The occupation of Port Arthur and Ta-lien-wan (renamed Dalny) was accompanied by assurances from the Russian Government—chiefly designed to quiet Great Britain and Japan—that it had “no intention of infringing the rights and privileges guaranteed by existing treaties between China and foreign countries;” and that no interference with Chinese sovereignty was contemplated. To the objections raised when it proceeded to fortify Port Arthur, the reply was made that Russia “must have a safe harbor for her fleet, which could not be at the mercy of the elements at Vladivostok or dependent upon the good-will of Japan.” Under this plea she refused to change the status of Port Arthur as a closed and principally military port. The effect of all this upon the attitude of public feeling in Japan toward Russia can easily be imagined. Even when, in August, 1899, the port of Dalny was declared “open” by an Imperial ukase, regulations with respect to passports and claims to a monopoly of mining rights continued to lessen the confidence of other nations in Russia’s good faith with respect to the occupation of Manchuria. It is now sufficiently well established that during this period secret agreements between Li Hung Chang and the Russian Government were made which enlarged the special privileges of Russia in Manchuria. Meantime, also, her military hold was being strengthened; so that by December, 1898, she had 20,000 men at her two ports, while Cossack guards—“the pennons on their lances showing a combination of the Russian colors and the Chinese dragon”—were patrolling the railway line and protecting the work of fortification at Port Arthur. During these years the Japanese Government was watching with quiet but painful solicitude the movements going forward in China. When Marquis Ito visited Peking and the Yangtse provinces in the summer of 1898, he was received with marked attention, especially by the reform party among the leading Chinese officials; but the baleful influence of the Dowager-Empress, and of the party opposed to everything likely to curtail their power, arrested the attempts at _rapprochement_ between China and Japan. It was the so-called “Boxer Movement,” however, which gave to Russia a new claim of right to interfere in Chinese affairs and to establish more firmly than ever before her special privileges in Manchuria. The history of this movement—of the way in which Russia dealt with its extension into Manchuria, of the siege of Peking and the doings of the allied forces, and of the subsequent behavior of the Russians with regard to the evacuation of Manchuria—is now well known, or easily accessible, by all students of the period.