ing States, would be able once more to exercise a control over its own territories.

For many weeks after the assassination of the Korean Queen the situation in Seoul showed no signs of improvement. Indeed, on the 27th November a night attack was made on the Kyung Pok Palace to rescue the King from the virtual imprisonment in which he was held by the revolutionary Progressives. The failure of the plan led to the adoption of a more startling one. On the 9th February, 1896, the Russian Legation received a heavy addition to the Legation garrison from its warships lying at Chemulpo, and two days later the King and the Crown Prince escaping suddenly from their prisonpalaces in the night were welcomed with open arms by the Russian Minister. No such diplomatic triumph had ever been obtained before in Seoul, for with a powerful Russian Marine Guard keeping the closest watch day and night, the King at last felt safe, and in his joy at his deliverance soon made it known that he was also strongly disposed to put his kingdom in the same keeping. Thus the Tokyo Government had so mishandled a situation which was really no impossible one to deal with, that eighteen months after the war with China, Russia was entrenched more powerfully than China had ever been in Korea-thus making the net results of a conflict which had cost Japan at least £30,000,000 absolutely nil.

Nor was it possible for the Tokyo Government to shut its eyes to what had happened, for its entire

discomfiture had been so loudly advertised by the retrocession of the Liaotung territory, and the proRussian declarations and tendencies of the Korean Court were so noised abroad, that every peasant and workman in Japan knew what had happened. The feelings of the Japanese populace were clearly reflected in a serious recrudescence of anti-foreign feeling all over the Island Empire, which the authorities were powerless to hide. But in spite of all this the Mikado's advisers once more rose to the occasion, as they had always done since the opening of Japan whenever great issues were at stake, and gave the first evidences of an attitude which eight years later has aroused the admiration of the entire world during the long-drawn-out agony of the recent Russo-Japanese negotiations. They decided at once that they must regain their lost position in Korea by a patient, honourable, and consistent effort, and that such a policy alone would win back the esteem of the Korean Court and people. It is believed that Baron Komura was largely responsible for such a momentous decision.

The flight of the King of Korea to the Russian Legation, following after a series of highly discreditable events, proved ultimately a most important turning point in the affairs of the distraught kingdom. The Japanese saw at last clearly that there was but one policy to follow, and in the well-known WaeberKomura Convention, modified and ratified a month later as the Lebanoff- Yamagata agreement, we see the first evidences of the new policy. In the con

vention signed by the Russian and Japanese plenipotentiaries at the Korean capital on the 13th May 1896, the right of both Powers to maintain a maximum force of eight hundred troops for the protection of their respective Legations and commercial settlements was established, pending the restoration of order; and in addition to this Japan was granted the right to patrol the military telegraph line she had built between Fusan and the capital with a force of two hundred gendarmes. Japan had, as far as was then possible, placed things on an equitable basis and had inaugurated her new policy. The Lebanoff-Yamagata agreement was but a ratification and confirmation of the first instrument.

Baron Komura left Seoul at the end of May, and it would seem as if his departure was the signal for increased Russian activity, in spite of the apparent frankness with which Monsieur Waeber, the Russian Plenipotentiary, had met Baron Komura's first overtures. On the 4th July of the same year a concession for a railway which would unite Seoul with Wiju on the Yalu was granted to a French syndicate, a move which it was easy to interpret. The Russians, finding it awkward to show so soon how lightly they esteemed the honourable advances of the Japanese, put forward a so-called French syndicate as a mask to their real attitude. It has long been understood in the Far East that the Franco-Belgian concessions, obtained largely owing to Russian initiative and support, would be shared on a profit-sharing basis

by the dual alliance should the Muscovite programme be completed.

The granting of this concession and the subsequent Russian intriguing in Southern Korea disclosed the extreme limits of Russian ambition: a desire to have the capital of Korea united to the Siberian railway system and to possess a fortified coal-station at the extreme end of the Korean boot, so as to link Vladivostok properly with the Russian advance down the coasts of the Yellow Sea. All through 1896 Russians of note visited Seoul, to the intense irritation of the Japanese, who understood that their own advances had been accepted only to be ignored at heart. Monsieur Pokitilow, the genius of the then newly-organised Russo-Chinese Bank, came to Seoul, and later on Admiral Alexeieff, destined to become so famous, made repeated visits. And on the 24th October Colonel Potiata, three officers and ten non-commissioned men of the Russian army arrived to drill Korean troops-in order to establish order! The Russian forward policy of disorder had indeed begun.

To all these unfavourable signs Japan made no public reference, but in the spring of 1897 it is worth noticing that the Chemulpo-Seoul Railway, for the construction of which Mr. James Morse, an American capitalist then resident in Yokohama, had obtained a concession some time previously, was hurriedly commenced. With but three hundred miles of water separating Japan from Chemulpo and a railway connecting the coast-port with the capital, Japan would