Under the first of these articles it is declared that ’Russia has no territorial advantages or preferential or exclusive concessions in Manchuria in impairment of Chinese sovereignty or inconsistent with the principle of equal opportunity’; whilst the second is a reciprocal engagement by Russia and Japan ’not to obstruct any general measures common to all countries which China may take for the development of the commerce and industry of Manchuria.’

“It would be interesting to know whether a refusal to allow China to build a railway on her own territory is or is not an impairment of Chinese sovereignty and whether such a railway as that proposed was not a measure for the ’development of the commerce and industry of Manchuria.’

“It is doubtful if even the Russo-Japanese war created as much feeling in China as did the Fa-ku-men incident.  Japan’s action was of such flagrant dishonesty and such a cynical repudiation of her promises and pledges that her credit received a blow from which it has never since recovered.  The abject failure of the British Government to support its subjects’ treaty rights was almost as much an eye-opener to the world as the protest from Tokio....

“The methods which had proved so successful in stopping the Fa-ku-men railway were equally successful in forcing the abandonment of other projected railways.  Among these were the Chin-chou-Aigun line and the important Antung-Mukden line.[60] The same alleged secret protocol was used equally brutally and successfully for the acquisition of the Newchwang line, and participation in 1909, and eventual acquisition in 1914, of the Chan-Chun-Kirin lines.  Subsequently by an agreement with Russia the sixth article of the Russo-Chinese Agreement of 1896 was construed to mean ’the absolute and exclusive rights of administration within the railway zone.’”

Japan’s spheres of influence have been subsequently extended to cover the whole of Manchuria and the whole of Shantung—­though the latter has been nominally renounced at Washington.  By such methods as the above, or by loans to impecunious Chinese authorities, the Japanese have acquired vast railway monopolies wherever their influence has penetrated, and have used the railways as a means of acquiring all real power in the provinces through which they run.

After the Russo-Japanese war, Russia and Japan became firm friends, and agreed to bring pressure on China jointly in any matter affecting Manchuria.  Their friendship lasted until the Bolshevik revolution.  Russia had entered into extensive obligations to support Japan’s claims at the Peace Conference, which of course the Bolsheviks repudiated.  Hence the implacable hostility of Japan to Soviet Russia, leading to the support of innumerable White filibusters in the territory of the Far Eastern Republic, and to friendship with France in all international questions.  As soon as there began to be in China a revolutionary party aiming at the overthrow of the Manchus, the