d. And while she waited the branch road from Harbin moved
swiftly down to Mukden, and on through the Manchurian peninsula, and
Port Arthur was in _direct line of communication with St. Petersburg_.

In 1900 the anti-foreign insurrection known as the "Boxer war" broke
out in China. Russia, in common with all the Great Powers (now
including Japan), sent troops for the protection of the imperiled
legations at Pekin. Nothing could better have served the Government of
the Tsar. Russian troops poured into Manchuria, and the new road from
Harbin bore the Tsar's soldiers swiftly down to Port Arthur. The fort
was garrisoned, and work immediately commenced--probably upon plans
already drawn--to make of this coveted spot what Nature seemed to have
designed it to be--the Gibraltar of the East.

The Western Powers had not been unobservant of these steady
encroachments upon Chinese territory, and while a military occupation
of the peninsula was necessary at this time, it was viewed with
uneasiness; but none was prepared for what followed. Before peace was
actually concluded, Russia approached China with a proposition for her
permanent occupancy of--not the peninsula alone, but all of Manchuria.
A mystifying proposition when we reflect that Japan was forced out of
the southern littoral of Manchuria because her presence there
threatened Korea, China, and the peace of the world. Port Arthur was
no farther from Pekin and Seoul than it was five years before, and it
was much nearer to St. Petersburg! And as Russia had already made
surprising bounds from Nikolaifsk to Vladivostok, and from Vladivostok
to Port Arthur, she might make still another to one or both of these
capitals.

So limp and helpless had China become since the overthrow by Japan and
the humiliations following the "Boxer war," and so compliant had she
been with Russia's demands, that the United States, Great Britain and
Japan, fearful that she would yield, combined to prevent this last
concession, which under this pressure was refused, and a pledge
demanded for the withdrawal of troops before a fixed date, which pledge
Russia gave. At the specified dates, instead of withdrawing her troops
from Manchuria, Russia reopened negotiations with China, proposing new
conditions. Garrisons were being strengthened instead of withdrawn.
Strategic positions were being fortified and barracks built in rushing
haste. At the same time Russian infantry and bands of Cossacks were