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On April 16th the Japanese declared the Dairen Conference broken up. The Japanese delegates left for Tokyo, and Japanese troops remain in the zone established by the agreement of March 29th. Readers will believe one or other of these official statements according to their prejudices, while those who wish to think themselves impartial will assume that the truth lies somewhere between the two.
The Times of April 27th contains both the Japanese and the Russian official accounts of this break up. The Japanese statement is given in The Times as follows: The Japanese Embassy communicates the text of a statement given out on April 20th by the Japanese Foreign Office on the Dairen Conference.
The war ended with a qualified victory for Japan. This part of the railway, with a few branch lines, has since then been called the South Manchurian Railway. From Dairen to Changchun is 437 miles; Changchun is 150 miles south of Harbin. The Japanese use Dairen as the commercial port for Manchuria, reserving Port Arthur for purely naval purposes.
The Japanese from time to time announce that they have decided to withdraw, but they simultaneously send fresh troops. A conference between them and the Chita Government has been taking place at Dairen, and from time to time announcements have appeared to the effect that an agreement has been reached or was about to be reached. But on April 16th the Japanese broke up the Conference.
The Far Eastern Delegation left Dairen. Agreement was reached between the Japanese and Russian Delegations on March 30th on all points of the general treaty, but when the question of military evacuation was reached the Japanese Delegation proposed a formula permitting continued Japanese intervention.
Only a little more than four miles from Port Arthur is the city of Dalney, also called Dairen. It is a beautiful little city of fifty or sixty thousand people with a good street car system and many modern buildings. On landing I went to the Yamato hotel and found comfortable quarters at a reasonable price. The South Manchurian railway operates a string of these Yamato hotels.
The 11th Division of the troops in Siberia was originally to be relieved during April, but if the Dairen Conference had progressed satisfactorily, the troops, instead of being relieved, would have been sent home.
The only conclusion from this attitude of the Chita Government is that they lacked a sincere effort to bring the negotiations to fruition, and the Japanese Government instructed its delegates to quit Dairen. The Russian official account is given by The Times immediately below the above. It is as follows: On April 16th the Japanese broke up the Dairen Conference with the Far Eastern Republic.
Handsome stations, built to accommodate traffic for fifty years to come, have been erected. In Dairen, "virtually the property of the railway company," the system has built a magnificent modern city street railways, waterworks, electric light plants, macadamized roads, and beautiful public parks.
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