdom was issued,
the nine articles of which declare the absolute power of the King. It
cannot be said that either the Coreans, the foreign diplomatic corps,
or the world at large took this giving of a constitution as a very
serious matter. To the special “imperial” envoy despatched from Seoul
to Tokio, Japan flatly refused to promise the complete neutrality of
Corea. Nevertheless, Corean subjects are expected to bow down and
worship (either in the old English sense of the term or with more
profound significance) the picture of the Emperor as in other pagan or
semi-civilized countries. A memorial tablet and pagoda “to commemorate
the virtues of his Majesty” was begun—on a day significant in the
West—April 1, 1902. These will be in the main street at the junction of
Palace Street in Seoul.
It was noted as a great event in the history of a country that has
never given very serious attention to its high-roads, that Dr. W. B.
Magill, an American missionary, drove a horse and carriage from Gensan
to Seoul. A system of lighthouses was decided upon October 31, 1901.
The fiftieth anniversary of the Emperor’s birthday was celebrated
December 7th, silver commemorative medals being given to each guest at
the palace. A Corean band of musicians, trained by Mr. Franz Eckhart, a
German, who arrived in the country February 19, 1901, played two pieces
of foreign music very creditably to themselves and their instructor. On
July 1, 1902, the Corean national hymn, an adaptation by Franz Eckhart,
was published. This German musician had already made a good record in
Japan.
On May 30, 1902, the Emperor entered the Society of the Hall of Aged
Men, having completed the first year of the sixth decade of his life
(51 years), the foreign representatives being entertained at breakfast.
Prominent among these, in influence and ability, was the American
minister, Dr. Horace Newton Allen, born in Delaware, Ohio, in 1868, and
resident in Corea since the summer of 1884, when he introduced modern
methods of healing and surgery. He accompanied the first legation of
Chō-sen in Washington. There he was appointed secretary to the American
legation in Seoul, and since 1890 has been the chief guardian of
American interests in Corea, being made minister in July, 1896. During
the time of the Boxer insurrection in China, when the movement
threatened to spread into Corea, he was especially alert in
precautionary measures of safety. Previous to the outbreak of the
Russo-Japanese war, he secured the presence of a guard of American
marines in Seoul by which American rights, personal and commercial,
were thoroughly secured.
Events during the year 1903 showed a steady movement toward an
inevitable end and pointed to the impending crisis between Russia and
Japan. The situation in Seoul was dominated by Yi Yong Ik and Yi Keun
Tak, who were in close communication with Port Arthur and the Russian
authorities at that place. Their high-handed financial and other
schemes, in opposition to the Japanese efforts at securing a stable
currency, came to naught after severe pecuniary loss to natives and
foreigners and the serious disturbance of trade. The Russians, on April
11, 1901, had secured a twenty-year extension of timber cutting and
prosecuted vigorously their advances in the north. They now refused to
allow the Corean Government any supervision over their work of denuding
the forests in the Yalu valley. In May one of the Czar’s gunboats
anchored in the harbor of Yongampo, which the Russians called Port
Nicholas, and soon after began what were believed to be fortifications.
A guard of twenty-six Russian marines reinforced the legation in Seoul,
shortly after the violation by Russia of her pledge to evacuate
Manchuria. A serious riot in November between Nipponese and Muscovite
soldiers at Chemulpo foreshadowed the impending clash on a large scale
in 1904. During December Russia’s influence at Seoul blocked all
attempts of the foreign representatives to have Wiju (Ai-chiu) opened
as a port of trade.
At this stage in the nation’s history, the once white-coated hermits
who had hitherto lived under their own top-knots, and often under hats
that were as big as a haycock, began numerously to go abroad as
students. Scores of them have been in America and Europe and hundreds
in Japan. In December, 1902, a party of nearly one hundred emigrants,
men, women, and children, started for Hawaii. All of these were
admitted, except eight who were sent back because of contagious eye
disease. Other incidents showed healthful movement in a long-stagnant
mass of population. Light and vision are coming to a people blind to
nearly everything modern.
Of all the moral and reformatory forces at work, that of active
Christianity leads. The missionary pioneers, Allen, Underwood,
Scranton, Appenzeller, Heron, Gale, Jones, Hulbert, and others,
mastered the language and opened the treasures of native literature and
history. Already the list of aids to the vernacular and of their
writings descriptive of country and people is a very respectable one.
These works, the fruit of earnest toil, contrast superbly in the
quality of truthfulness with the sketchy and ephemeral writings of
tourists and hasty travellers. With other scholars and civil servants
of various governments, they sustain the editor in furnishing the
richly freighted pages of the Korea Review, and have formed the Korea
Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, from which already several
creditable volumes of “Transactions” have appeared to delight the
serious student, who values perspective and tone in his mind-pictures
of this once hermit nation.
Already the representatives of the Christian brotherhoods of
English-speaking peoples have their row of graves in which sleep
heroes, veterans, and some who “fell at the first fire.” Beginning in
1884, their prospective celebration of a double decennial, in
September, 1904, was postponed under the clouds of war. Besides healing
and helping, translating the Scriptures, and teaching the great
uplifting truths which centre around the idea of one living and true
God, gathering thousands of souls into churches and furnishing Gospel
nurture, they have taught the natives the grand lesson of self-support
and self-propagation through a first-hand knowledge of the Bible. War,
persecution, and manifold trials have tested and proved the quality of
the converts, who in sincerity and power to stand in the midst of
temptations are perhaps second to none in any field.
It was evident at the opening of the year 1904 that Japanese armies
were once again to tread the soil of Corea, this time the war being not
between China and Japan, but between Japan and Russia. Against the
Colossus of the North and Russian rapacity, the Island Empire had a
long list of grievances. As far back as 1861 a Russian man-of-war had,
not without shedding the blood of its defenders, landed marines on the
Island of Tsushima. There they had planted seed and begun the formation
of a settlement looking to permanent occupation. In those days of
hermitage, weakness, and fear, nothing could be done by the Japanese
authorities at Yedo; but Katsu Awa, the Shogun’s most far-seeing
statesman, called the attention of the British minister at Peking to
this invasion, and a British naval force was sent to compel the
Russians to retire. A few years later Russia took possession of
Saghalien, after the usual preliminary of “joint occupation,”
compelling the Japanese to be satisfied with the Kurile Islands below
50° 56′ of north latitude. This was in the year 1875, but long before
that, Japanese statesmen, especially Okubo, had penetrated the designs
of Russia. The formation, out of feudal elements, of her national army
in 1871 and the first of this character since the twelfth century, was
largely with a view of defending Japan against Russian and other
aggressions. On the return of the Japanese embassy from its trip round
the world in 1873, Okubo, Kido, and others opposed the Corean war
project (as we have seen in Chapter XLVII), because a war with Corea
then meant playing into Russia’s hands. Something of the popular fear
of Russia over the Japanese nation, which hung like an advancing black
cloud, was seen in the attack by a fanatical policeman on the Crown
Prince, now the Czar of Russia, during his visit to Japan in 1891, but
the Government in Tokio, even in the person of the Mikado, besides
making ample apology, scrupulously maintained propriety in all dealings
with Russia, at home and in Corea, living on terms of perfect
friendship. It was therefore a stunning disappointment, though a not
wholly unexpected procedure, when Russia, in 1895, summoning to her aid
the French and Germans, deprived the Japanese of the fruits of their
victories in the war with China, by compelling the islanders to
relinquish all territory on the mainland of Asia, and to be content
with Formosa and an indemnity. Exhausted as they were by the war with
China, yet had the Japanese been possessed of five battle-ships, they
would have declared war upon Russia as an abominable intermeddler and
aggressor. The force of circumstances required them to swallow their
humiliation, but as the Japanese, any more than certain Christian
nations, never forgive an injury, they began immediately to gird
themselves for the coming and inevitable struggle with the Power that
seemed bent upon their destruction. When the Boxer uprising in 1899
called forth the military energies of eight nations, the Japanese
Government at first held back, lest its motives in being too forward
might be questioned. When finally urged to lead the van of the allied
armies of rescue, Japan sent 21,000 of her ablest and best equipped
soldiers into the campaign. Their experiences on the march to Peking
were invaluable to the Japanese, for through becoming comrades with the
mujiks in the camps and on the battle-field, they learned that they had
nothing to fear from such foes when arrayed against them in anything
like an equality of numbers in war. The Japanese officer found himself
a modern man in the presence of his equals, who were men steeped in
mediæval methods of thought.
Steadily enlarging their navy and perfecting in every detail arms,
ammunition, field equipment, army hygiene, and the physical development
of their soldiers, the Japanese determined to stand for their rights,
even though this might seem like Jack challenging the giant. No longer
hermits on an island, which, having but a small fraction of arable
fertile soil, could not feed its inhabitants, so that population had to
remain stationary, the Japanese had become a nation of traders and
manufacturers, with an annual increase of population of over 500,000 a
year, with a total population of fifty millions, and with a foreign
trade that had increased 543 per cent since 1890, with a total export
trade consisting of 84.6 per cent of manufactured articles. With nearly
thirty thousand Japanese subjects in Corea, most of them married and
with homes, and with 10,000 of their people in Manchuria, they took an
interest in the affairs of Corea and Manchuria which was not like that
of the Russians, chiefly military and strategic, but which, on the
contrary, was commercial and vital. During the Boxer troubles, Russia
sent a large army into Manchuria and finally took possession of the
whole of that portion of the Chinese Empire. She promised solemnly to
all the governments interested, to vacate the country on the 9th of
October, 1903.
The world knows how this promise was broken. The correspondence between
Tokio and St. Petersburg reveals the exasperating delays of the Russian
Government, and its intention not only to remain permanently in
Manchuria but to prevent if possible Japan from having anything to do
with the matter. Russia even desired “recognition by Japan that
Manchuria is outside her sphere of special interest” and requested a
mutual engagement to establish “a neutral zone on the Corea-Manchuria
frontier, extending fifty kilometers each side into which neutral zone
neither of the contracting parties shall introduce troops without the
consent of the other,” and “the engagement on the part of Japan not to
undertake on the coast of Corea any military works capable of menacing
the freedom of navigation in the straits of Corea.”
In a word, what Japan claimed is, that “Japan has a perfect right to
demand that the independence and territorial integrity of China shall
be respected and the rights and interests of Japan in that region shall
be formally guaranteed.”
After innumerable delays and the situation growing more serious every
day, the Russians continually reinforcing their naval and military
forces in the far East, Mr. Kurino, the Mikado’s minister to St.
Petersburg, having waited for an answer since the 13th of January,
called on Count Lamsdorff at 8 P.M. February 4th for a definite reply,
which was not forthcoming. Finding that in all probability there would
be no changes in Russia’s claims of control over Manchuria and her
demand for “a buffer region between confines of direct influence and
action of the two countries in the far East,” being out of the
question, the Japanese legation was on the 10th of February withdrawn
from St. Petersburg and war began.
The Russians were already on Corean soil with three hundred Cossacks
guarding their timber cutters on the left bank of the Yalu River. Since
June, 1903, they had reinforced their army with 40,000 men and their
navy with 26 vessels, ranging from battle-ship to torpedo boat, thus
adding 83,000 tons to their sea power. Five days before, the Russian
commander at Vladivostok had notified the Japanese commercial agent
that a state of siege might be declared at any moment. With steam up,
decks cleared for action, and search-lights in use for night work, the
Russian seamen instantly replied to the fire and torpedoes of Admiral
Togo’s attack. The Japanese thus anticipated a naval raid from the
Russians, which was afterwards successfully carried out from
Vladivostok. To the Czar’s advisers in Europe actual war may have come
as a surprise. It did not come thus to his servants in the far East.
Nevertheless, within three days after the rupture of peaceful relations
the Russian war ships Variag and Koreetz had been sunk outside of the
harbor of Chemulpo by the guns of Admiral Uriu and an army landed to
begin its march northward. At Port Arthur three battle-ships and four
cruisers had been sunk or damaged by Admiral Togo’s torpedoes. The
first idea of the Japanese was to eliminate the sea power of Russia
from the scene of the seat of war. Landing her armies in Corea, at
Chemulpo, the march was made without serious opposition, until near
Wiju, the Mikado’s hosts once more stood on the banks of the Yalu, the
Rubicon of eastern Asia, confronting the forces of the White Czar.
Meanwhile, a new protocol between Japan and Corea was signed, in March,
1904, in which the stronger Power bound itself to reform the weaker
country without annexing it and to protect it without impairing its
sovereignty. Corea pledged herself, as distinctly under Japan’s
protection, to repose confidence in and to accept advice from the
Japanese Government, and to make no agreement with a third Power which
might seem to contravene the principles of the protocol. This document
made Japan the champion of Corean independence, and is in spirit and
letter the antipodes of Russia’s action in Manchuria.
The new model army in Asia, and the most modern of all armies, was in
its fitness of body and mind to cope with the problems of war in the
twentieth century, the creation of the public schools of Japan. These
soldiers, both veterans and youth, set a new standard of resourceful
valor, celerity of movement, temperance in living, ability to endure
hunger and hardship, and of self-abnegation in the presence of death.
To a Japanese patriot, life, apart from duty, has no value. On the 1st
of May, this “public school army,” under Kuroki, having crossed the
Yalu under fire, won a brilliant victory, capturing many guns and
prisoners. They had met European troops and beaten them in fair fight.
Then began the Japanese march through the old Border Gate and Feng-Wang
Chang or Phœnix Castle, and over the mountain range dividing the Yalu
from the Liao valley. The fortified passes were one after the other
carried in victorious assault, and in the early days of September both
Russian and Japanese main armies were marshalled before Liao Yang city,
southwest of the ruins of the ancient Corean stronghold, for one of the
great decisive battles of modern times and perhaps of human history.
During this time other armies were landed in Manchuria and by May 15th
Oku was in possession of the railway leading to Port Arthur. Dalny was
occupied May 26th, and later Yinkow and Niu Chwang came under the sun
banner. On August 25th Field-Marshal Oyama took command of all the
Japanese forces and the armies of Kuroki, Nodzu, and Oku.
After the great pitched battle in the early days of September, the
Mikado’s flag floated over Liao Yang, and Kuropatkin fell back on
Mukden, in masterly retreat.
From Port Arthur, girdled by a wall of fire and under a rain of shells,
the Czar’s battle-ships and cruisers made desperate efforts to escape,
only to be sunk, driven back, or, torn and riven, to seek shelter in
the ports of China, and elsewhere, their presence giving rise to
perplexing questions in international diplomacy.
As we close again, in the autumn of A.D. 1904, our story of the once
“hermit nation,” the Japanese, confronted with the practical
difficulties of assuming a real protectorate over Corea, while
nominally but sincerely striving to maintain her independence, are
still determined to control the peninsula as a vital possession. One
hundred miles of the Seoul-Fusal railway are in operation. The sound of
the blasting night and day in the deep rock-cuts near Seoul announce
their purpose to finish speedily a highway of steel to the Chinese
frontier. The real purpose of the war is the integrity of China, upon
which depends the safety of Japan, perhaps even the political salvation
of Asia.