RUSSIAN DEMANDS. 383 



and suffering, constructing the railway and defending 

 it from hordes of Boxers ; that the Russian Cossacks 

 and soldiers who have performed miracles of valour in 

 the last Chinese war — modestly termed troubles — have 

 suffered all this, and fallen on the field of battle, for 

 the sake of foreign commercial firms ? It was not for 

 this that E/Ussia has done what she has. In one word, 

 we have fought and laboured in Manchuria not for the 

 sake of open doors." And so the Manchurian phase 

 of 1900-1904, displaying Kussia in occupation of the 

 field, was the natural corollary of those that had 

 already been enacted. 



Russian statesmen no doubt realised that at the 

 conclusion of the Boxer troubles they might be obliged 

 under external pressure to effect a partial and tem- 

 porary evacuation of the country ; and bearing this 

 in mind, they were not slow to determine that such 

 evacuation, if it became necessary, should be made the 

 lever for securing important and valuable concessions. 

 Hence the many troublesome documents which dis- 

 turbed the peace of the inmates of more than one 

 chancellory from the opening days of 1901 until the 

 early part of 1902, when the publication of the Anglo- 

 Japanese treaty was instrumental in hastening on 

 the conclusion in March of that year of a more or 

 less satisfactory convention for the evacuation of 

 Manchuria. 



The demands formulated in the previous documents 

 are of considerable interest, as showing the wide scope 

 of Russian aspirations. The chief provisions were to 

 have been as follows : (1) An increase in the number of 

 troops originally granted for the protection of the rail- 

 way ; (2) the numbers of any future Chinese army to 

 be fixed in consultation with Russia ; (3) no subject of 

 another Power to be employed to train naval or military 



