CHINA.
For a considerable time prior to 1891, when the first sod was turned for the construction of the great Siberian Railroad, the Russian gov ernment was anxious to secure control of this territory. When Japan in 1895 occupied the Liao-Tung Peninsula of Manchuria and began to fortify Port Arthur as its southern tip Rus sia, with two other powers protested. Weak, though victorious, Japan withdrew, af terward to learn of the secret treaty of Count Cassini, by which Russia leased Port Arthur from China for 26 years. Having obtained this foothold, the Russians cast covetous eyes on the vast territory which lay between, and under the commanding influence of Admiral Alexieff, generalissimo of the Russian military and naval forces in the Far East, who, in 1903, for his services was proclaimed by imperial ukase vice roy of Greater Russia and lord of all the lands which lie between Baikal and the Pacific and which extend from the Arctic to the Yellow Sea, they accordingly began a pacific conquest by colonization an an unparalleled scale. The route of the Siberian Railroad was originally surveyed with Vladivostok on the Pacific coast of Russian Asia as the terminus. Port Arthur, however, washed by the warmer waters of the Yellow Sea, now became the coveted goal.
A corporation known as the Russo-Chinese Bank was established, which to all appearances was a mutual combination of Russian and Chi nese capital, but was actually only another name for the Department of Finance of the Russian Empire.
There were times when China was short of ready cash, and the Russo-Chinese Bank each time went to her aid. Therefore, when China was asked to grant a concession for a railroad from the Siberian trunk line to Liao-Timg Bay, to be called the Russo-Chinese Railroad, and the Russo-Chinese Bank offered to furnish the necessary $250,000,000, China could not well re fuse. This railroad penetrated the most fertile as well as the most densely populated districts of Manchuria and had as its terminus the Rus sian fortress of Port Arthur. On the north it joined with the Siberian trunk line at Harbin, on the mighty Sungara.. It passed through the
cities of Tsitsihar, Kirin and Mukden, capi tals of the three Manchurian provinces. It tapped the Gulf of Liao-Tung, by means of the port of New-Chwang, and skirted the whole eastern coast of this arm of the Yellow Sea.
When the other powers became alarmed at the armies which kept pourning in from Sibe ria and European Russia, the officials of the Tsar pointed to a clause in the railroad's char ter which permitted Russia to guard the rail way with troops, but did not limit their number. There followed a vigorous colonization policy; free transportation (with a land grant of 100 acres to each male of a household, besides agri cultural implements) was offered to Russian immigrants ; and families migrated from all parts of the Tsar's western dominions. Not withstanding this influx amounting to 200,000 a year, it did not penetrate far from the rail roads. The region is too vast.
Consequent on the Boxer massacres and troubles of 1900 a Russian military force occu pied the right bank of the Amur River, declared it to be Russian territory and established a pro visional Russian administration. On 8 April 1902, the Manchurian convention between China and Russia was signed, wherein Russia agreed to evacuate Manchurian territory within 18 months. But Russia could not then voluntarily withdraw. The civilization of the Slav had rooted itself too firmly in this soil to be erad icated except by a political cyclone. One could. see everywhere, from Port Arthur at its ex treme southern end to the Amur River, the old Russian boundary, on the north, evidences of the Muscovite occupation. Under the direction of Russian engineers native laborers were build ing railroads and military highways, construct ing wharves, marking out vast farms and laying out cities. The Russian fortress was found wherever a strategic site would make Russian cannon still more formidable, and almost in the shadow of these guns rose the peaceful sanc tuaries of the Orthodox Greek, with their white walls and green roofs and cupolas.