The War in the Far East, 1904-1905

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Russia undertook to evacuate Chinese territory by degrees at certain fixed dates. Had Russia carried out the terms of this Convention, her recent humiliations would have been avoided. This evacuation received indeed a commencement of execution so far as clause (a) was concerned?namely, the withdrawal from the south-western portion of Mukden province as far as the Liau River; but when April 8, 1903, arrived, there was no sign whatever that Russia intended to keep faith and withdraw, as she had undertaken to do, from the remaining portion of Mukden province and from Kirin. Despite innumerable excuses and assurances, her troops held their ground. Russia had, in fact, deliberately determined to annex Manchuria, or, as the Vicdomosti cynically expressed it, We may make political mistakes, but that is no reason why we should persist in them. The open and visible sign of this change of front was the creation of the special Imperial Lieutenancy of the Far East by the Tsar's ukase of July 30, 1903. To this Vice-Autocracy Admiral Alexeieff was appointed, and in his hands was placed the control of the diplomatic relations between Russian East Asia and neighbouring countries, and the supreme command of the naval and military forces. Japan had never remained blind to the serious detriment caused to her national future by the character of the Russian pretensions, but she was slow to convince herself of her neighbour's bad faith. She considered it indispensable for her welfare and her safety that the independence and integrity of Korea should be maintained, and that her paramount interests in the Korean peninsula should be safely guarded. She was unable to see how this could be done should Manchuria be annexed by Russia; and, in view of Russia's pretext for the eviction of the Japanese ...