The russo-japanese war was a conflict between russia and japan that started in the year 190419041904. let xxx represent any year. write an inequality in terms of xxx and 190419041904 that is true only for values of xxx that represent years before the start of the russo-japanese war.

The first thing we must do for this case is to define a variable.
 We have then:
 x: number of years before the Russo-Japanese conflict began
 We write now the inequality that models the problem.
 We know that the conflict began in the year 1904, therefore, all the previous years are given by:
 x <1904
 
 an inequality in terms of x and 1904 that is true only for values of x that represent years before the start of the Russo-Japanese War is:
 x <1904