have wisely followed England's example. She should have tacitly constituted herself the sole judge of times and seasons, instead of pragmatically seeking China's sanction. It would seem that here, as throughout the whole course of the story, she counted Japan a negligible quantity, and imagined that only China had to be dealt with-China invertebrate, temporising, and always ready to purchase a little peace by large sacrifices. But Japan's diplomatists were shrewd and persevering. They stiffened China's back; they educated her intelligence; they showed her what Russian aggression signified. And in the end Russia, to the world's surprise, concluded a convention pledging herself to evacuate Manchuria in three processes, the first ending on October 8, 1902, the second on April 8, 1903, and the third on October 8, 1903. These pledges were absolutely unconditional. It is not to be conceived that Russia gave them with the deliberate intention of violating them. Yet in the end she violated them without compunction or explanation.

In the meanwhile Japan was doing two things-strengthening her armaments and seeking to foster a spirit of progress among the Chinese. After her victorious war with China it might have been thought that nothing menaced her. She had not proved her prowess against a Western State, it is true, but she had proved that no Western State could attack her with impunity. Yet she doubled the numerical strength of her army and quadrupled the fighting force of her navy. In view of what contingency were these preparations made? The roughly judging section of the public concluded that they were directed against Russia. That is true in a sense. According to the record here set down Russia was the one and only Occidental Power that had subjected Japan to the indignity of invasion, that had made a successful inroad upon her territory, that had sought to carry out an act of deliberate aggression at her expense, that had formed a European coalition to check her continental expansion. Further, Russia was the one and only Occidental State that followed in East Asia an unvarying programme of territorial aggression. Nothing had hitherto stopped her; nothing seemed likely to stop her. In 1895 the Amur still formed her southern boundary. But by her manoeuvres after the China-Japan War she projected her shadow over Manchuria, and when that shadow assumed substance, as it certainly would, Korea could not fail to be involved. It is here that the features of Japan's policy can be clearly discerned. She never proposed to herself the stupendous task of building in East Asia an effective barrier against Russia's general aggres

sion. She never seriously entertained the ambition of becoming the great Northern Power's continental rival. But she did consider it essential to her own imperial security that Korea should not be added to Russia's dominions. She did consider it essential to her own economic expansion that the markets of China should remain open to her manufactures. She did consider it essential to the development of her own resources that peace should be maintained in the East. Now Russia herself had openly declared, and France and Germany had endorsed the declaration, that all these objects would be defeated if Japan entered into possession of a part of the Manchurian littoral. By such a conjuncture the independence of Korea would be rendered illusory, the safety of the Chinese capital would be menaced, the maintenance of peace in the East would be jeopardised. Such were the results that Russia, France and Germany discerned as plainly destined to follow the addition of a portion of Manchuria to Japan's dominions. Still more inevitably must the same results follow the addition of the whole of Manchuria to Russia's dominions. It was against the latter danger proximately that Japan began to arm in 1896. She prepared to resist Russian aggressions in Manchuria, not for their own sake but for the sake of their collateral effects, among which effects she placed first and foremost the inclusion of Korea in the Russian empire.

To the question whether Japan's estimate of the relation in which the Korean peninsula stands to her own welfare is not in some degree factitious and sentimental, it might be hard to give an altogether negative answer. Korea has for the Japanese a traditional and historical value analogous to that which Calais had at one time for the English, and possibly from that point of view to be effaced in the Korean peninsula might not injure Japan more than the loss of Calais injured England. But the analogy is very misleading. It takes no account of the immense inequality between Russia and Japan, nor yet of the fact that, at the time when the Japanese were required to consider this problem, the command of the sea belonged absolutely to Russia. Very little effort would have been needed to place in Far Eastern waters a Russian fleet incomparably stronger than anything Japan could oppose to it. Therefore the outlook was that if Russia acquired Korea Japan would see planted within sight of her shores a Power of incalculably large military potentialities, of preponderating strength at sea, and of insatiable territorial greed. No small State was ever menaced by a more formidable peril.

Consider the matter now from Russia's point of view.

Korea is a kind of half-way house between Liaotung and Vladivostok. It commands the maritime communications between the two places. Japan, holding Korea as Russia's enemy, could close the Broughton Strait and the Tsugaru Strait to Russian ships, and thus effectually isolate Vladivostok by water. At the present moment such isolation is actually effected; a Russian squadron of four powerful cruisers lies imprisoned in Vladivostock and cannot reach Port Arthur. Strategically, then, the Korean peninsula is necessary to Russia if she owns Liaotung and Vladivostok. Economically it is equally necessary. For neither Manchuria nor Siberia possesses a harbour offering first-class mercantile facilities, whereas Korea possesses many such. In fact, to become owner of Korea would secure for Russia the end she has so long sought to compass, free access to open seas in a temperate zone.

Thus with Manchuria and without Korea Russia's strategical position would be precarious and her ambition unsatisfied; whereas with Manchuria and with Korea she would overshadow the Japanese empire, close ultimately to Japanese producers and manufacturers all the markets of continental EastAsia, and condemn the Japanese nation to a career of shrinkage and self-effacement,

Against these dangers, then, Japan began to arm in 1896, and it was by Russia's acquisition of Manchuria that the dangers would begin to materialise.

In the spring of 1902 the Anglo-Japanese alliance was formed. Many Russians attribute the present war to this alliance. Japan's head was turned, they say, and her sense of proportion impaired by association with one of the leading States of the West.

From first to last Russia has displayed almost incredible ignorance of Japanese sentiments and purposes in connection. with this crisis. Persons residing in Japan at the time of the alliance, and having access to the organs of public opinion and to the views of prominent men, know that what the alliance signified to the nation at large was peace. People told each other joyfully that since England and Japan had now openly united to maintain the integrity of China and the independence of Korea, tranquillity was assured throughout the period of the union; namely, five years. So far from producing any access of delirium, the alliance exercised a sobering effect. To its influence was largely ascribed Russia's agreement to evacuate Manchuria by three processes consummated at definite dates. She was supposed to have thus acknowledged herself sensible of the potentialities of the Anglo-Japanese combination.

Judged by events, no supposition could have been more erroneous. Russia did indeed carry out the first part of her engagement: she withdrew her troops from the western sections of Manchuria, the section between the Liao River and the Great Wall; the section which she can scarcely be said to have occupied effectively at any time. But thereafter she treated her promise with absolute indifference. Not alone did she refrain from any semblance of attempt to keep faith: she refrained also from any attempt to explain her faithlessness. Instead of evacuating the Chinese provinces, she formulated a new set of conditions as necessarily preliminary to evacuation, conditions which would have rendered evacuation illusory. It was impossible for her to make a more flagrant display of contempt for China in the first place, for Japan in the second, and for the AngloJapanese alliance in the third.

When April 8, 1903, arrived, and showed Russia not withdrawing her forces from Manchuria but actually increasing them, the political sentiment of Japan received a violent shock. In a moment the nation seemed to awake to the conviction that it stood on the brink of a great crisis. There were a thousand evidences of this startled mood, yet Russia seemed to ignore or to despise them all. From first to last she could never persuade herself to regard Japan seriously. Immediately subsequent to the grave lesson taught by the unheeded 8th of April, Russia commenced in Northern Korea a series of activities which, if not planned with deliberately aggressive purpose, were certainly aggressive in character, and at the same time calculated to render the Manchurian situation more intolerable for Japan. A timberfelling concession obtained from the Korean monarch seven years previously under peculiar circumstances his Majesty being a refugee in the Russian Legation—was arbitrarily perverted into an instrument for establishing Russian sway throughout the whole Yalu Valley, and for creating a special Russian settlement in a position that commanded the estuary of the river. These encroachments, viewed by the light of Russia's unvarying methods in East Asia, could not be misinterpreted. They were emphasised by her obstinate resistance to the opening at Japanese instance of Wiju, a town on the bank of the Yalu, which had formerly been a frontier emporium of trade between China and Korea. Explicitly bound by convention not to obstruct in any way the development of Japanese commerce and industry in Korea, Russia nevertheless showed no hesitancy in offering this palpable obstruction. Here also the reckless clumsiness of her diplomacy is inexplicable except on the supposition that Japan counted for nothing in her eyes.

Had

the statesmen in St. Petersburg felt the least solicitude about Japan's mood, these object-lessons in Korea would not have been offered simultaneously with flagrant displays of bad faith in Manchuria.

The Japanese Government did not take immediate action. They waited patiently until August, by which time Russia's resolve to remain in military occupation of Manchuria had been conclusively shown; first, by her failure to carry out the second-period evacuation, which ought to have been completed on April 8; secondly, by the absence of any preparations to commence the third-period evacuation, which was to be completed by October 8; and, thirdly, by the continuous and considerable augmentation of her naval and military forces in the Far East.

Then Japan approached Russia diplomatically. She did not ask for anything that could hurt the great Empire's pride or injure its position. She did not ask even for what St. Petersburg, little more than a year previously, had solemnly promised, the evacuation of the Chinese provinces. She recognised fully that Russia had created for herself in Manchuria-factitiously created, it is true, but still created-material interests which she could not reasonably be expected to abandon or to desist from guarding. What Japan said was in substance this: "Let us agree reciprocally to recognise each other's preponderating interests in Manchuria and Korea respectively. Let us agree that each shall be free to protect these interests by any means short of impairing the independence and territorial integrity of China and Korea. Let us agree to respect that independence and that territorial integrity. Let us agree that the principle of equal opportunities for all shall be maintained alike in Manchuria and in Korea." For two other things also she asked, namely, that to her should belong the exclusive right to advise and assist Korea in the interests of reform and good government, and that Russia should not impede the extension of the Korean railway system so as to connect with her own Manchurian system. This latter proposal, being a plainly useful measure of material development, should have secured Russia's immediate consent. The former should have been welcomed by her had she any desire to see progress and sound administration substituted for the political intrigues, the corruption, the clan feuds and the economic incompetence that rendered Korea a constant menace to the peace of the Far East.

It seems strange at first sight that while fully sensible of the danger a Russian Manchuria must involve for Korea, the Japanese Government should propose terms virtually perpetuating that