more. To everyone in Japan the war was a thing of life or death: the object of all Japanese, victory. The Russian nation contained an enormous number of people who more or less openly avowed a desire for defeat because thereby the political situation at home might be improved. The conditions which made men capable of holding such views, allowing the war to have been totally unjust, the conditions which permitted the expression of such views whatever they may have indicated ethically, emphatically indicated 'unfitness to win.' Never perhaps in history has there been so marked an instance of a nation earning and deserving defeat.
We may now proceed to examine in somewhat fuller detail certain of those incidents of the war which will be valuable for all time. Of these the invasion of Korea in face of an unbeaten and nearly equal fleet especially demands attention. The situation, as has elsewhere been remarked, was in some ways not very dissimilar to the invasion of Sicily by the Romans in face of the existence of the Carthaginian fleet.[1] An extremely important point is that Russia, despite political bluff, was obviously not anxious to go to war. Carthage was in exactly that condition in her first conflict with Rome. Owing to this Rome was able to invade Sicily with impunity; and so it is perhaps wrong to accept her success as bearing on the question whether invasion in face of a hostile fleet is possible.
- ↑ See Chapter II.
