Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/153

 which began with secret conversations at the Tsar's coronation in Moscow in 1896 and finally culminated in acquiescence in the cool Slav seizure of Port Arthur, were daggers in the heart of Japan—which she was unable to ward off. But in 1900, on the occasion of the Boxer explosion, by winning the esteem of the world by the excellence of her expeditionary force, she prepared the ground for what subsequently happened. The Colossus of the North, after playing for more than half a century like a cat with a mouse with Chinese sovereignty, had become too bold. Casting off the fiction of friendly co-operation, which had been her insistent cry ever since Muravieff had first sailed down the Amur in the middle of the nineteenth century, Russia had invaded all Manchuria and established garrisons even to the mouth of the Yalu, her intrigues in Seoul to obtain the lease of a harbour at the toe of the Korean boot—Masampo for choice—being so insistent as to make the Mikado's country seethe with rage.

In 1904 Japan hazarded the impossible. The splendid gesture which involved her in war with Russia was forced on her; it was in every sense a war which had to be fought if Japan were to retain her real independence. There is no question but that Russia directly and cate-