Many books have been written on the Russian advance to the Pacific, and they eventually induced Britain to hurl Japan on the aggressor. These volumes include Putnam Weale’s fervid volumes, works by Lord Beresford, Senator Beveridge, Norman, Chirol, Colquhoun, Alexandria Hosie, Younghusband, Krausse, Lord Curzon and others. That advance has been pushed back as far as the borders of Shingking, the southernmost of Manchuria’s three provinces, and out of the Korean Peninsula, but it is marking time in the other two Manchurian provinces of Kirin and Helung-Kiang, and in vast Mongolia, Jungaria and Turkestan. Some critics have said that in having Russia pushed back from the Pacific, the wave has backed up on Persia. The American one-time treasurer of Persia, Mr. Shuster, believes Britain has recently lost to Russia in the buffer states of the Indian border. Certainly a new party has risen in British diplomacy, whose writers are Maurice Baring, Hardinge and others, which is not at all Russophobic. Many believe that Russia intends to try again in Manchuria, and others believe that Japan will concede to Russia the two northern Manchurian provinces; or again, that Japan will occupy all Manchuria, and support Russia’s occupation of Mongolia and part of the Pechili province. As long as there is oligarchic rule in Russia, there will be danger of the Russian advance, as the aristocracy wishes to keep an army employed, so as to use it when necessary on an ambitious Duma, or a people who demand real representation in return for the tax privilege. Therefore Russia will for many years press China at one spot or another, and how to checkmate this pressure is one of Britain’s hardest problems, in which America is involved because of the Hay doctrine of the “non-partition of China,” which is the Monroe doctrine of the Far East.

Early in 1911 Russia disturbed the diplomats by sending a note to the powers that she intended to make a military demonstration against Sungaria and reoccupy, as from 1871 to 1881, trade routes and frontier cities like Kuldja and Kobdo. Gullible China was induced to include in the treaty with Russia at that time permission for Russian caravaners to cross Western China under Russian arms; to trade without paying duty, and to establish Russian “imperium in imperio” settlements. The Novi Krai of Harbin admitted that these extraterritorial demonstrations in Far Western China aimed not so much at aggression in Turkestan as cajoling further privileges in Manchuria, such as navigation on the Sungari, Russian settlements, mining and railway rights, etc. On another occasion, Russia is party to the rejection of America’s proposal of the internationalization of Manchurian railways; or again Russia cites some secret coerced treaty and compels China to refuse a franchise for an American railway from Chin-Wang to Aigun, or Chin-Wang to Kailar. Yet at the same time Russia is arranging with China to drop a railway on Peking down from Irkutsk, and a railway from Semipalatinsk down on Jungaria and the headwaters of the great Tarim River. The Russian advance is not an extinct volcano; one never knows when it will be recrudescent somewhere. The party of Admiral Alexeyev, General Spiridovitch, State Secretary Bezobrazov and Count Bobrinsky, is not dead at St. Petersburg. Russia is to-day moving 100,000 colonists a year into Siberia. She is double-tracking the Siberian railway eastward to Lake Baikal.

The following memorial to the throne, written by Viceroy Liu Ming Chuan, and approved by Li Hung Chang in 1893, reveals China’s knowledge of Russia’s deep designs: “We feel Russia’s grip on our throat, and her fist upon our back, and our contact with her is a source of perpetual uneasiness to our minds. When a quarrel occurs, we have to yield to her demands.”

Though no one can show why, land-rich Russia considers Mongolia, Turkestan, Ili, Jungaria, and two provinces of Manchuria, and even Tibet, as her sphere. In the troubles of the revolution, during the last months of 1911, harassed China felt Mongolia dragged from under her feet. The Chinese amban at Koren (Urga) was discountenanced, and Russia set up the Buddhist Lama as an independent ruler. Plans were also laid to run a railway down from Kiakhta. The Mongolian princes frequently receive presents to retain their sympathy and increase their obligations. Russia even made demands that China should withdraw her troops from the outposts and discontinue colonization, for China is beginning to learn the strategy of emigration. The building of the all-Russian link on the north side of the Amur River from Stretyinsk to Khabarovsk and Vladivostok, is going on apace at great cost, because the Russians, in trying to settle the district, refuse to employ Chinese, and have brought out 15,000 Russian railway laborers. The river has too many shallows for successful transportation, and it would not pay yet to dredge it. The Chun Kuo Pao, a native paper of Peking, was so pusillanimous in its fear of Russia and Japan, as to recommend in 1910 the abandonment of Manchuria to save Mongolia. I have said pusillanimous, but I might have said venal, as an illustration that Russian money may not neglect to seek power with some Chinese editors in the northern provinces.

America desired to keep Japan and Russia separated in Manchurian aggrandisement, and instead Russia came to a secret amicable agreement with her old enemy, Japan, in June, 1912. The American, Mr. Shuster, at the desire of Persia, was satisfactorily managing the customs of Persia, but Russia successfully intrigued for his retirement. On February 22, 1912, in the Hall of the Nobility, St. Petersburg, the Nationalist Party held a meeting to denounce treaties with America. Count Bobrinsky, the president of the Constitutional Conservative Party, stood up and called Ex-president Roosevelt the “enemy of Russia,” referring to the Portsmouth Peace Treaty. Plans were laid before the meeting showing how Chinese Turkestan could supply America’s place in growing cotton for Russia. Several reasons were given why Russia opposed America. The real reason was that Russia does not like America’s and Britain’s policy of the “non-partition of China.” The aristocracy of Russia also hate the influence upon the Duma of America’s and Britain’s system of budgets and armies controlled by the lower house of the people. The oligarchy of Russia hate America’s altruism that would secure to growing China her ancient fields, mines and forests of Turkestan, Mongolia and Manchuria. The Chinese rely on America’s altruism. There was possibly more than humor in the Tientsin shopkeeper’s sign: “All languages spoken; American understood.”

The Chinese bitterly remember the massacre at Blagovestchensk on the Amur River in 1900. When the Europeans were besieged in Peking, the Russians drove the innocent and unarmed Chinese inhabitants into the river at the point of the bayonet. Many were drowned, and their bodies choked the landing wharves as they floated down-stream. Yet some inquirers ask why there should be an anti-foreign feeling in China! The name of General Chitchegoff, who gave the murderous order, would live in history yoked to Nero’s if we had writers to-day as able and patriotic as fearless Seneca and Lucan. If you are an American and ask Chitchegoff in the place of his retirement why he did it, he will answer: “Ask the Bureau, and blame the oligarchical system, not the miserable agent.”

There was a time, too, when Prince Henri d’Orleans, Paul Doumer, Garnier, Leroy Beaulieu, Riviere, Loti, Petit, Bert, Imbere and Bonheur wrote, when France, as Russia’s ally, had her aggressive designs on China. Hongkong, when I lived there, was haunted by continual nightmares after France took possession of Kwangchou Bay in Kwangtung province. Since the French ran their railway from Haiphong to Yunnan City, French influence is strong in Yunnan province, and the Szechuenese are looking for France’s hand at the headwaters of the Yangtze River. In a sense this puts a barrier against the British attack on Western China from Burma, and the American attack from the Philippines. While France at home and in Tonquin is a high tariff country, there is more confidence in the republican people of France on the part of America and Britain than there is in the reliability of the other mighty diplomatic competitors. Still French aggression is potential and not to be ignored, especially as France has in Indo-China a colony of 735,000 square miles with a population of 34,000,000 people at the southern gates of old China. The heavily subsidized Messageries Maritimes mail line plies between Marseilles, Saigon and the ports as far as Japan. I once sailed half around the world on one of their white boats and know their service to be excellent. At present the French monopolize the Yunnan traffic with their railway, charging in addition to the rates a high transit fee on bonded traffic. This is internationally illegal, and is exactly what incensed Germany blew out of French diplomacy in Morocco at the muzzle of the Panther’s guns, when that vessel dropped anchor at Agidir one eventful morning. In desperation, the Chinese tin miners of Kuo Chia (some of whom are citizens of Hongkong) contemplate an opposition railway to Nanning, and the old water route to Hongkong. The division of Siam between France and Britain is slowly going on, France having recently taken over one of the Shan States. To protect Singapore as a world equator gate, Britain must connect the Malay states with Burma, and in time take part of Siam. At one time France had a design of pressing her Tonquin influence through Western China, and meeting the Russian advance at Peking, but by the “entente-cordiale” France is now nearer to Britain than Russia, and this is for the good of the world, including potential American trade in the Far East. The Supreme Council of Indo-China has recently raised a loan of $40,000,000 in France for irrigation, drainage, agricultural and mining development, and extended railways and roads in Annam and Tonquin.

Chinese imperial influence in the last few centuries has not extended far south of the Yangtze River. All through French China, that is, Annam, Tonquin, Cambodia, etc., and in Siam and the Shan states (now partly absorbed by British Burma), in the old days there were hundreds of petty kings and princes (a king to a hill in that land of hills), who themselves, with the exception of the brave and intelligent Black Flag Leader, Liu Jung, were really adventurers, or descendants from Chinese adventurers from Kwangtung, Kwangsi and Yunnan provinces. Send a Chinese to America, and he tries to become a monopolist because of the ambitious example set before him; send him to British Singapore, and he strives to become a contractor with designs on knighthood; send him to Annam or Tonquin, and in the merry old days he became a swashbuckler king, and strutted upon his ant hill. The French had to pension or dethrone a hundred of these “royal” fellows from the Si Kiang valley. The dethroned one said: “As for me now, back to the pirate waters of the West River, and the admiralty of a snake-boat fleet.” They have all recently turned up in the pirate waters of Kwangtung province, and during the revolution of 1911–12 made endless trouble for the gunboat fleet of Britain, America and China, operating in the interests of civilization and trade, from Hongkong and Canton. One brigand named Luk captured the famous Bogue forts of Canton on March 12, 1912.

The Frenchman takes Paris with him wherever he goes, and as one indication I found him in all the cafÉs that lined the red streets of Indo-China, dropping his absinthe on ice in a long glass, though a physician would shudder at the risk taken in such a terrifically hot and humid climate. To balance “pidgin English” he has taught the Annamese “petit negre.” He has brought his costly Parisian architecture, as in the Palais, the Opera, the Cathedrals of Saigon, Hanoi and Haiphong. Since 1873 the five provinces of Indo-China, with an area larger than Texas, have cost the French $150,000,000 for military expenses. The trade last year was $50,000,000 imports and $30,000,000 exports. The colony is only beginning to exploit its great wealth, especially in coal at Hongay, Kebao and Laokai in Tonquin.