A severe blow had been dealt to Russia.  She saw her entire Eastern policy threatened with failure.  The permanent occupation of the Liao-Tung peninsula by Japan meant that she had to deal, not with an effete and waning power which she might threaten and cajole, but with a new and ambitious civilization which had just given proof of surprising ability.  After vast expenditure of energy and treasure and diplomacy, access to the sea was further off than ever.

Then came a masterly stroke.  Germany and France were induced to co-operate with Russia in driving Japan out of Manchuria, upon the ground that her presence so near to Pekin endangered the Chinese Empire, the independence of Korea and the peace of the Orient.  So in the hour of her triumph Japan was to be humiliated; the fruits of her victory snatched from her, precisely as the “Berlin Treaty,” in 1879, had torn from Russia the fruits of her Turkish victories!  Japan wasted no time in protests, but quietly withdrew and, as it is significantly said, “proceeded to double her army and treble her navy!”

As the protector of Chinese interests Russia was in position to ask a favor; she asked and obtained permission to carry the Siberian railway in a straight line through Manchuria, instead of following the Amur in its great northward sweep.  The Japanese word for statesman also means chess-player.  Russian diplomatists had played their game well.  In serving China, they had incidentally removed the Japanese from a position which blocked their own game, and had at the same time opened a way for their railway across that waiting gap in Northern Manchuria.

Just three years after these events Germany, by way of indemnity for the murder of two missionaries, compelled China to lease to her the province of Shantung.  Russia immediately demanded similar privileges in the Liao-Tung peninsula.  China, beaten to her knees, could not afford to lose the friendship of the Tsar, and granted the lease; and when permission was asked to have a branch of the Russian railway run from Harbin through the length of this leased territory to Port Arthur, humbly conceded that too.

With wonderful smoothness everything had moved toward the desired end.  To be sure, the tenure of the peninsula was only by lease, and in no way different from that of Shantung by Germany.  There was no pretext in sight for garrisoning the dismantled fort at Port Arthur, but the fates had hitherto opened closed doors and might do it again.  And so she waited.  And while she waited the branch road from Harbin moved swiftly down to Mukden, and on through the Manchurian peninsula, and Port Arthur was in direct line of communication with St. Petersburg.

In 1900 the anti-foreign insurrection known as the “Boxer war” broke out in China.  Russia, in common with all the Great Powers (now including Japan), sent troops for the protection of the imperiled legations at Pekin.  Nothing could better have served the Government of the Tsar.  Russian troops poured into Manchuria, and the new road from Harbin bore the Tsar’s soldiers swiftly down to Port Arthur.  The fort was garrisoned, and work immediately commenced—­probably upon plans already drawn—­to make of this coveted spot what Nature seemed to have designed it to be—­the Gibraltar of the East.