The Germans came forward, and Argentina and Chile, both of whom were swollen and fat, saw that there were steps to go down, and immediately expressed their willingness to accept mediation. After all, the white-hot arms race between the two countries at this time is no longer a rational national defense need, but the result of the government's hegemony mentality, the pressure of the domestic people, and the promotion of foreign business forces

In order to show its sincerity, the Argentine government first decided to accept the German offer, suspended the purchase of two 15,000-ton battleships in Germany, and put two armored cruisers under construction on the shelves.

Seeing that the Argentines had given up on continuing to expand their army, the Chileans immediately responded by accepting only the protective cruiser Chacabco and three destroyers built in Germany, and abandoning the two Freedom-class 2nd class battleships built in Britain, which were also put up for sale.

The territorial dispute between the two countries was led by the Germans, with the participation of the United States, and resolved by an arbitration committee chaired by Buchanan, the U.S. minister to Bolivia. The Commission eventually negotiated a final border between the two countries, recognized Chile's claim to the strait, and divided Tierra del Fuego equally between Chile and Argentina.

The two countries signed the July Treaty, two months later than in history, which provided for a negotiated settlement of the border dispute, mutual disarmament and the elimination of hostility. Subsequently, the two parliaments ratified the treaty one after another, and immediately after that, the two countries signed disarmament treaties, realizing a series of peace and friendship agreements.

In order to commemorate this great peace and avoid an already inevitable war, the two countries used the artillery originally prepared for the war to melt down and erect a statue of Christ on the highest part of the Andes, a move that became a symbol of peace and friendship between the two countries.

However, when the statue was completed, the two countries fought again, because the statue faced Argentina and turned its back to Chile, and the two countries began to attack each other, and the senior management of the Chilean Navy was full of malice and said: Argentines just need to be under the eyes of Jesus and be supervised at all times.

Anyway, though. The situation in South America has eased, and the clouds of war have dissipated. Of course, this is only short-lived, and the financial problem can only slow down the speed of the arms race, but cannot affect the intensity of the arms race, still less can it eliminate the deep-seated factors that give rise to the conflict. And the top three ABC in South America, one of them didn't speak. So peace now is just a breath of relief for the future race.

Chile and Argentina disarmed each other. The ships they didn't want attracted the interest of some people, some of whom were listed for sale for the sake of peace, and some of whom naturally wanted to be in their pockets for the sake of war.

In particular, the two second-class battleships of the Chileans are indeed first-class good goods, with a standard displacement of 11,800 tons, equipped with 2 twin 10-inch 45-fold diameter Mark-VI naval guns, 14 7.5-inch 50-diameter Mark-III secondary guns, and the 7-inch main armor belt covers an area not at all like a British warship, and the hull between the two main turrets is partially covered. It also goes 2.4 meters below the waterline.

And as a second-class battleship, it has a speed of up to 19 knots and a top speed of 20 knots, which is in a sense similar to the super armored cruiser built by the Germans for the Russians. Such a battleship is naturally extremely sought-after.

The first to come to the door were the Russians.

The Russians, after being frightened by the Anglo-Japanese alliance, were very honest for a while, and their actions and attitudes in the Far East were very restrained. However, the Russians still reacted in the end, this Anglo-Japanese alliance is completely using Japan as a gunman, and the British obviously don't want to end up in person.

If the British don't end up, then what am I afraid of? This discovery made the Russians realize that they still had absolute superiority in the Far East. I also felt that my previous restraint was simply a cowardly and humiliating move. It was a gaffe that my Great Russian Empire was frightened by a covenant of little practical value by the British. It's a gaffe.

This can't be done, it has already smeared the face of the ancestors, we can't go on like this, we have to get the field back, otherwise there is no place to put this face. With such a somewhat annoyed state of mind, the Russians decided. We're going to send troops, and we're going to use a war to completely solve the Far Eastern problem.

The Russians were not wrong in their considerations, the British who had just finished the Boer War were greatly demoralized, and they only needed to deal with a yellow-skinned dwarf half-heartedly. Wait for the lesson to teach those dwarfs and take them down to North Korea. After annexing the northeast of the Qing Kingdom, you can operate with peace of mind, and even if the British are relieved, these places are the inherent territory of the Russian Empire.

Time is running out, hurry up, it's too late if you don't fight.

As for whether to win or not? What are you kidding, how could I, the Great Russian Empire, lose? This was a common perception throughout the Russian Empire.

In April 1903, the Japanese Navy held a naval grand viewing ceremony in Kobe, and the captain of the Russian cruiser Askold, Colonel Goran Machkov, who came to visit, said to the Russian minister Roman after the ceremony. Rosen said: "The Japanese Navy has managed to get together all the equipment by purchasing warships from foreign countries, but it does not have the naval spirit that we have, and even the level of warship control and fleet operation is still very naïve. ”

However, the report submitted by the captain of the Freya, the flagship of the German Far East Fleet, after returning from the observation ceremony, gave a completely opposite conclusion: "The technical and tactical level of the Japanese naval sailors is quite high, the captains are very good in handling the ship, and the coordinated use of the entire fleet is also very good." ”

The British naval attaché gave an even higher evaluation: "The British Navy is the only one that can stand shoulder to shoulder with the Japanese Navy in the handling of warships and the operation of the fleet." ”

Known as one of Russia's finest generals, Russian War Minister Alexei? General Kuropatkin, after visiting Japan, also came to the conclusion that "one Russian soldier can deal with three Japanese soldiers, and we can gather 400,000 troops in Manchuria in only 14 days, which is already three times the number needed to defeat the Japanese army." Therefore, it is more appropriate to say that what will happen in the future is not so much a war as a military walk. ”

Therefore, the whole of Russia thinks that this war is not risky at all, so it must be done quickly.

That being said, the Russians still hope to build up their power and make the situation more secure. So the intelligence and the 4 large battleships abandoned by Argentina immediately fell into the sight of the Russians. However, since two super-armored cruisers had already been ordered from Germany, the Russians were initially interested only in those two Freedom-class 2nd class battleships of the Chileans.

The Russians were thinking about these battleships, and the Japanese, of course, would not sit still, and like the Russians, the Japanese also came to the same conclusion, that is, to fight as soon as possible.

It stands to reason that his allies are licking their wounds, so he should be waiting for him to recover and is considering a war with the Russians, but the Japanese General Staff Headquarters believes that "now is the best time to go to war." ”

At present, the Japanese General Staff Headquarters is not able to arbitrarily analyze the situation and then come to all kinds of erroneous conclusions, as it did in World War II. At present, the conclusion of the careful analysis of the General Staff Headquarters is still basically reliable:

The environment around Russia was complicated, the various European powers were intertwined, and the relations between the Ottomans, Finland, Germany, and Britain and Russia were unstable, and the changes in the situation were difficult to predict.

Moreover, after such a long period of observation and intelligence gathering, the Japanese also believed that the level of the Russian Army was low, the training was poor, the establishment was chaotic, and not a single combat exercise had been conducted.

The Trans-Siberian Railway has not yet been completed, and it is a single-track railway, and the traffic situation in Korea and Manchuria is equally bad, and the Russians can only rely on a Chinese Eastern Railway to enter Manchuria, and the Korean and Japanese know that it is too late to build their own railways. Therefore, the transport capacity of the Russians was limited.

The limited capacity of the Russians, and the fact that the Russians could not obtain supplies on the spot, had to rely on transportation, which in turn crowded out the capacity of the transport of supplies and troops, further limited the scale of combat operations that the Russians could conduct in the Far East.

Although the strength of the Russian Pacific Fleet is not weak, it is scattered in Arthur and Vladivostok, so it can be broken individually.

The political situation in Russia is also unstable, and the scale of internal socialist and communist activities is increasing year by year, so it will draw the attention of the Russian government.

Looking at it this way, the Japanese feel that they still have a chance to win and can fight. Although the country's politicians were still hesitant about going to war with Russia, the army began to prepare intensively.

If you want to fight, you have to have equipment, and the news that the Russians ordered two more armored cruisers from Germany made the Japanese very worried, after all, the previous standard of the Grumbowie was there, and the new ships ordered by the Russians could not be worse than that. So there were large ships capable of dealing with the armored cruisers of the Russians, and the Japanese turned out to have their sights on those two second-class battleships of the Chileans. I also came to buy.

And the two heavy cruisers built by Germany became for a time something that my uncle didn't love my grandmother, and even the German Navy didn't want her. The purchase of these two ships required a lot of money, and also squeezed out the quota of 2 heavy cruisers, and more importantly, the German Navy thought that these two things were weaker than the newly built Bismarck class in Germany, and it was not worth spending a lot of money on these two things.

If the German Navy built by other shipyards would not be too lazy to care, how do you like to deal with the shipyard, but it was built by the shipyard of His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, which gave Tirpitz a headache, should you pay for it to please His Royal Highness the Crown Prince? (To be continued......)