Note 25 — Chapter XV
Reading edition
Count Hayashi in his Secret Memoirs, published in London (Eveleigh Nash, 1915), devotes a couple of pages to the part I took in Russo-Japanese relations as he saw it, from which the following extract deals with the two treaties concluded between these empires: "In the beginning of 1907 Dr. Dillon contributed two articles to reviews in England, urging the necessity of a Russo-Japanese rapprochement. These articles were shown to M. Motono, our ambassador at St. Petersburg, by M. Isvolsky, who was at that time the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs. These articles were evidently written after conversation with some high person in the Russian government, and M. Motono believed that they indicated the undoubted intention of the Russian government of entering into an agreement with Japan on the lines laid down in the articles. M. Motono drew the attention of the Japanese Foreign Office to the articles and asked for an opinion on them.
"I should say something about Dr. Dillon. His father was an Englishman and his mother was Irish." [This is a lapsus calami. It was the other way round.] "He was educated at various continental universities, and he possessed several high diplomas of learning. For some time he was professor at various Russian universities and also had been the proprietor of a newspaper at Odessa.
"He ... resided in St. Petersburg. At the time I was minister and ambassador in London, Dr. Dillon was the St. Petersburg correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, and probably is so to-day. He certainly was most extraordinarily well acquainted with all Russian affairs, and any statement made by him in the Daily Telegraph having reference to Russia was always regarded as being based on the highest authority."