378 THE FAR EAST. 



post of Inspector-General of Customs should be held by 

 an Englishman ; while Lord Salisbury, bearing in mind 

 no doubt the Bristol speech of 1896, declared in March 

 that whereas his Government had always looked with 

 favour upon the idea of Bussia obtaining an ice-free 

 port on the Pacific, " Bussia had now given a most 

 unfortunate extension to this policy." The tangible 

 proof of the official awakening was the acquisition of 

 Wei-hai-wei for such period as Bussia occupied Port 

 Arthur, and this was followed nearly four years later 

 by the Anglo-Japanese alliance, contracted at a time 

 when Bussia was endeavouring to extort a brand-new 

 set of absolutely preposterous concessions from China 

 as the price of her evacuation of Manchuria — a tardy 

 recognition of the dismal failure of the policy of isola- 

 tion of 1895. 



The value of Wei-hai-wei ^ is, as I have had occasion 

 to remark in a previous chapter, under existing circum- 

 stances hypothetical. It is hardly conceivable that in 

 the event of Great Britain going to war, any British 

 captain would consent to allow his ship to remain in an 

 open harbour where it could at any moment be tor- 

 pedoed, or that anything else could be done with the 

 coal-supply now kept on the island in the harbour- 

 mouth than to shift it precipitately into the sea. When 

 in the hands of China, it was fortified at a cost of 

 from £5,000,000 to £6,000,000, and no doubt thor- 

 oughly to refortify the island and the mainland now 



1 The harbour of "Wei-hai-wei, which is said to be capable of holding 

 from thirty to forty men-of-war, — though I believe sixteen is the largest 

 number that we have ever had in the harbour at one time, — is faced by an 

 island, which divides the entrance into two channels. The narrow entrance 

 is from 1200 to 1400 yard? in width, and the broader channel from 2 to 3 

 miles, and shallow for the greater part. To render the harbour secure from 

 torpedo attack it would be necessary to construct a breakwater across this 

 passage, at a probable cost of £1,000,000. 



