1904 NAVAL BATTLE OF PORT ARTHUR Russia, however, bitterly charged Japan with treachery when at midnight on February 8 the main division of the Japanese fleet under Admiral Togo stole upon the unsuspecting Russian squadron at Port Arthur, and torpedoed the battleships "Retvisan" and "Cesarevitch," and the cruiser "Pallada." Togo continued the attack next day, and put the battleship "Poltava," and the cruisers "Diana," "Askold," and "Novik" out of action. This left only three Russian battleships at Port Arthur fit for action. On the same day the cruiser division of the Japanese fleet under Admiral Uriu, convoying transports of troops to Chemulpo, the port of Seoul, capital of Korea, encountered and sank the Russian cruiser "Variag" and gunboat "Korietz." The force landed at Chemulpo, the first of the three divisions of the First Japanese Army under General Kuroki, seized the strong position of Pingyang, north of Seoul, thereby securing the entire Korean peninsula to Japan throughout the war. Russia now scored her first "beat" on Japan. She made a formal declaration of war on the 10th of the month, Japan following her example upon the 11th. On the same day Japan's strong ally in the war, Russia's own incompetency, caused the first of a long series of heart-breaking disasters. The Russian torpedo transport "Yenisei," while laying minesat the entrance of Talienwan Bay, northeast of Port Arthur, was sunk by the accidental explosion of a mine. Russia became alarmed at this and other evidences of incompetency, and sent her best talent to the front, Admiral Makaroff to supersede Admiral Stark at Port Arthur, and General Kuropatkin, Minister of War, to command the land forces in Manchuria. On the 14th of the month the Russian commander of the cruiser "Boyarin" beached her to escape an attack of Japanese torpedo-boat destroyers. On the 21st the Viceroy, Admiral Alexieff, left Port Arthur by the railway to make his headquarters at Mukden. On the 23d Togo imitated the 1904 BRITISH EXPEDITION TO TIBET tactics of Sampson at Santiago, and made the first of a series of attempts to bottle up the enemy by sinking steamers in the harbor mouth. His plan was not successful. The British had seized the opportunity afforded by Russia's preoccupation in Manchuria to strengthen the northern barrie. of India against the Muscovite advance in that direction. During 1903 a British mission under Colonel Younghusband had been despatched by the British-Indian Government to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, to discuss with Tibetan and Chinese officials trade relations between India and Tibet, and to secure the observance of former AngloTibetan conventions. When, early in the present year, the mission began its march through Tibetan territory, it was met by Tibetan generals, who demanded the retirement of the British. Colonel Younghusband not only refused to obey but began to disarm the Tibetan forces. These resisted, and were mown down by the British troops. After this the mission fought its way toward Lhasa, the capital of the country, overcoming step by step the feeble but persistent attacks of the Tibetans. Lhasa was reached August 3. Dalai Lama, the ecclesiastical and temporal head of the country, had fled the city, but on September 7 the Regent left in charge signed a formal treaty with the British, affixing the Dalai Lama's seal. Tibet agreed to open markets at two of her border cities for British trade and to pay an indemnity of £500,000 ($2,500,000), for which she gave the Chumbi Valley, on the frontier, as security. Tibet further agreed to demolish all forts on the frontier and not to make any concessions of land, railway routes, etc., to any foreign power without the consent of Great Britain. The United States Government also hastened to secure herself against loss in the threatened "smash-up of China." On January 13 she concluded a commercial treaty with the Chinese Government which provided among other things THE COTTON CORNER 1904 for the opening of Mukden and Antung in Manchuria to international residence and trade. At home there was unusual commercial activity. The closing days of January brought the greatest excitement ever known in the cotton trade. Within five years cotton had risen from five cents a pound to more than double that price, and now it was boosted to the record figure of 181 cents by the bold operations of Daniel J. Sully, a cotton expert and broker. European as well as American manufacturers became alarmed, and prepared to shut down their mills. Cotton prints doubled in price. The planters throughout the South who sold their cotton at the height of the boom rejoiced in the accumulation of more wealth than they had ever dreamed of possessing, and those who held it for a further rise had visions of a return of ante-bellum days when cotton should again be "king." Too much, however, depended upon the leadership of one man, Mr. Sully, and when it was reported that owing to the severe nervous strain of his operations he was going on a vacation, the price broke heavily. In two weeks cotton fell to 13 cents, causing general demoralization among planters and speculators, but rejoicing the mill-owners and the consuming public. King Edward referred to the cotton corner in his speech at the opening of Parliament on February 2, advising the increase of cotton cultivation in the Empire. This session of the imperial lawmakers was destined to become notable for the beginning of disintegration in the strong Conservative majority. The sympathies of the labor element were alienated from the party by the introduction of cheap Chinese labor into the Transvaal, and those of the non-conformists in religion by the enforcement of an Education Act that vir tually placed the public schools in certain regions, notably the non-Anglican kingdom of Wales, under the supervision of the Church of England. Then Mr. Chamberlain split his 1904 THE BALTIMORE FIRE party in two by forcing to the front his proposition to tax imported grain and other food stuffs as a basis for establishing his system of preferential tariffs. The Duke of Devonshire led a revolt of the Free Trade Conservatives. On February 7 and 8 a great fire gutted the business district of Baltimore, Maryland, burning 75 city blocks and destroying $70,000,000 worth of property. The owners bravely began at once to rebuild the burned district, but in a more convenient, beautiful, and enduring form. On February 26 a fire in the business district of Rochester, New York, destroyed $3,200,000 worth of property, and on April 20 a loss of $10,000,000 was incurred by a fire at Toronto. The Hague Tribunal decided in the Venezuelan case, on February 22, that the three Powers which had taken aggressive measures to collect their debts-Great Britain, Germany, and Italy-were entitled to preferential payment of the 30 per cent levied on the customs receipts of the country, as indemnity. The United States Government was commissioned to see that the judgment was carried out. On February 23 the United States Senate ratified the Panama Canal treaty, and on March 22 the treaty with Cuba. President Roosevelt ruled, on March 16, that all Civil War veterans sixty-two years of age and over were entitled to pensions. As this included every soldier who was twenty-one or over at the outbreak of the war, the ruling virtually affected every veteran. On March 14 the Supreme Court, by five votes to four, sustained the decision of the Supreme Court in the Northern Securities case. On Politics were not so varied in France as in Great Britain and America. Her statesmen still wrestled with the old issues of the Dreyfus case and non-secular education. March 5 the criminal chamber of the French Court of Cassation, after a searching inquiry, acquiesced in the application for a revision in the Dreyfus case. In answer to the criti |