1 The Memory and Significance of the Russo-Japanese War from a Centennial Perspective BEN-AMI SHILLONY AND ROTEM KOWNER T he Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) was the first great war of the twen- tieth century. Advances in communications at that time made it also the most reported war in the world until then, with a flood of news stories, commentaries, analyses, essays, photograph collections, books, and even movies in dozens of languages. To contemporaries, that war looked dramatic, epoch-making and unforgettable, something that many generations would recount and remember. One book of that time, entitled The Japan-Russia War, which appeared in Philadelphia in 1905, opened with the words: “The Japan-Russia War goes into history as the greatest military struggle the world has known.” 1 The siege of Port Arthur, the author Sydney Tyler asserted, “has no dupli- cate among all recorded military achievements.” 2 Referring to the nine- teenth-century English prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, he affirmed: “Lord Beaconsfield once said that there were only two events in history – the siege of Troy and the French Revolution. It seems more than possible that the Russo-Japanese War will have to be recorded as a third supreme factor in the progress of the world.” 3 Other contemporaries were startled by the possible repercussions of the clash. The American war correspon- dent, Murat Halstead, for example, believed in 1906 that it “is a logical war and it may spread until it sweeps over the Continent of Europe and Asia.” He was certain it would continue “to be of universal and almost unparalleled interest,” and wondered, among all colossal eventualities the war might lead to, whether Europe would conquer Asia, or Asia would conquer Europe. 4 These contemporary eulogies and admiring notes notwithstanding, the Russo-Japanese War was soon forgotten. World War I, which broke