The Chinese question will therefore not be so easily solved as the Russian by Japan, even though the latter costs three thousand million yen and two hundred thousand lives. That Japan will ever be able to control China completely is a vain dream: she may exert a great influence for a space, but China for the Chinese applies as much to Japan as it does to any of the Western Powers. It may be that only a partial Japanese success against Russia will ultimately make more for the latter's good than a grand uninterrupted success. But of this more anon: the present pages having sufficed to trace rapidly the main aspects of a mighty question.

CHAPTER XXXI

FRANCO-BELGIAN SCHEMING IN THE FAR EAST

IN these days of necessary rapprochements, brought about indirectly by the epoch-making events of the Far East, it may seem both unfriendly and impolitic to sound a discordant note; but as only a frank and fearless discussion of every phase of Far Eastern affairs can give all the light that is absolutely essential to understand the immense number of friction-points still existing, that discussion must continue until the natural end is reached even at the risk of wounding delicate susceptibilities. A word of history is first necessary to give a requisite perspective to the subject of France and Belgium in the Far East.

It was not until Napoleon III. had succeeded in persuading the French people that an Empire was really better for them than a Republic that French action in the Far East began to become a somewhat important factor. The short and ill-timed alliance between England and France during the Crimean war gave birth to a friendship between these two Powers in the Far East, destined to endure a number

of years until it spluttered out owing to the reshifting of forces on the Continent after disastrous 1870. It is not uninteresting to note that Russia was the indirect cause of bringing France and England together in the Far East exactly half a century ago, and that, decades after, Russia was indirectly responsible for an unfortunate separation.

The echo of the Crimean war resounded in the extreme East in a curious manner. On the 28th August, 1854, the Anglo-French squadron appeared off Petropavlovsk in Kamschatka, then one of the most important Russian Pacific settlements, and began a vigorous bombardment by way of intimating that hostilities begun in the Crimea now extended all over the world. The assault which followed this bombardment was, however, beaten back with heavy losses, and the Allies, much humiliated, retired, leaving the Russians still in possession of their Pacific sea-board. Later on

during the Crimean war other attempts were made by Anglo-French squadrons to damage these Russian stations on the Pacific, but only trifling successes hardly worthy of the name attended these ventures in such northerly latitudes, and the Russians began to imagine that they they were impregnable here.

The end of the Crimean war found a number of French vessels still in the Far East, where they were forced to use Hongkong as a base. The capture of Canton in 1857 as one of the important results of England's second China war (the Arrow war)

saw these French vessels, although they were in nowise concerned with Indian opium troubles, tacitly helping the British. The immediate result was that one of the three officers selected by the British High Commissioner to carry on the provincial Government established at Canton was a French naval officer. This is probably the first instance of Anglo-French co-operation in Chinese affairs.

Pleni

In 1860 the English and the French openly cooperated on their famous march to Peking. Thirteen thousand British troops and seven thousand Frenchmen, after many delays, finally encamped under the great Tartar walls of the Chinese capital, sacked the beautiful Summer Palace, and secured the ratification of the Tientsien Treaties of 1858, together with the right of European potentiaries to reside within the gates of the Manchu city. It is important to point out that in 1858 the French and American Commissioners had merely accompanied the Lord Elgin expedition to Tientsien under British protection, and that it was therefore England who directly helped other nations to secure the same rights as herself in China. These points are worth remembering at the present moment.

After 1860 there was a long peace for China not broken until the French war of 1884; but whilst there was actual quiet for two decades and a half, French action on the Southern confines of the Chinese Empire did not escape the notice of Peking. It is necessary to refer rapidly to these things.

On the 17th February, 1859, a French fleet, co

operating with some Spanish vessels, had anchored off Saigon and nominally conquered all Cochin China-which still acknowledged a vague Chinese suzerainty. It was not until 1862, however, that France formally occupied certain provinces of this territory and obtained their surrender by treaty. In 1867 more provinces were annexed, and from that date it became clear that the French advance towards the Red River-the boundary-line river of Southern China-was merely a matter of time. In other words, the French were then being drawn farther North by the same magnetism which was influencing everybody else in the Far East.

SO

After the disastrous Prussian war of 1870, the enthusiasm for a Colonial Empire became pronounced that, using Saigon as a base, the French authorities attempted to extend their influence over the neighbouring provinces of Tonkin. Annam, which included Tonkin within its territory, being still a feudatory State of China, it was not long before the King of Annam reported to Peking the attempts which the French were continually making to extend their influence over his northern province -Tonkin-in order finally to gain complete possession of it.

For ten years matters remained more or less in abeyance, but in 1884 French corps began to move North again from Cochin China. The Chinese immediately protested, and whilst the invading troops were marching the much discussed Fournier Treaty was signed, in which the Chinese promised