Weekly Arizona journal-miner., 1904-02-24
UNCLE SAM'S POSITION.

America's promptness in urging the powers to join it in attempting to localize the war is commanding all most as much of the worlds attention as are Japan's swift and heavy blows against Russia. The advantage which Japan gained by her victories. on the first and the second days of the war are being followed up. Her troops are pouring into Korea from two or three sides of the peninsula-by the way of Masanpho, Furan and Chemulpo. the last named being the port nearest to Seoul, Korea's capital. The capital is occupied. Masanpho ;s being fortifi- ed. From Masanpho, which is just across the Korean strait from the Jap anese shore, that narrow waterway is commanded by the guns of the mika- dos forces. Even if the Russian fleets at Port Arthur and Vladivostock showed any disposition to attempt to move out from the shelter of the guns of the forts at those points, they would not be able to get through the strait in either direction. Communi- cation by water between those two fortified points, by far the strongest in Russian Aria, is cut off The whole of Korea is open to the invasion of the Japanese
 D,,A l.o ,sv ,F+ hn S. to guard against some of the pOssibil ities and eventualities of the War. Secretary Hays note to the powers does not aim to hamper the activities of either beligerent to any embarrass- ing degree. Nor does it threaten the complications for the United States which some of the yellow newspapers in New York, St. Louis and other places in the country imagine, or pre- tend they imagine. Neither Korea nor Manchuria is included in the 8one of neutrality which Roosevelt and Hay have in view. They want to kept the war out of the part of China which is still under the sway of Pekin. Should Russia extend her operations into China, this might pro- yoke a rising5in that country against all foreigners, which might lead to atrocities like those perpetrated by the Boxers, and thus provoke interna- tional complications Iand render nec- essary another march on Pekin like that of 1900 When the Chinamen get aroused they make no discrimina- tions between men with white skins. The American, the Englishman and the German in China might find that country as hot as the Russian would. Atrocities on missionaries, merchants and other peaceable foreigners in the empire would stand chance to be precipitated, and the scenes of four years ago be repeated.
 The president and the secretary of state want to prevent any such event ualities. 1t was the Boxer rising that gave Russia the preteXt 7under which she seized and holds Manchuria. The present war is due chiefly to the op- portunity for territorial aggrandize- ment which the Muscovite embraced in 1900. Roosevelt and Hay know these things, if their American critics do not. These things are also known in every chancellery in Europe, and this is why the secretary's note has been received with favor in London, Berlin, Vienna and Paris, for Paris is in sympathy with the general pur- pose of the note, although it says that it wants to steer clear of anything which would be calculated to embar- rass Russia. Of course, the severest of the war is still to come The Rus sian is poor sailor. He always has been, and he will probably remain so. But when he has solid ground under his feet he is a sturdy fighter. He has proven this in many wars in the two centuries separating their con- flicts with Charles XII. of Sweden and Abdul Hamid of Turkey Man for man, the Japanese are probably bet ter fighters and campaigners than the Russians on land as on water, and will defeat them in the end. The United States, however, in the interest of civilization and humanity, wants to keep the war within as narrow bounds as possible, to hold the Chinese ports open to the world while the war is under way and to prevent disorder and massacres of foreigners in China during the war and afterward. The Administration at Washington can laugh at the assaults of its yellow critics among the American press and politicians. Globe Democrat.