Unsatisfactory as the Manchurian Agreement of April 8, 1902, appeared to Great Britain and Japan, they refrained from entering any protest against its conclusion. They probably preferred the imperfect obligation the Convention imposed upon the contracting parties to an indefinite prolongation of the dangerous conditions which had prevailed. What remained for them and for China was to watch the conduct of Russia in Manchuria and test her veracity according to their own interpretations of the Agreement. In the mean time, the questions which had existed between China and the Powers were being one after another disposed of; the distribution of the indemnities was finally agreed upon on June 14, the Provisional Government of Tien-tsin by the Powers came to an end on August 15, and the rendition of the city to the Chinese authorities was accomplished. The date set for the evacuation of the southwest of the Sheng-king Province up to the Liao River, October 8, drew on, and the evacuation took place. The Tartar General TsÊng-chi had received an Imperial mandate to take over from the hands of the Russians the specified territory and its railways, even before the middle of September,^[429] and, on October 28, Prince Ching was able to state to Sir Ernest Satow: “Their Excellencies the Minister Superintendent of Northern Ports and the Military Governor of Mukden have now severally reported by telegram that all the railways outside the Great Wall have been handed back, and that the southwest portion of the Mukden (Sheng-king) Province as far as the Liao River has been completely evacuated by Russian troops.”^[430] But what was evacuation? Some troops may have been sent to European Russia, others to different stations in Siberia, including the strategically important Nikolsk, near the eastern border of Manchuria, and still others to Mongolia, where Russian forces were reported to have suddenly increased, until in December they were said to have numbered about 27,000.^[431] No small number were also transferred to Port Arthur^[432] and Vladivostok.^[433] It was, however, alleged by several observers that the main part of the so-called evacuation meant nothing more than the transferring of Russian troops from Chinese towns and settlements to the rapidly developing Russian settlements and quarters within Manchuria. It was reported from various sources^[434] that along the 2326 versts of the railroads there were about eighty so-called depots, each two to five square miles in extent, which had been marked out as the sites of new Russian settlements, and in many cases as stations of the railway guards. The most important line, connecting Port Arthur with Harbin, was studded with such depots at every fifteen or twenty miles. In many of these depots were to be seen extensive barracks built of brick, one at Liao-yang, for example, being capable of holding 3000 men, and another at Mukden, in the building of which bricks of the wall of the Chinese Temple of Earth were surreptitiously utilized,^[435] accommodating 6000. Besides the barracks, permanent blockhouses were met with every three or four miles. The guards of the railways, whose numbers were just at this time fixed at 30,000,^[436] were recruited from the regular troops, from whom they were distinguished by green shoulder-straps and collar-patches, and also by higher pay, and the regular troops themselves could be contained in large numbers in the depots and barracks and blockhouses when the evacuation was completed.^[437] At the same time, the Russians seemed to have destroyed nearly all the forts and confiscated the guns of the Chinese, whose defense had thus been reduced almost to nil. The military power of the Tartar Generals at the capitals of the three Manchurian Provinces was held under a strict surveillance of the Russian officers, who also readily controlled highroads and rivers. It was, moreover, uncertain how much of this control and supervision by the Russians would be relaxed after the promised evacuation, or how much it would then be replaced by the powerful position the Russians would hold in their own quarters in Manchuria. The conclusion seemed inevitable to some people that by the so-called evacuation, if it should ever take place in the face of the enormous obstacles which the Agreement did not seek to remove, Russia would gain a much stronger hold upon the Manchurian territory than during the preceding period of open military occupation.^[438] It was also pointed out that the forts, docks, and other military and naval establishments at Port Arthur, costing millions of rubles, were not compatible with the short term of the lease of the port, and their practical value would be seriously impaired by a true evacuation of the rest of Manchuria.

So far as the immediate interests of foreign nations, aside from the general principle of the integrity of the Chinese Empire, were concerned, nothing was more to be desired than a speedy evacuation of the treaty port of Niu-chwang, where the Russians had maintained a provisional government since August 5, 1900.^[439] At the conclusion of the Agreement of April, 1901, M. Lessar delivered a note verbale to the Chinese Government, stating that Niu-chwang would be restored as soon as the Powers terminated their administration of Tien-tsin, and that, if the latter event did not take place before October 8, then Niu-chwang would be surrendered to China in the first or second month after that date.^[440] The rendition of Tien-tsin was accomplished by the Powers on August 15, but the restoration of Niu-chwang not only did not follow it, but seemed to be indefinitely delayed for the trivial reasons presented one after another by the Russian authorities: that, for instance, one or two foreign gunboats were present in the harbor;^[441] that the Chinese had refused to agree to the constitution of a sanitary board;^[442] and that the Chinese Tao-tai detailed to receive back the civil government of the port had not arrived from Mukden, where, it has been discovered, he had been detained by the Russians much against his will.^[443] Up to the present time, the maritime customs dues at this important trade port have been paid to the Russo-Chinese Bank, and, for a large sum thus received, the Bank is said to have paid to the Chinese authorities neither the amount nor the interest.^[444]