h his friends, but the Japanese took good care that
traitors should come to him and be loudest in their expressions of loyalty.
Little that he did but was immediately known to his captors. In the early
summer of 1907 the Emperor thought that he saw his chance at last of
striking a blow for freedom through the Hague Conference. He was still
convinced that if he could only assure the Powers that he had never
consented to the treaty robbing Korea of its independence, they would then
send their Ministers back to Seoul and cause Japan to relax her hand.
Accordingly, amid great secrecy, three Korean delegates of high rank were
provided with funds and despatched to the Hague under the guardianship of
Mr. Hulbert. They reached the Hague only to be refused a hearing. The
Conference would have nothing to say to them.

This action on the part of the Emperor gave the Japanese an excuse they had
long been looking for. The formation of the Korean Cabinet had been altered
months before in anticipation of such a crisis, and the Cabinet Ministers
were now nominated not by the Emperor, but by the Resident-General. The
Emperor had been deprived of administrative and executive power. The
Marquis Ito had seen to it that the Ministers were wholly his tools. The
time had come when his tools were to cut. The Japanese Government assumed
an attitude of silent wrath. It could not allow such offences to go
unpunished, its friends declared, but what punishment it would inflict it
refused to say.

Proceedings were much more cleverly stage-managed than in November, 1905.
Nominally, the Japanese had nothing to do with the abdication of the
Emperor. Actually the Cabinet Ministers held their gathering at the
Residency-General to decide on their policy, and did as they were
instructed. They went to the Emperor and demanded that he should abandon
the throne to save his country from being swallowed up by Japan. At first
he refused, upon which their insistence grew greater. No news of sympathy
or help reached him from foreign lands. Knowing the perils surrounding him,
he thought that he would trick them all by a simple device. He would make
his son, the Crown Prince, temporary Emperor, using a Chinese ideograph for
his new title which could scarce be distinguished from the title giving him
final and full authority. Here he overreached himself, for, once out, he
was out for good. On July 19th, at six o'clock in the morning, after an
all-night conference, the