United States or Faroe Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Indeed it could not be exacted, as Japan occupied no Russian territory which she did not intend to annex. To Russia the material results of the war were the loss of some 350,000 men, killed, wounded, and prisoners; of two fleets; and of the valuable provinces and ice-free harbours for the acquisition of which she had constructed the Trans-Siberian Railway.
It is quite obvious that this policy of marking time, which Russia is adopting for the moment, can only be transitory. The requirements of the mighty Empire irresistibly compel an expansion towards the sea, whether in the Far East, where it hopes to gain ice-free harbours, or in the direction of the Mediterranean, where the Crescent still glitters on the dome of St. Sophia.
It has been suggested that Russia has long had her eye on the ice-free harbors of the Norwegian coast and has coveted them; that she has built her railroads across Finland close up to the Norwegian frontier, and that there is trouble ahead for Norway, because she has isolated herself from Sweden, her natural protector. But we see in the division a Greater Scandinavia.
The same instinct that led Russia from the mouth of the Amur to Vladivostok prompted the acquisition of Saghalien also, which, as already related, was accomplished in 1875. But all this effort did not procure for Russia an unobstructed avenue from Vladivostok to the Pacific or an ice-free port in the Far East.
"Besides, captain," I added with still greater enthusiasm, "why wouldn't we find open sea at the South Pole just as at the North Pole? The cold-temperature poles and the geographical poles don't coincide in either the northern or southern hemispheres, and until proof to the contrary, we can assume these two spots on the earth feature either a continent or an ice-free ocean."
In view of the completeness of Japan's triumph, these conditions could not be considered onerous, but they, undoubtedly, disturbed the balance of power in the Far East, and, had they been permitted to stand, would have effectually thwarted Russia's plan of advancing southward, and of obtaining an ice-free port.
The last clauses granted to Russian subjects the right to acquire mining rights in Manchuria, and to the Czar's officers to drill the levies of that province in the European style, should China desire to reorganise them. But the protector had not reaped the full reward of his timely intervention in the spring of 1895. He had not yet gained complete control of an ice-free harbour.
Of what use was a naval station which was not only ice-bound half the year but from which, even when ice-free, it was impossible for ships to reach the open sea except by passing through narrow gateways controlled by Japan? How to overcome these obstacles, how to circumvent nature in her persistent effort to imprison her this was the problem set for Russian diplomacy to solve.
Russia has declared the right of her one hundred and twenty millions of people to an ice-free port on the Pacific; why shall she not assert, with equal cogency, the right of these millions to an ice-free port on the Atlantic?
Its natural advantages are superior to those of any other park in Europe. Even in April, when there was scarcely a sign of spring, its cliffs of grey rock, its rolling lawns of brown grass, and its venerable oaks, with their iron trunks and gnarled, contorted boughs, with blue glimpses of ice-free water on all sides, attracted hundreds of visitors daily.
Word Of The Day