With the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) Charles Urban, the American owner of the Charles Urban Trading Company, secured permission from the British War Office and the Japanese Embassy in Britain to send one cameraman to film with the Japanese forces, rendezvousing with them at Yokohama.

Urban wanted both sides of the story though, and secured, through George Rogers, his manager in Paris, permission to accompany General Kuropatkin of the Russian army through Siberia to the front.

Urban sent Joe Rosenthal, who had previously captured footage of the Boer War. While Rosenthal filmed images of life in the Japanese army he didn’t capture much film of any fighting - although he did record footage of the fall of Port Arthur, the decisive encounter which won the war for the Japanese.

George Rogers failed to make it to the battlefront before the war was over. Travelling with the Russian army on the single track Siberian Railway and by sledge across the icy Lake Baikal, Rogers' progress was halted on many occasions. He did, however, manage to capture film of Russian and Chinese peasants on his travels. He also filmed the beheading of thirty-two prisoners, but this footage was considered too gruesome for public consumption.