The case is particularly striking; for every one felt that the real object of the war was in the abstract unlimited, that it was in fact to decide whether Russia or Japan was to be the predominant power in the Far East. Like the Franco-German War of 1870 it had all the aspect of what the Germans call "a trial of strength." Such a war is one which above all appears incapable of decision except by the complete overthrow of the one Power or the other. There was no complication of alliances nor any expectation of them. The Anglo-Japanese Treaty had isolated the struggle. If ever issue hung on the sheer fighting force of the two belligerents it would seem to have been this one. After the event we are inclined to attribute the result to the moral qualities and superior training and readiness of the victors. These qualities indeed played their part, and they must not be minimised; but who will contend that if Japan had tried to make her war with Russia, as Napoleon made his, she could have fared even as well as he did? She had no such preponderance as Clausewitz laid down as a condition precedent to attempting the overthrow of her enemy--the employment of unlimited war.
Fortunately for her the circumstances did not call for the employment of such extreme means. The political and geographical conditions were such that she was able to reduce the intangible object of asserting her prestige to the purely concrete form of a territorial objective. The penetration of Russia into Manchuria threatened the absorption of Korea into the Russian Empire, and this Japan regarded as fatal to her own position and future development. Her power to maintain Korean integrity would be the outward and visible sign of her ability to assert herself as a Pacific Power. Her abstract quarrel with Russia could therefore be crystallised into a concrete objective in the same way as the quarrel of the Western Powers with Russia in 1854 crystallised into the concrete objective of Sebastopol.
In the Japanese case the immediate political object was exceptionally well adapted for the use of limited war. Owing to the geographical position of Korea and to the vast and undeveloped territories which separate it from the centre of Russian power, it could be practically isolated by naval action. Further than this, it fulfilled the condition to which Clausewitz attached the greatest importance--that is to say, the seizure of the particular object so far from weakening the home defence of Japan would have the effect of greatly increasing the strength of her position. Though offensive in effect and intention it was also, like Frederick's seizure of Saxony, a sound piece of defensive work. So far from exposing her heart, it served to cover it almost impregnably. The reason is plain. Owing to the wide separation of the two Russian arsenals at Port Arthur and Vladivostock, with a defile controlled by Japan interposed, the Russian naval position was very faulty. The only way of correcting it was for Russia to secure a base in the Straits of Korea, and for this she had been striving by diplomatic means at Seoul for some time. Strategically the integrity of Korea was for Japan very much what the integrity of the Low Countries was for us, but in the case of the Low Countries, since they were incapable of isolation, our power of direct action was always comparatively weak. Portugal, with its unrivalled strategical harbour at Lisbon, was an analogous case in our old oceanic wars, and since it was capable of being in a measure isolated from the strength of our great rival by naval means we were there almost uniformly successful. On the whole it must be said that notwithstanding the success we achieved in our long series of wars waged on a limited basis, in none of them were the conditions so favourable for us as in this case they were for Japan. In none of them did our main offensive movement so completely secure our home defence. Canada was as eccentric as possible to our line of home defence, while in the Crimea so completely did our offensive uncover the British Islands, that we had to supplement our movement against the limited object by sending our main fighting fleet to hold the exit of the Baltic against the danger of an unlimited counter-stroke.[8]