[101]. To-day there seem to be about 84,500 public schools in Russia, of which 40,000 are under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education [compared with 30,157 public and private schools in Japan in 1902]. Toward the maintenance of the 40,000 schools, the ministry appropriates only about $2,000,000, or a little over one eighth of the annual cost. The teachers number 172,000 [in Japan, 126,703, in 1902], and pupils and students, 4,568,763 [in Japan in 1902, 5,469,419]. 7,250,000 children of school age are without any education [while in Japan, in 1902, the ratio of attendance to the number of children of school age was 95.80 per cent. for boys and 87.00 per cent. for girls, or, on the average, 91.57 per cent.]. See the U. S. daily Consular Reports for February 8 and March 4, 1902 (Nos. 1871 and 1892), [and the Kwampō, April 8, 1904].
[102]. As an evidence for this striking state of things the reader is referred to Dr. E. J. Dillon’s article in the American Review of Reviews for October, 1904, pp. 449–454. The whole subject should be more carefully studied than it seems to have been thus far.
[103]. “The whole northern part of Asia Minor, according to the treaty between Russia and Turkey, is now placed under such conditions that Russian capitalists have the area open to them, to the exclusion of foreign enterprise. A situation analogous is found in Persia, where the entire northern portion is acknowledged to be under the exclusive economic influence of Russia.”—Consul Greener at Vladivostok, in the U. S. daily Consular Reports, April 22, 1903 (No. 1627).
[104]. For example, the normal freight per ton from Russia to Eastern Siberia would be about twenty-one rubles, while that from Japan or Shanghai is three or four rubles. If Russian goods were sold to the artificial exclusion of articles exported from nearer countries, the consumer’s burden would be greatly increased.
[105]. Count Cassini, the present Russian Ambassador at Washington, wrote, in the North American Review for May, 1904: “... But let us suppose for argument’s sake that Russia, triumphant in this war, finds herself dominant in Manchuria. Japan, her enemy, could look for no favors; she could not expect to find encouragement for the importation of her manufactures” (p. 688).
[106]. Continuing, the Count stated: “But Manchuria would require many things that Russia could not supply, or supply at figures reasonable enough to create a market. In Russia, agriculture is, comparatively speaking, more important than manufacturing, and those goods which are made in my country are not such as Manchuria would need. Russia, too, would be obliged to use the railway with its high freight tariffs....”—Ibid.
[107]. One can seldom find a more outspoken confession of a diplomacy consisting of a series of deliberate falsehoods than the chapters on the Russian relations with China, Korea, and Japan, in a diplomatic history by a Russian writer, as translated in the Dōbun-kwai Hōkoku, Nos. 45, 46, 48, 49, and 50 (August, September, November, and December, 1903, and January, 1904).
[108]. The Russian diplomatic historian to whom frequent reference has been made frankly says that the feebleness and internal disorder of China are welcome conditions for the expansion of Russian influence in the Far East, and that it would be the height of folly to displace the weak China with a colonial possession of a European power.—The Dōbun-kwai Hōkoku, No. 48, p. 36.
[109]. See p. [55], note 1, above.
[110]. The Shiberiya oyobi Manshū, pp. 221–223.