of Muravief, she reached the mouth of that great river, the acquisition of Nikolayevsk for a naval basis was her immediate reward. But Nikolayevsk could not possibly satisfy her. Situated in an inhospitable region far away from all the main routes of the world’s commerce, it offered itself only as a stepping-stone to further acquisitions. To push southward from this new port became an immediate object to Russia. There lay an obstacle in the way, however; the long strip of sea-coast from the mouth of the Amur to the Korean frontier—an area then called the Usuri region because the Usuri forms its western boundary—belonged to China, and she, having conceded much to Russia in the matter of the Amur, showed no disposition to make further concessions in the matter of the Usuri. In the presence of menaces, however, she agreed that the region should be regarded as common property pending a convenient opportunity for clear delimitation. That opportunity came very soon. Seizing the moment (1860) when China had been beaten to her knees by England and France, Russia secured final cession of the Usuri region, which now became the maritime province of Siberia. Then Russia shifted her naval base on the Pacific from Nikolayevsk to Vladivostok. She gained ten degrees in a southerly direction.
From the mouth of the Amur, where Nikolayevsk is situated, to the southern shore of Korea there rests on the coast of eastern Asia an arch of islands having at its northern point Sakhalin and at its southern Tsushima, the keystone of the arch being the main island of Japan. This arch embraces the Sea of Japan and is washed on its convex side by the Pacific Ocean. Immediately after the transfer of Russia’s naval base from Nikolayevsk to Vladivostok, an attempt was made to obtain possession of the southern point of the arch, namely, Tsushima. A Russian man-of-war proceeded thither and quietly began to establish a settlement, which would soon have constituted a title of ownership had not Great Britain interfered. The Russians saw that Vladivostok, acquired at the cost of so much toil, would be comparatively useless unless from the sea on whose shore it was situated an avenue to the Pacific could be opened, and they therefore tried to obtain command of the Tsushima channel. Immediately after reaching the mouth of the Amur the same instinct had led them to begin the colonization of Sakhalin. The axis of this long narrow island is inclined at a very acute angle to the Usuri region, which its northern extremity almost touches, while its southern is separated from Yezo by the strait of La Pérouse. But in Sakhalin the Russians found Japanese subjects. In fact the island was a part of the Japanese empire. Resorting, however, to the Usuri fiction of joint occupation, they succeeded by 1875 in transferring the whole of Sakhalin to Russia’s dominion. Further encroachments upon Japanese territory could not be lightly essayed, and the Russians held their hands. They had been trebly checked: checked in trying to push southward along the coast of the mainland; checked in trying to secure an avenue from Vladivostok to the Pacific; and checked in their search for an ice-free port, which definition Vladivostok did not fulfil. Enterprise in the direction of Korea seemed to be the only hope of saving the maritime results of the great Trans-Asian march.
Was Korea within safe range of such enterprises? Everything seemed to answer in the affirmative. Korea had all the qualifications desired by an aggressor. Her people were unprogressive, her resources undeveloped, her self-defensive capacities insignificant, her government corrupt. But she was a tributary of China, and China had begun to show some tenacity in protecting the integrity of her buffer states. Besides, Japan was understood to have pretensions with regard to Korea. On the whole, therefore, the problem of carrying to full fruition the work of Muravief and his lieutenants demanded strength greater than Russia could exercise without some line of communications supplementing the Amur waterway and the long ocean route. Therefore she set about the construction of a railway across Asia.
The Amur being the boundary of Russia’s east Asian territory, this railway had to be carried along its northern bank where many engineering and economic obstacles presented themselves. Besides, the river, from an early stage in its course, makes a huge semicircular sweep northward, and a railway following its bank to Vladivostok must make the same détour. If, on the contrary, the road could be carried over the diameter of the semicircle, it would be a straight and therefore shorter line, technically easier and economically better. The diameter, however, passed through Chinese territory, and an excuse for extorting China’s permission was not in sight. Russia therefore proceeded to build each end of the road, deferring the construction of the Amur section for the moment. She had not waited long when, in 1894, war broke out between China and Japan, and the latter, completely victorious, demanded as the price of peace the southern littoral of Manchuria from the Korean boundary to the Liaotung peninsula at the entrance to the Gulf of Pechili. This was a crisis in Russia’s career. She saw that her maritime extension could never get nearer to the Pacific than Vladivostok were this claim of Japan’s established. For the proposed arrangement would place the littoral of Manchuria in Japan’s direct occupation and the littoral of Korea in her constructive control, since not only had she fought to rescue Korea from Chinese suzerainty, but also her object in demanding a slice of the Manchurian coast-line was to protect Korea against aggression from the north; that is to say, against aggression from Russia. Muravief’s enterprise had carried his country first to the mouth of the Amur and thence southward along the coast to Vladivostok and to Possiet Bay at the north-eastern extremity of Korea. But it had not given to Russia free access to the Pacific, and now she was menaced with a perpetual barrier to that access, since the whole remaining coast of east Asia as far as the Gulf of Pechili was about to pass into Japan’s possession or under her domination.
Then Russia took an extraordinary step. She persuaded Germany and France to force Japan out of Manchuria. It is not to be supposed that she frankly exposed her own aggressive designs and asked for assistance to prosecute them. Neither is it to be supposed that France and Germany were so curiously deficient in perspicacity as to overlook those designs. At all events these three great powers served on Japan a notice to quit, and Japan, exhausted by her struggle with China, had no choice but to obey.
The notice was accompanied by an exposé of reasons. Its signatories said that Japan’s tenure of the Manchurian littoral would menace the security of the Chinese capital, would render the independence of Korea illusory, and would constitute an obstacle to the peace of the Orient.
By way of saving the situation in some slight degree Japan sought from China a guarantee that no portion of Manchuria should thereafter be leased or ceded to a foreign state. But France warned Japan that to press such a demand would offend Russia, and Russia declared that, for her part, she had no intention of trespassing in Manchuria. Japan, had she been in a position to insist on the guarantee, would also have been in a position to disobey the mandate of the three powers. Unable to do either the one or the other, she quietly stepped out of Manchuria, and proceeded to double her army and treble her navy.
As a reward for the assistance nominally rendered to China in this matter, Russia obtained permission in Peking to divert her Trans-Asian railway from the huge bend of the Amur to the straight line through Manchuria. Neither Germany nor France received any immediate recompense. Three years later, by way of indemnity for the murder of two missionaries by a mob, Germany seized a portion of the province of Shantung. Immediately, on the principle that two wrongs make a right, Russia obtained a lease of the Liaotung peninsula, from which she had driven Japan in 1895. This act she followed by extorting from China permission to construct a branch of the Trans-Asian railway through Manchuria from north to south.
Russia’s maritime aspirations had now assumed a radically altered phase. Instead of pushing southward from Vladivostok and Possiet Bay along the coast of Korea, she had suddenly
