the
settlement following the Boxer explosion of 1900; and third, the cost of
the revolution of 1911-1912. We have already discussed so exhaustively
the Boxer Settlement and the finance of the Revolutionary period that it
is necessary to deal with the first period only.

In that first period China, having been rudely handled by Japan,
recovered herself only by indulging in the sort of diplomacy which had
become traditional under the Manchus. Thankful for any help in her
distress, she invited and welcomed the intervention of Russia, which
gave her back the Liaotung Peninsula and preserved for her the shadow of
her power when the substance had already been so sensationally lost. Men
are apt to forget to-day that the financial accommodation which allowed
China to liquidate the Japanese war-debt was a remarkable transaction in
which Russia formed the controlling element. In 1895 the Tsar's
Government had intervened for precisely the same motives that animate
every State at critical times in history, that is, for reasons of
self-interest. The rapid victory which Japan had won had revived in an
acute form the whole question of the future of the vast block of
territory which lies south of the Amur regions and is bathed by the
Yellow Sea. Russian statesmen suddenly became conscious that the policy
of which Muravieff-Amurski in the middle of the nineteenth century had
been the most brilliant exponent--the policy of reaching "warm
water"--was in danger of being crucified, and the work of many years
thrown away. Action on Russia's part was imperative; she was great
enough to see that; and so that it should not be said that she was
merely depriving a gallant nation of the fruits of victory and thereby
issuing to her a direct challenge, she invited the chief Powers in
Treaty relations with China to co-operate with her in readjusting what
she described as the threatened balance. France and Germany responded to
that invitation; England demurred. France did so because she was already
the devoted Ally of a nation that was a guarantee for the security of
her European frontiers: Germany because she was anxious to see that
Russia should be pushed into Asiatic commitments and drawn away from the
problems of the Near East. England on her part very prudently declined
to be associated with a transaction which, while not opposed to her
interests, was filled with many dubious elements.

It was in Petrograd that this account was liquidated. The e