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The most effective local defense of a naval base is a combination of mine-fields and heavy guns, which also give protection to which the wounded vessels can retire, as the German vessels did after the North Sea battle. Unless such protection be provided, swift destroyers can complete the work that guns began, as the Japanese destroyers did, after the artillery battle at Tsushima.
As a surveying party had meanwhile been examining the sea-route by way of Quelpaert Island, the mission was enabled to reach the Tsushima Islands this time; but the local authority would not suffer them to land, or at least to stay, nor were the letters accepted, as, in the opinion of the Japanese, "the phraseology was not considered sufficiently modest."
Midway in this channel, however, lie the twin islands of Tsushima, and the space that separates them from Japan is narrowed by another island, Iki. Tsushima and Iki have belonged to Japan from time immemorial, and thus the avenues from the Pacific Ocean to the Sea of Japan are controlled by the Japanese empire.
Of the 37 ships all told that entered Tsushima Straits, only the following escaped: the cruisers Oleg, Aurora, and Jemschug reached Manila on June 3; a tug and a supply ship entered Shanghai, and another transport with plenty of coal went clear to Madagascar; only the fast cruiser Almaz and two destroyers made Vladivostok.
By the battle of Tsushima the territorial object was completely isolated by sea, and the position of Japan in Korea was rendered as impregnable as that of Wellington at Torres Vedras. All that remained was to proceed to the third stage and demonstrate to Russia that the acceptance of the situation that had been set up was more to her advantage than the further attempt to break it down.
He was thereupon sent back to await events at Tsushima, and, having remained there a year, he arrived back in Peking in the summer of 1273. The cabinet council suggested to Kublai that it would be a good thing to explain to the Japanese envoys that the occupation of Kin Chow was "only temporary," and would be removed so soon as the operations now in process against Quelpaert were at an end.
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