ry and naval preparations
already made were quite sufficient to repel the attack. One of these
officials--probably the best informed of all--said to me quite frankly:
"If Japan had attacked us in May or June, we should have been in a sorry
plight, but now [November, 1903] we are ready."

The whole past history of territoral expansion in Asia tended to confirm
the prevailing illusions. Russia had advanced steadily from the Ural
and the Caspian to the Hindu Kush and the Northern Pacific without once
encountering serious resistance. Not once had she been called on to make
a great national effort, and the armed resistance of the native races
had never inflicted on her anything worse than pin-pricks. From decrepit
China, which possessed no army in the European sense of the term, a more
energetic resistance was not to be expected. Had not Muravieff Amurski
with a few Cossacks quietly occupied her Amur territories without
provoking anything more dangerous than a diplomatic protest; and had
not Ignatief annexed her rich Primorsk provinces, including the site of
Vladivostok, by purely diplomatic means? Why should not Count Cassini,
a diplomatist of the same type as Ignatief, imitate his adroit
predecessor, and secure for Russia, if not the formal annexation, at
least the permanent occupation, of Manchuria? Remembering all this, we
can perceive that the great mistake of the Russian Government is not
so very difficult to explain. It certainly did not want war--far from
it--but it wanted to obtain Manchuria by a gradual, painless process
of absorption, and it did not perceive that this could not be attained
without a life-and-death struggle with a young, vigorous nationality,
which has contrived to combine the passions and virtues of a primitive
race with the organising powers and scientific appliances of the most
advanced civilisation.

Russian territorial expansion has thus been checked, for some years to
come, on the Pacific coast; but the expansive tendency will re-appear
soon in other regions, and it behooves us to be watchful, because,
whatever direction it may take, it is likely to affect our interests
directly or indirectly. Will it confine itself for some years to a
process of infiltration in Mongolia and Northern Thibet, the line of
least resistance? Or will it impinge on our Indian frontier, directed by
those who desire to avenge themselves on Japan's ally for the reverses
sustained in Manchuria? Or will it once more ta