anent safety and peace to
China, preserve Chinese territorial and administrative entity, protect
all rights guaranteed to friendly powers by treaty and international
law, and safeguard for the world the principle of equal and impartial
trade with all parts of the Chinese Empire." To this position he
requested the powers to assent.

Again Hay had hit upon a formula which no self-respecting power could
deny. Receiving from practically all a statement of their purpose to
preserve the "integrity" of China and the "Open Door" just when they
were launching the greatest military movement ever undertaken in the Far
East by the western world, he made it impossible to turn punishment into
destruction and partition. The legations were saved and so was China.
After complicated negotiations an agreement was reached which exacted
heavy pecuniary penalties, and in the case of Germany, whose minister
had been assassinated, a conspicuous and what was intended to be
an enduring record of the crime and its punishment. China, however,
remained a nation--with its door open.

Once more in 1904 the fate of China, and in fact that of the whole Far
East, was thrown into the ring. Japan and Russia entered into a war
which had practically no cause except the collision of their advancing
interests in Chinese territory. Every land battle of the war, except
those of the Saghalien campaign, was fought in China, Chinese ports were
blockaded, Chinese waters were filled with enemy mines and torpedoes,
and the prize was Chinese territory or territory recently taken from
her. To deny these facts was impossible; to admit them seemed to involve
the disintegration of the empire. Here again Secretary Hay, devising a
middle course, gained by his promptness of action the prestige of having
been the first to speak. On February 8, 1904, he asked Germany, Great
Britain, and France to join with the United States in requesting
Japan and Russia to recognize the neutrality of China, and to localize
hostilities within fixed limits. On January 10, 1905, remembering how
the victory of Japan in 1894 had brought compensatory grants to all the
powers, he sent out a circular note expressing the hope on the part of
the American Government that the war would not result in any "concession
of Chinese territory to neutral powers." Accustomed now to these
invitations which decency forbade them to refuse, all the powers
assented to this suggestion. The results of the war, therefor