Note 255 — Chapter VI

The Japanese Foreign Minister, in communicating to the British Minister on April 27 the Russian demands to China, spoke “with unwonted seriousness” and asserted “that he considered the situation exceedingly grave” (MacDonald to Lansdowne, April 27, 1903, B.D., II, 198 ff., No. 226. The dispatch was received first on June 2, but there is no reason to doubt that the view expressed therein was immediately known to the British government since the two governments were in constant communication. See Lansdowne to MacDonald, April 29, 1903, ibid., 200 f., No. 228; memo. communicated by Hayashi, Japanese minister to London, to Lansdowne, April 27, 1903, ibid., 201 f., No. 228, inclosure; William L. Langer, “Der Russisch-Japanische Krieg,” Europäische Gespräche, June, 1926, pp. 310 ff.; Tyler Dennett, Roosevelt and the Russo-Japanese War (New York, 1925), pp. 139 f., 355 ff.