Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/231

 aid or the advice of Japan. The end of the year 1902 may be said to have been the approximate time when Japan first realised that all hope of a peaceful solution of the Korean problem was gone. One naturally asks why Korea took this step, and, while we are still too near the event to secure an entirely dispassionate estimate or opinion, there seems to be little doubt that it was because Russia made no pretensions and expressed no desire to reform the administration of the government. She was perfectly content to let things go along in the old way in the peninsula, knowing that this would constantly and increasingly jeopardise the interests of Japan, while she herself had practically no commercial interests to suffer.

The immemorial policy of Russia in Asia sufficiently accounts for her work in Korea. Her policy of gradual absorption of native tribes has never held within its purview the civilising or the strengthening of those tribes, until they have been gathered under her aegis. On the other hand, until that has been accomplished she has either waited patiently for the disintegration of the native tribes or has actually aided in such disintegration. History shows no case in which Russia has strengthened the hands of another people for the sake of profiting.by the larger market that would be opened up; for until very recently the commercial side of the question has scarcely been considered, and even now the commercial interests of Russia depend upon an exclusive market. So that in any case a dominant political influence is the very first step in every move of Russia in the East. Why then should Russia have advised administrative or monetary or any other reform, since such action would inevitably form a bar to the success of her own ultimate plans.

The historian of the future, taking his stand above and out of the smoke of battle, will take a dispassionate view of the whole situation. He will mark the antecedents of these two rival powers; he will compare their domestic and foreign policies, he will weigh the motives that impelled them, he will mark the instruments wielded by each and the men whom they employed