"Article IX. Immediately upon the exchange of the ratifications of this Act, all prisoners of war then held shall be restored, and China undertakes not to ill-treat or punish prisoners of war so restored to her by Japan. China also engages to at once release all Japanese subjects accused of being military spies or charged with any other military offences. China further engages not to punish in any manner, nor to allow to be punished, those Chinese subjects who have in any manner been compromised in their relations with the Japanese army during the war. "Article X. All offensive military operations shall cease upon the exchange of the ratifications of this Act." {78} When the terms of the treaty were made known, Russia, Germany and France entered such protests against the cession of a portion of the Fêng-tien peninsula, on the main land, and brought such pressure to bear on Japan, that the latter was compelled to yield, and relinquished the districts in question by the following imperial proclamation, dated May 10, 1895: "We recently, at the request of the Emperor of China, appointed Plenipotentiaries for the purpose of conferring with the Ambassadors sent by China, and of concluding with them a Treaty of Peace between the two Empires. Since then the Governments of the two Empires of Russia and Germany and of the French Republic, considering that the permanent possession of the ceded districts of the Fêng-tien Peninsula by the Empire of Japan would be detrimental to the lasting peace of the Orient, have united in a simultaneous recommendation to our Government to refrain from holding those districts permanently.