will of every European or American in Korea with whom he came in contact.  Yang Ki-tak, formerly Mr. Bethell’s newspaper associate, had on this account been a marked man by the Japanese police.  He had been previously arrested under the Peace Preservation Act, sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and pardoned under an amnesty.  He had also previously been examined twice in connection with the charge against the assassin of Prince Ito, and twice on account of the attack made on Yi, the traitor Premier, but had each time been acquitted.  “I am not very much concerned as to what happens to me now,” he said, “but I do protest against being punished on a charge of which I am innocent.”

The case for the prosecution was based on the confessions of the prisoners themselves.  According to these confessions, a body of Koreans, in association with the New People’s Society, headed by Baron Yun Chi-ho, plotted to murder General Terauchi, and assembled at various railway stations for that purpose, when the Governor-General was travelling northwards, more particularly at Sun-chon, on December 28, 1910.  They were armed with ready revolvers, short swords or daggers, and were only prevented from carrying out their purpose by the vigilance of the gendarmerie.

A number of missionaries were named as their associates or sympathizers.  Chief of these was Mr. McCune, who, according to the confessions, distributed revolvers among the conspirators and told them at Sun-chon that he would point out the right man by shaking hands with him.  Dr. Moffett of Pyeng-yang, Dr. Underwood of Seoul, Bishop Harris, the Methodist Bishop for Japan and Korea who had long been conspicuous as a defender of the Japanese Administration, and a number of other prominent missionaries were implicated.

When the prisoners were faced by these confessions in the open court they arose, one after another, almost without exception, and declared either that they had been forced from them by sustained and intolerable torture, or that they had been reduced by torture to insensibility and then on recovery had been told by the Japanese police that they had made the confessions.  Those who had assented under torture had in nearly every case said “Yes” to the statements put to them by the police.  Now that they could speak, they stoutly denied the charges.  They knew nothing of any conspiracy.  The only man who admitted a murder plot in court was clearly demented.

The trial was held in a fashion which aroused immediate and wide-spread indignation.  It was held, of course, in Japanese, and the official translator was openly charged in court with minimizing and altering the statements made by the prisoners.  The judges acted in a way that brought disgrace on the court, bullying, mocking and browbeating the prisoners.  The high Japanese officials who attended heartily backed the sallies of the bench.