A LARGE QUESTION. 365 



CHAPTER XXVIIL 



THE FAR EAST. 



Commerce of the Far East — Great Britain's ideal ' the open door ' — 

 Russia's first mouthful of Manchurian territory — The second phase 

 of the Manchurian question — Events following upon the conclusion 

 of the treaty of Shimonoseki — England's isolation— Action of Russia, 

 Germany, and France — The Port Arthur incident — British ignorance 

 of Far Eastern conditions and affairs— The Intelligence Department 

 — The duty of British statesmen to stay the disintegration of the 

 Chinese Empire. 



The Chinese question, like the Chinese Empire and 

 its population, is a large one, and to write of it in 

 all its bearings would require many pages. All that 

 I aspire to do here is to touch upon certain phases 

 which Far Eastern events have of late years assumed, 

 and in doing so I shall keep mainly to those parts 

 of the empire with which the journey, the descrip- 

 tion of which forms the foundation of this book, 

 happened to bring me in contact. 



Commerce, as I have already pointed out, is the 

 lever which has raised China to its present unen- 

 viable prominence in w^orld politics, and commerce 

 it is that must continue to be the will-o'-the-wisp 

 to draw Western Powers on through the laby- 

 rinthine pathways of diplomatic mazes in the 

 remote East — for commerce, large as it already is, 

 must inevitably continue to expand and further 



