she studiously deferred her answers to Japan's
proposals, and while she protracted the negotiations to an extent
visibly contemptuous, she hastened to make substantial additions to
her fleet and her army in far-eastern Asia. It was impossible to
mistake her purpose. She intended to yield nothing, but to prepare
such a parade of force that her obduracy would command submission.
The only alternatives for Japan were war or permanent effacement in
Asia. She chose war.

EXTRATERRITORIAL JURISDICTION

Before passing to the story of this war, it is necessary to refer to
two incidents of Japan's foreign relations, both of which preceded
her struggle with Russia. The first was the restoration of her
judicial autonomy. It has always been regarded as axiomatic that the
subjects or citizens of Western countries, when they travel or reside
in Oriental territories, should be exempted from the penalties and
processes of the latter's criminal laws. In other words, there is
reserved to a Christian the privilege, when within the territories of
a pagan State, of being tried for penal offences by Christian judges.
In civil cases the jurisdiction is divided, the question at issue
being adjudicated by a tribunal of the defendant's nationality;
but in criminal cases jurisdiction is wholly reserved. Therefore
powers making treaties with Oriental nations establish within
the latter's borders consular courts which exercise what is called
"extraterritorial jurisdiction." This system was, of course, pursued
in Japan's case. It involved the confinement of the foreign residents
to settlements grouped around the sites of their consular courts; for
it would plainly have been imprudent that such residents should have
free access to provincial districts remote from the only tribunals
competent to control them.

This provision, though inserted without difficulty in the early
treaties with Japan, provoked much indignation among the conservative
statesmen in Kyoto. Accordingly, no sooner had the Meiji Restoration
been effected than an embassy was despatched to the Occident to
negotiate for a revision of the treaties so as to remove the clause
about consular jurisdiction, and to restore the customs tariff to the
figure at which it had stood prior to Sir Harry Parkes' naval
demonstration at Hyogo. The Japanese Government was entitled to raise
this question in 1871, for the treaties were textually subject to
revision in that year. No time was lost in desp