382 THE FAR EAST. 



gard as anything but chimerical a measure of reform 

 which is in the course of a few years to give to China 

 an increased annual revenue of £40,000,000, a fleet 

 consisting of 30 battleships and first-class cruisers, 30 

 second-class cruisers and as many destroyers, with a 

 flotilla of 150 torpedo-boats, three naval and four 

 military colleges, four arsenals, an up-to-date army of 

 500,000 on a peace footing, and last, but not least, 

 a new and incorruptible set of ofiicials ! Omnia vincit 

 labor improhus ! But are the difiiculties which await 

 Sir Robert Hart likely to prove less insurmountable 

 than those that attended the shades of the daughters 

 of Danaus ? The task might well recall the unavailing 

 endeavour of a Sisyphus — 



" One — but the type of all — 

 EoUing the dreadful ball 

 In vain ! in vain / " •'■ 



The Boxer rising of 1900, as all the world knows, 

 aflbrded Russia the excuse for which she was waiting 

 to complete the process of absorption inaugurated by 

 Muravieff" and Ignatiefl" in the 'Fifties. Had there 

 been no Boxer outbreak it would have made no differ- 

 ence, for it is in no way open to doubt that when 

 Russia spent a fortune on Manchuria and built a 

 railway from one end of it to the other she did so 

 with the fixed conviction that that country was 

 destined to be hers. " Is it really possible," asks 

 the ' Pre - Amur Yiedomosti,' " that the Americans 

 imagine that Russia has spent so much treasure and 

 blood on Manchuria simply in order to convert it into 

 an international bazaar ? Do American editors really 

 seriously imagine that Russian officers who have 

 traversed Manchuria through and through in peril 



^ Charles Mackay. 



