As a matter of fact, I believe Russia regarded this proposal as an attempt to evade the assurance given by Mr Balfour in his Bristol speech. She looked upon it as the design of a powerful Anglo-German combination to exclude her for ever from the China seas. It was to her mind a conspiracy of the most dangerous kind, and she bent all her efforts to defeat it. When she had defeated it she lost no time in securing her position. She took Port Arthur as well as Talien-wan, for the simple reason that her interpretation of the situation convinced her that a commercial port overlooked by a great citadel in foreign hands would be a vantage to her foes rather than a prize to herself. Can she be altogether blamed for taking this view?
The mistake the Russian Government made was in attaching a serious meaning to the casual blunders of our Government, and in imagining that these blunders marked a connected purpose, if not a consistent policy. They were not to know that the Russophile passage in Mr Balfour's Bristol speech was a mere oratorical tag; that our friendly attitude towards Germany at Kiaochow was only a sort of amiable tolerance of an act the scope and consequence of which we had not measured; and that our proposal to open Talien-wan was made at the suggestion of our Minister at Peking, who, of course, knew what he was about, while it was acquiesced in at home by Ministers who simply did not know what they were doing. That Sir Claude Macdonald designed the Talien-wan move as a check to Russia I have no doubt; that Lord Salisbury never dreamed of this aspect of it I am equally convinced.
However that may be, one thing, I think, is clear. The sense of injury and the complaints of bad faith are not all on one side. In diplomacy, as in most of the affairs in this world, it is a wise rule not to believe your opponent to be as stupid as he looks. Russia at any rate paid us this compliment during the recent negotiations. The result, no doubt, is that she has overreached us. But whose fault is it?
The Russian flag once hoisted over Port Arthur and Talien-wan (by what nominal authority makes no difference whatever to the fact) placed the new relation of China to the rest of the world beyond all discussion. China did not willingly surrender her territory: she looked in vain for help, but found none. She weighed in the balance the words and acts of one great Power against the words and acts of another, and had no choice but to place herself under authority of the strongest, finally and irrevocably. That fact must be taken as the master-key to her subsequent policy in all its phases.
These several events succeeding each other in close order awoke the British public from their optimistic dream, and forced them to reflect that there was after all something more in these Far Eastern readjustments than had occurred to them when cheering on gallant little Japan to the spoliation of China. The result obtained was certainly not that which was contemplated either by the nation or the Government when Great Britain settled down into her isolation. When the truth of the situation had revealed itself to the public there was naturally a loud call for something to be done to safeguard the commercial interests of the country, if not to recover lost prestige; but the Government were as far from having definite aims in China as they had ever been, and while goading them to action, the public was scarcely in a position to advise what that action should be. Neither had the Government, in spite of all that had taken place, fully realised to what extent China had added impotence to reluctance, for they continued to deal with China very much as if the events of 1895 to 1898 had never happened. They were reluctant to recognise the fact that Russia, in possession of the Liao-tung or Kwan-tung peninsula and of the railway line connecting it with Siberia, held a noose round the neck of the Peking Government, which she could tighten or relax, conceal or parade, as circumstances required, and that until some other Power or Powers were prepared to speak with equal authority Russia must be paramount, not by virtue of any convention, but as the outcome of accomplished facts.
Two measures adopted by Great Britain to rectify the preponderance of Russia were the seizure, under a form of negotiation, of the harbour of Weihai-wei and the forcing of money upon the Chinese by way of loan. The value of these strokes of policy has not yet become apparent.
