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If it be asked why, apart from history and national sentiment, Japan should object to Russia in Korea, the answer is, first, because there would thus be planted almost within cannon-shot of her shores a power of enormous strength and traditional ambition; secondly, because whatever voice in Manchuria's destiny Russia derived from her railway, the same voice in Korea's destiny was possessed by Japan, as the sole owner of the railways in the Korean peninsula; thirdly, that whereas Russia had an altogether insignificant share in the foreign commerce of Korea and scarcely ten bona fide settlers, Japan did the greater part of the oversea trade and had tens of thousands of settlers; fourthly, that if Russia's dominions stretched uninterruptedly from the sea of Okhotsk to the Gulf of Pehchili, her ultimate absorption of northern China would be inevitable, and fifthly, that such domination and such absorption would involve the practical closure of all that immense region to the commerce and industry of every Western nation except Russia.

Li Hung-chang, viceroy of Pehchili, whose troops had been chiefly engaged during the war, and who had been mainly responsible for the diplomacy that had led up to it, was sent by China as plenipotentiary to discuss terms of peace.

In the second half of the year 1900 an anti-foreign outbreak, known as the "Boxer Rebellion," broke out in the province of Shantung, and, spreading thence to Pehchili, produced a situation of imminent peril for the foreign communities of Peking and Tientsin. No Western power could intervene with sufficient promptness. Japan alone was within easy reach of the commotion. But Japan held back.

The addition of such an immense area to Russia's East Asiatic dominions, together with its littoral on the Gulf of Pehchili and the Yellow Sea, would necessitate a corresponding expansion of her naval force in the Far East. With the exception of Port Arthur and Talien, however, the Manchurian coast does not offer any convenient naval base.