ver China[488].

[Footnote 488: See the evidence adduced by V. Chirol, _The Far Eastern
Question, _chap, xi., as to the _ultimately_ aggressive designs of China
on Japan.]

The chief conditions of the Chino-Japanese Treaty of Shimonoseki (April
17, 1895) were the handing over to Japan the island of Formosa and the
Liaotung Peninsula. The latter was very valuable, inasmuch as it
contained good ice-free harbours which dominated the Yellow Sea and the
Gulf of Pechili; and herein must be sought the reason for the action of
Russia at this crisis. Li Hung Chang, the Chinese negotiator, had
already been bought over by Russia in an important matter[489], and he
early disclosed the secret of the terms of peace with Japan. Russia was
thus forewarned; and, before the treaty was ratified at Pekin, her
Government, acting in concert with those of France and Germany,
intervened with a menacing declaration that the cession of the Liaotung
Peninsula would give to Japan a dangerous predominance in the affairs of
China and disturb the whole balance of power in the Far East. The
Russian Note addressed to Japan further stated that such a step would
"be a perpetual obstacle to the permanent peace of the Far East." Had
Russia alone been concerned, possibly the Japanese would have referred
matters to the sword; but, when face to face with a combination of three
Powers, they decided on May 4 to give way, and to restore the Liaotung
Peninsula to China[490].

[Footnote 489: _Manchu and Muscovite, _by B.L. Putnam Weale, p. 60.]

[Footnote 490: Asakawa, _op. cit. _p, 76.]

The reasons for the conduct of France and Germany in this matter are not
fully known. We may safely conjecture that the Republic acted conjointly
with the Czar in order to clinch the new Franco-Russian alliance, not
from any special regard for China, a Power with which she had frequently
come into collision respecting Tonquin. As for Germany, she was then
entering on new colonial undertakings; and she doubtless saw in the
joint intervention of 1895 a means of sterilising the Franco-Russian
alliance, so far as she herself was concerned, and possibly of gaining
Russia's assent to the future German expansion in the Far East.

Here, of course, we are reduced to conjecture, but the conjecture is
consonant with later developments. In any case, the new Triple Alliance
was a temporary and artificial union, which prompt and united action on
the part of Great Britain and the United S