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Updated: June 15, 2025
*The War in the Far East, by the Military Correspondent of "The Times." To have left the Japanese in undisturbed possession of the neck of the Liaotung peninsula would have been to abandon Port Arthur to its fate.
The Treaty of Portsmouth recognized Japan's "paramount political, military, and economic interests" in Korea; provided for the simultaneous evacuation of Manchuria by the contracting parties; transferred to Japan the lease of the Liaotung peninsula, held by Russia from China, together with that of the Russian railways south of Kwanchengtsz and all collateral mining or other privileges; ceded to Japan the southern half of Saghalien, the fiftieth parallel of latitude to be the boundary between the two parties; secured fishing-rights for Japanese subjects along the coasts of the seas of Japan, Okhotsk, and Bering; laid down that the expense incurred by the Japanese for the maintenance of the Russian prisoners during the war should be reimbursed by Russia, less the outlays made by the latter on account of Japanese prisoners, by which arrangement Japan obtained a payment of some four million sterling $20,000,000, and provided that the contracting parties, while withdrawing their military force from Manchuria, might maintain guards to protect their respective railways, the number of such guards not to exceed fifteen per kilometre of line.
Japan and the whole world believed that the Liaotung Peninsula was made over to China in perpetuity. It soon appeared that the Czar and his Ministers had other views, and that, having used France and Germany for the purpose of warning off Japan, they were preparing schemes for the subjection of Manchuria to Russian influence.
Kao-sung, then the Tang Emperor, despatched a general, Su Ting-fang, at the head of an army of two hundred thousand men. There was now no long and tedious overland march round the littoral of the Gulf of Pechili and across Liaotung.
Under the Manchus they had seen the loss of Korea, the Liaotung, Formosa, and, in a sense, of Manchuria itself; they were apprehensive of German designs in Shantung, of Japanese in Fuhkien. The feeling that the country was in danger helped both sides to be of one mind.
The fourth moved up the Liaotung peninsula, and, having seized Kaiping, advanced against Niuchwang, where it joined hands with the second column. The fifth crossed from Port Arthur to Weihaiwei, which it captured."
On another occasion, off the western coast of the Liaotung, we came upon a fleet of junks, craft engaged in coast trade, I presume. Their crews ran them ashore and escaped, whilst the Japanese fired the stranded junks with shells, the officers amusing themselves by sighting the guns and betting on the shots. When a satisfactory bonfire had been created we steamed away.
The war between China and Japan in 1894-5, terminating in the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which ceded to Japan the Liaotung Peninsula, showed Russia that if she was not to be forestalled she must be up and doing.
Hitherto her programme had been to push southward from Vladivostok along the coast of Korea, but she had now suddenly leaped Korea and found access to the Pacific by the Liaotung peninsula. Nothing was wanting to establish her as practical mistress of Manchuria except a plausible excuse for garrisoning the place. Such an excuse was furnished by the Boxer rising, in 1900.
The second column diverged westward from the Yalu, and, marching through southern Manchuria, reached Haicheng, whence it advanced to the capture of Niuchwang. The third landed on the Liaotung peninsula, and, turning southward, carried Talien and Port Arthur by assault.
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