Sarah Paine

But for incompetent Russian strategy, if the Russians had run one more battle against the Japanese, their Japanese supply lines would have collapsed.

And it's unclear how far down the Liaodong Peninsula they would have had to retreat.

So this is when Japan's war termination plan goes into effect.

The Japanese realized from the very beginning that they had a high risk, high reward strategy.

And in contrast to World War II, they had a really carefully prepared exit strategy.

So when Prime Minister Ito Hirabumi is convening the cabinet and they're gonna make the decision to fire the first shots in this war, he is already lining up a Harvard grad

I hear Viscount Caneco, who was an acquaintance of President Theodore Roosevelt of the United States, then president.

And what they want is to have Viscount Caneco work on getting Roosevelt ready to do mediation at the end of this war.

And the peace treaty is going to be held in, negotiations are going to be held in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, negotiated by another Harvard alumnus, Baron Komura.

who's going to do all of that.

Meanwhile, Ito sends his son-in-law, who's a diet member, but also a graduate of Cambridge University, off to Britain to keep the Anglo-Japanese alliance solid.

So the Japanese are very aware that you've got to have a way out of this thing.

So...

It's in the Battle of Mukden that Field Marshal Yamagata decides it's time to call the American card at this moment.

He said, look, the enemy is never going to request peace unless we have invaded Moscow or St.

Petersburg, something he knows to be impossible.

And he doesn't assess me.

So look, the enemy still has powerful forces in its home country.

We have already exhausted ours.

Second, while the enemy still does not run out of officers, we have lost a great number since the opening of the war and cannot easily replace them.