[391]. The U. S. 57th Congress, 2d Session, House Documents, vol. i. pp. 926–928.
[392]. The italics in the quotation are the author’s.
[393]. Observe how powerfully Russia applies this argument. On February 4, M. Lessar said that Russia was merely asking privileges in Manchuria similar to those granted to Germany in Shan-tung.—The U. S. 57th Congress, 2d Session, House Documents, vol. i. p. 274. Russia, if she would, could with a certain amount of impunity inquire of Great Britain and other Powers how it was that they allowed Germany to acquire her apparently exclusive rights in Shan-tung, and now objected to Russia’s following her example only on a larger scale.
[394]. The U. S. 57th Congress, 2d Session, House Documents, vol. i. p. 929.
[395]. Ibid., pp. 277–279.
[396]. I. e., the draft of March limited the period of evacuation to one year, instead of a year and a half, as in the convention of April.
[397]. The reader will remember the cordial exchange of views between the two Powers when Wei-hai-Wei was leased to Great Britain in 1898. There occurred in the East several affairs of minor importance in which the British and Japanese authorities acted with mutual good-will; e. g., the arrangement for a British concession at Niu-chwang in 1899. See China, No. 1 (1900), pp. 215–218.
[398]. See the British Parliamentary Papers: China, No. 3 (1900), Nos. 146, 121, 129, 134, 141, 155, 169–171, 180–181, 188–189, 191, 193, 203, 210, 216, 238, 241, 212, 217, 224, 236, 246–247, 252, 260, 265–267; China, No. 1 (1901), Nos. 122–124, 42, 4, 18, 23, 29, 32 (July 13, 1900), 41, 52, 57, 38.
[399]. Mr. Katō, Foreign Minister at Tokio at the time, remarked later that even in matters about which the two Powers had not exchanged their views, their Representatives at Peking acted in such mutual sympathy that it was suspected that a secret understanding must have existed between them.—Tokushu Jōyaku, p. 411.
[400]. In this connection it was thought not improbable that Germany herself might have informally suggested the feasibility of a triple alliance between herself and Great Britain and Japan in the same line as the Anglo-German Agreement, which Japan had joined as a signatory. In his speech before the Reichstag, however, Herr von Bülow declared, on March 3, that Germany was not the father of the Anglo-Japanese alliance. At any rate, the German suggestion, if there was one, never materialized, but gave place to another and still more important form of agreement in which the world-politics of the versatile Kaiser played no part.