Note 106 — Chapter XVIII · JULY, 1907, AND AFTERWARD

This is perhaps the place to deny, authoritatively and finally, that Marquis Ito procured, counselled, or even gave consent to, the act of abdication. Indeed, the members of the Residency-General, and the Japanese in Seoul generally, who approved of the more strenuous measures to be taken against Korea, regretted to have the abdication take place. To use the expression of one of them: “It dulled the edge of the Japanese sword.”