This is the month the great and infamous Taft-Katsura fictitious Treaty was “secretly” signed…

Here is an article from 1 July 1905 about Taft’s group heading to the Philippines.  I didn’t bother reading but the start of it.

I also learned through reading these archives that Sec. of State John Hay actually died this month during the crucial period of behind-the-scenes negotiations to end the war.  3 July 1905

Of course, much of the month is filled with articles about the peace prospects and the US role as arbiter.  That stuff is so heavily covered on websites, academic articles, and books on the war, I’ll bypass it…

I will take the time, however, to cover an article about the troubles inside Russia since I know less about it and because of how significant it and the eventual communist revolution a decade later was for the history of the rest of the 20th Century:  3 July 1905 – Anarchy at Odessa

[lead paragraph]  The recent condition of the City of Odessa is adapted to discourage all persons but Anarchists and Nihilists.  To these it must appeal as a kind of Utopia.  For there is in Odessa now no government, no order, no civilization as civilization implies government and order, “nihil.”

Next is a demonstration of the kind of thinking that I actually have concerning NK and its near future:

That the authority of the Government is irresistible, that it cannot be successfully defied, that swift and sharp punishment will follow the attempt to defy it:  these are the fundamental conditions for the prevalence and the continuance of the autocracy, and of the bureaucracy into which the autocracy has naturally and necessarily tended to degenerate.  When the populace discovers throughout Russia that the power of the Government is not irresistible, that it can be defied with impunity, at least for the time being, when the patient, passive Russian people discover that uprising against oppression does not necessarily involved instant destruction, what will happen then?

Indeed…

If Russia had been victorious in Asia, the forcible suppression of Russia in Europe might have been indefinitely continued.  Now, it seems, and in one way or another, the term of Russian despotism is approaching.

And for once the newspaper pundits were right…

This shows how important this little one year war between two nations was a key moment in setting the stage for the rest of the 20th Century:  for the eventually rise of the Soviet Union to the colonization of Korea for the next 40 years – with generations of Koreans being born and coming of age as part of Japan – and on a much less meaningful but still significant way to the process of anti-US in Korea attitudes in South Korea.

9 July 1905 – Japanese Occupy Sakhalin Island

The Japanese fleet covering the landing consisted of two battleships, seven cruisers, three gunboats, thirty-six torpedo boats, and ten transports loaded with troops.

The commander of the Russian detachment of troops at Korsakovsk ordered before retiring that the coast defense guns be blown up and that all the Government buildings be burned.

At 3 PM Japanese torpedo boats approached Karsakovsk, and the Russian batteries opened fire on them and compelled the boats to retire. 

The bombardment had been anticipated, and the commandant had ordered the withdrawal of the defenders northward.

The news from Sakhalin has startled military circles in St. Petersburg, though it had been realized since the defeat of Admiral Rojestvensky that the Japanese were able to take possession of the island as soon as they thought fit, since the garrison of the island was too weak to offer an effective defense.

Korea gets a direct mention in a short article on the 18th:  Koreans Want Freedom – it is a one-paragraph article datelined Honolulu:

Koreans here have raised a fund to send the Rev. P. T. Yon, a Korean Methodist minister, to Washington to see President Roosevelt to ask that efforts be made by the US in the forthcoming peace negotiations to bring about an agreement by which the Korean Nation will become independent within twenty years if it shows fitness for self-government.

Most of the month is filled with stories about the big names in government in all the major powers travelling here and there to meet and about the run-up to formal peace talks.

Sec. Taft going to Japan simply falls within this category.

Korea comes back into the news on the 27th:  Battle in North Korea

It’s another short one-paragraph story:

…a Japanese army of many thousand men is attacking the Russian position on the Tumen River.

Also sprinkled in the month are stories of the Potemkin ship mutiny that became so famous in Russia and had what is still considered a classic movie made about it:

30 July 1905 – Rojestvenky’s Story of Graft and Mutiny

It was supposed that the sensations in regard to the battle of the Sea of Japan had been exhausted, but Admiral Rojestvensky’s report, printed here today, is a document of so amazing a character that the battle is again being discussed almost as generally as immediately after it was fought.

The Admiral declares that his vessels were in extremely bad condition, due not only to the haste in their construction, but also to the dishonesty of the builders and the corruption of the Russian officials who passed as satisfactory ships which were manifestly bad.

On none of the vessels did the thickness of the armor plating correspond to the official figures.  Furthermore, the armor was of inferior quality, and this enabled the Japanese shells to pierce it…  The shells were lamentably made, and two-thirds of them did not explode. 

Two-thirds of the crews, says the Admiral, were men incapable of performing what was required of them.  The gunners did not know the elementary laws of firing, and, in spite of the practice they had received, it was certain that the squadron was sailing to defeat. 

At Madagascar a mutiny broke out, and fourteen sailors were executed.  The guns of Admiral Rojestvensky’s ships had to be trained on the Admiral Seniavin, and the General Admiral Apraksin in order to restore order among the mutineers.  Then – this was discovered too late – the crews decided to revolt and to give themselves up to the enemy.

Near Formosa another mutiny broke out in Admiral Nebogatoff’s squadron…

From the very beginning of the battle of the Sea of Japan Rojestvensky saw that Nebogatoff’s vessels…were taking no part in the battle, and were not carrying out his orders.  He sent torpedo boats to tell the mutineers that if they did not execute the maneuvers as ordered he would sink them.  Only then did they open fire.