Portsmouth 1905: Peace or Truce?

White offers an unstated challenge to studies of how wars end by maintaining that war and peace are a continuum in the struggle for power, that both are "equally inconclusive", and, by implication, hardly distinguishable from each other (or not distinguishable in ways White regards as significant). White provides nevertheless a brief but very clearly stated sketch of the relationship of military situation, costs and domestic pressures to changing war aims and peace conditions (especially for Japan) in the process of terminating the Russo-Japanese war. The role of the mediator (President Roosevelt) is touched on briefly in the context of giving aid to Japan by facilitating the negotiations. Thus White offers support to a suggestion of Morris that mediators are generally interested and their role "mischievous" (in this case, from the standpoint that the political outcome is more important than the cessation of armed hostilities).