I was googling for images to add to the August review of the New York Times archives on the Russo-Japanese War when I stumbled upon this gem from the NY Times’ website:

The president then faced the difficult task of facilitating a successful outcome for the peace talks that began in early August 1905 at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Roosevelt readily acceded to Japan’s authority over Korea, thereby violating an 1882 Korean-American treaty. He did so believing that a disgruntled Japan might strike against the American territories in Hawaii and the Philippines or American interests in China.

See, it must be true…

Teddy Roosevelt not only sacrificed Korea for the Philippines – but Hawaii too — and throw in trade relations with China to boot…

I also found this next quote rather historically misleading:

On January 2, 1905, the Russian commander at Port Arthur, without consulting his officers, ended the nearly year-long siege by surrendering to the Japanese, even though the Russians had sufficient provisions and ammunition to last three more months.

Uh…From my reading of the NY Times archives of the war period – and from reading here and there in a couple of books about the war – written shortly after it – the Russian troops at Port Arthur were a broken lot after a very long siege and were on their last leg.   This guy reviewing this for the NY Times today makes it sound like a blundering surrender…

I did a little digging on the author of this.  He is listed as

Robert C. Kennedy
Independet Scholar
Norfolk, Virginia

on a website listing scholars of the Gilded and Progressive Age.

From the first three pages of the Google search, he seems to have done much work for Harper’s on their archive of political cartoons…