it manifested anxiety that nothing should be done to cripple or impede the ability of China in the maintenance of a stable government and its territorial integrity. Hence it was necessary to continue in the concert of the powers and as far as possible control their action to that end.
Its success in bringing about an agreement for a lump sum for indemnities, to be apportioned among the nations, was of vast importance. If each power had acted separately respecting the indemnities, the one possible method other than a loan, which would have imposed foreign management of the revenues, would have been the occupation of sections of territory by the powers, each one utilizing its own sphere as a source of revenue in payment of claims. This condition once inaugurated would have been difficult to change.
In 1899, just before the Boxer outbreak, Secretary Hay, fearing the effects which might result to American commerce from the apparent intention of certain European powers to appropriate Chinese territory at will, or to extend over it their "spheres of influence," addressed the governments of Great Britain, Germany, Russia, France, Italy, and Japan, urging that it was to the interest of the world's commerce that the government of China should be strengthened and its integrity maintained, and submitting for their assent certain principles which should be respected in that territory, whereby that populous empire should remain an open market for the world. These principles were accepted by all the governments named, and the American Secretary received deserved credit among all nations for his
