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2 CHANG TSO-LIN’S STRUGGLE CHAPTER I HOW NORTH-CHINA

have been so deeply committed beyond Lake Baikal. But when the Muscovite State commenced building her great trans-Asian railway and realized that the only possible alignment in the Amur country was through Manchuria, she stirred up China against Japan in Korea, made them fight so as to weaken them both; and ended, by preventing the Liaotung Peninsula from going to Japan as one of the fruits of her unexpected victory since that would have interfered with her own plans.

It was then that Shantung, like Manchuria, became a factor. Russia, feeling that the time had come when she must speak her mind, produced the once famous Cassini Convention, a document compiled by the Tsar’s Minister in Peking and oddly resembling in its general assumption of what was good for China the recent British Memorandum of December 18. It insisted inter alia that ice-free ports were a necessity for Russia to maintain the Eastern balance of power, Kiaochow in Shantung and Port Arthur in the Liaotung Peninsula being specifically named to form two advance-posts, or pincers, on the two outjutting promontories which would hold any enemy who assaulted Peking through the gulf of Pechili.

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