RUSSIA SEES A SPECTRE.

533

from disinterested motives. The British Government, with the largest commercial stake in the question, was by no means inclined to fetter the Japanese when they placed freedom of trade at the head of their programme. It wished China to be opened to external and beneficial influences, and that was exactly what the Japanese proposed to do. Moreover, Japan had shown throughout the war every wish to consider British views, and to respect their interests. Shanghai, in the first place, and the Yangtse Valley afterwards, were ruled outside the sphere of military operations. The identity of interests between England and Japan was clear to the most ordinary intelligence, and certainly the British Government was not the one that would seek to fetter the legitimate and beneficial expansion of the bold islanders of the Far East.

But other Powers did not regard the matter from the same point of view, and Russia saw in the appearance of the Japanese on the Pacific freeboard a spectre for the future. The Russian Government could not tolerate the presence of the Japanese on the mainland, and especially in a position which enabled them to command Pekin. They therefore resorted to a diplomatic move unprecedented in the East, and which furnished evidence of how closely European affairs were reacting on Asia. The then unwritten alliance between France and Russia was turned into a formal arrangement for the achievement of definite ends, and the powerful co-operation of Germany was secured for the attainment of the same object, viz. the arrest of Japan in her hour of triumph. This movement was destined to produce the most pregnant consequences, some of which are not yet revealed, but for the moment it signified that a Triple Alliance had superseded Great Britain in the leading rôle she had filled in the Far East since the Treaty of Nankin.

The ink was scarcely dry on the Treaty of Shimonoseki when Japan found herself confronted by the Three Powers, with a demand couched in polite language to waive that part of the Treaty which provided for the surrender of Port Arthur and the Leaoutung peninsula. The demand was clearly one that could not be rejected without war, and Japan could have

no possible chance in coping with an alliance so formidable on land and sea. Japan gave way with a good grace, and negotiations followed which resulted in the resignation of her claim to the Leaoutung peninsula in return for an increase of the indemnity by the sum of six millions sterling. Wei Hai Wei was to be retained as bail, pending the payment of the indemnity; and the final payment in May, 1898, has released all Chinese territory on the mainland from the hands of the victors in the war of 1894-5. It will be seen that the question did not end here, but for the time being Japan's benefit from the war with China was a large indemnity, and the acquisition of the islands of Formosa and the Pescadores. The value of the latter possessions is, to say the least, doubtful, and time will have to establish it; but the indemnity has enabled Japan to purchase the new men-of-war and torpedo boats that will make her a Power at sea with which the strongest must reckon.

The Chinese rejoiced in the recovery of Leaoutung, which they represented, and perhaps believed, to be the disinterested act of the Three Powers. They thought nothing of the six millions they had paid away, and everything of the fact that the Japanese had been expelled from the position they had secured in the neighbourhood of their capital. For twelve months they seem to have indulged the hope that the assistance had been given out of disinterested motives, and that such concessions as Russia in particular might demand towards the construction of railways in Northern Asia, would fall very far short of the loss and injury inflicted by the continued presence of the Japanese in Leaoutung. For that period Russia was China's best friend, and France and Germany were content to wait on her convenience before presenting their little bills for payment at Pekin. This brief respite soon expired, and the period of hope gave place to the reality that Governments, like individuals, are never altogether disinterested in their actions.

At the moment of the negotiations which resulted in the liberation of Leaoutung, Russia was represented at Pekin by Count Cassini, while the direction of her foreign policy was in the able hands of Prince Lobanow. The new and youthful

THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS.

535

Emperor Nicholas had travelled in the Far East, and had come back with strong impressions on the subject of the importance of expanding his Empire in regions where trade and mineral wealth promised to reward his energy. Under his auspices the policy of Russia has taken an Eastern direction, and the events of the Chino-Japanese war were calculated to give it a specially rapid development. While the sovereign of Russia was personally keen on the extension of his power in the direction of the Pacific, it so happened that he possessed the very men most capable of advancing the objects he had at heart. On Count Cassini devolved in the first place the task of bringing the Chinese authorities round to the view that because Russia had recovered Leaoutung she was the only sincere friend China possessed, and that by her continued support alone could China hope to be preserved from the dangers by which she was surrounded.

The details of the secret negotiations and private understandings between Count Cassini and the Chinese officials with whom he did business are never likely to be known. It seems probable, however, that at the moment of signing the treaty of Shimonoseki, Li Hung Chang had some good grounds for believing that the clause relating to the Leaoutung promontory would never be enforced. If, as is probable, he knew that Russia had decided to intervene, he also knew that her intervention would not be gratuitous. The exact form of the payment was probably not decided, but that payment would have to be made in some form or other cannot have been a matter of doubt. The subject formed the one topic of discussion during the autumn and winter of 1895. It would have advanced more rapidly but for one circumstance, and that was the exclusion of Li Hung Chang from office, for the Emperor of China had steadily refused to restore him to the substantive posts he had held in the administration, and he was consequently without the authority to conclude any definite arrangements. The situation was therefore controlled by two separate but closely connected issues. The first was the return of Li Hung Chang to power, and the second the making of adequate concessions to Russia in return for her intervention.

When in the spring of 1896 it became necessary for China to nominate a special Ambassador to attend the Coronation of the Emperor at Moscow, the Chinese ruler nominated as his representative his Minister at the Russian capital, and what is still more noteworthy by the light of subsequent events, the Russian Government expressed its approbation of the appointment. When, however, the news reached Pekin, it was seen that if this arrangement were carried out, the return of Li Hung Chang to power might be regarded as indefinitely postponed. An unexpected turn was given to the question by the Russian Minister announcing that China would not be adequately represented at Moscow on such a memorable occasion as the Imperial Coronation, except by her most prominent and best-known official, Li Hung Chang. These representations, supported by the full weight of the Empress Dowager, produced their due effect, and Li Hung Chang was duly appointed Ambassador for the occasion. It soon became clear why this arrangement had been carried out. Before Li Hung Chang left China, he and Count Cassini had drawn up the heads of a Convention, and on his arrival at Moscow, he signed either there, or at St. Petersburg, a treaty which embodied the terms of payment to which Russia was entitled for her services. The statement as to the existence of this secret treaty has sometimes been traversed, but with every inducement to do so, and in the face of repeated challenges, no contradiction has ever been made with authority, and more recently such information has been obtained as to render any contradiction impossible.

The fact is therefore established that immediately after the rescue of Leaoutung, Russia took steps to obtain an equivalent from the embarrassed country she had rescued from her victorious adversary. She not only took the steps, but these, by the co-operation of Li Hung Chang, were crowned with success. The secret treaty gave Russia the control of that very Leaoutung peninsula which she had nominally saved at the cost to China of six millions sterling. In plain words, Russia had induced China to pay this money for the benefit of herself. We are too near the occurrence of

THE MOSCOW CORONATION.

537

these events to characterize them as they deserve without incurring a suspicion of partisanship, but at the right season history will know how to designate the course of Russia's so-called friendly policy towards China. It is unnecessary to lay stress on the other stipulations of the arrangements of 1895-6. They provided before everything, and in the first place, for the possession by Russia of Port Arthur and Talienwan. There is every reason to believe that Kiaochao was also to be assigned for the shelter of the Russian fleet, and the justification for these measures was, that the great ruler of Russia had taken China under his protection. A period of eighteen months elapsed before the full practical significance of these arrangements became evident, and in that period the evidence accumulated as to the need in which China stood of protection, and as to the continuance of the incapacity which had resulted in her downfall during the struggle with Japan.

Li Hung Chang came to Europe in the first place as Special Ambassador for the Imperial Coronation at Moscow; but his tour was extended, in a more or less accredited manner, to the other countries of the West. There was a prevalent and natural curiosity on the part of Europeans to see China's great man, the only visible embodiment of her rule, and this sentiment explained the demonstrativeness of the reception Li Hung Chang received in Berlin, Brussels, Paris, and London. The results of his tour were, however, none, because he had no authority to conduct, much less to conclude negotiations, and because all his efforts failed to obtain his restoration to the Viceroyship of Pechihli. On his return to China from Europe he found his position at Court, so far at least as his relations with the Emperor were concerned, no whit better than after his return from Shimonoseki. In order to obtain for him the requisite authority to fulfil the conditions of the arrangement with Russia, it was necessary to commence intrigues for the restitution of his rank and offices to Li Hung Chang, whose position was now confined to the honorary post of Grand Secretary. Despite the support of the Empress Dowager, whom Li Hung Chang regarded as "his Imperial Mistress," to the exclusion of the