Regarding the European trade with China in general, M. Sorokin, Assistant Director of Customs at Niu-chwang, is reported to have remarked that the freight per pood from Europe to the East was five rubles on land and 1.50 on sea.[[113]] Certain articles, such as glassware, tobacco, and the like, seem to be carried from Russia to China at two rubles by rail and one ruble by ships.[[114]] The sea route consumes nearly two months, but, for bulky merchandise, it would be impossible for the railway to compete with it.
It is interesting, in this connection, to remember that, from America, the freight between San Francisco and the Eastern ports has been reduced repeatedly during the last year, owing to the competition among the shipping companies, so that the charge for flour does not seem to be more than one mill per ton-mile, or forty cents a hundred pounds for 8000 miles.
During 1901, according to the latest statistics available, the deficit of the Ussuri branch of the Siberian Railway is said to have amounted to $435,162, and that of the entire railway to $11,330,000.[[115]]
In this connection, it is interesting to note that this view is further confirmed by no less authority than Count Cassini, the present Russian Minister at Washington, who, in his statement given on April 9, and published in the North American Review for May, 1904, said:
“... Consider Russia’s position commercially toward Manchuria with that of the United States. In this country [the United States] are made not only the very materials that would find a sale among the people of the province, but with American goods shipped by an all-water route, the cost of transportation would be much lower than the cost of carrying on the all-land routes to which Russia would be confined. Should Russia ship by water to Manchuria from Odessa, the distance would still be too great to make competition with the United States successful. From Moscow to Port Arthur the distance by rail is 5000 miles. It is therefore easy to realize the privileged position of the United States in competing over an all-water route from the Pacific coast, with Russia over an all-rail route.”[[116]]
CHAPTER I
RETROCESSION OF THE LIAO-TUNG PENINSULA
The way in which the momentous issues already discussed in the introductory chapter have been at work and have steadily culminated in the present conflict is with unusual clearness and in the most instructive manner illustrated by the historic events which led up to the outbreak of the war. The study of these events also appears essential for an intelligent understanding of the situation, for, in this crisis, as in many another in history, the contestants do not seem to be always conscious of even the more important issues at stake, while the events, in their main outlines, are patent to every one. The former may be found only by an analysis of facts, some of which are obscure, but the latter are narrated dramatically, from time to time as they occur or are published, in the press and in the diplomatic correspondence, so that it is little wonder that the events are often taken for the causes, even the significance, of the supreme fact to which they seem to point. The student should investigate the issues if he would know the meaning of the war, but, if he wishes to see something of the conscious attitude which the belligerents take toward the situation, perhaps no more profitable way can be found than in a study of the events through which the issues have been writing history.
The conflict of Russia and Japan was foreshadowed already in the middle of the past century, when the former began to claim some of the Kurile Islands and the whole of Sakhalien, upon parts of which Japan had long exercised vague sovereign rights.[[117]] Presently, in 1858, Muravieff “Amurski” succeeded in creating a common proprietary right with China over the vast territory lying between the Ussuri River and the sea.[[118]] The same territory was, only two years later, definitively annexed[[119]] to Russia through the skillful diplomacy of Ignatieff, Russian Minister at Peking, who, taking advantage of China’s defeat at the hands of the allied forces of England and France, had won the favor of the Chinese Government by acting as mediator between it and the allies. The Eastern naval headquarters of Russia, which had been transferred from Peterpavlofsk in Kamchatka to Nicolaiefsk at the mouth of the Amur, was now again moved further south to Vladivostok, founded in 1860, at the southern end of the new territory. No sooner did the remote but certain pressure from the expanding northern Power begin to be felt in Japan than, in 1861, a Russian man-of-war took possession of the Japanese islands of Tsushima in the Korean straits, from which it withdrew only at the instance of the British Minister, Sir Rutherford Alcock.[[120]] Half a dozen years after, the island of Sakhalien was placed under a common possession between Russia and Japan, while, in 1875, the island was surrendered to Russia, Japan receiving in return the chain of sterile Chishima Islands (the Kuriles).[[121]] This brought the presence of Russia still nearer home to Japan than before. On the other hand, Russia seemed to have only begun her ambitious career in Eastern Asia, for she could hardly be expected to be forever satisfied with her naval headquarters at Vladivostok, a station which, situated as it was at the southern extremity of her Oriental dominion, was so completely ice-bound during a large part of each year that her fleet was obliged to winter in Japanese harbors.
Then followed a comparatively long period of inactivity on the part of Russia. When, however, in 1891, she finally resolved to build the trans-Siberian Railway, the inadequacy of Vladivostok, not only as the Pacific naval harbor of the Russian Empire, but also as the terminus of the great railroad, became evident. To Russia a southern expansion toward an ice-free outlet seemed now a necessity. For the realization of this desire, an opportunity presented itself in a striking form, in 1895, at the end of the Chinese-Japanese war.