It was doubtless with a grave apprehension of this Manchurian situation that Great Britain had induced Germany to sign, on October 16, 1900, the ill-fated Anglo-German agreement. It sought to effect a difficult combination of three principles not easily reconcilable with one another: the integrity of the remaining territory of China, an open door, and equal advantage to men of all nations in the trading ports and marts, and the protection of the interest already acquired in China by the signatories. The strength of the combination was further reduced by the manner in which the first and the third principles were upheld in the agreement, which declared that neither power would make use of the present complication to acquire any territorial advantages, but that if another power should act contrary to this view, then the signatories might consult together as to the measures of protecting their own interests. At their invitation to accept the principles of the agreement, Russia, as well as France, cleverly replied that they saw therein nothing other than the same old principles which they had repeatedly advocated, while the United States expressed assent to the first two of the principles, but deemed the third as not concerning her. Japan entered the agreement as a signatory. Judged from the very purpose for which the document had been framed by Great Britain, the agreement may be said to have ended in a failure, for what was the use of reiterating the first principle if Manchuria was not considered a part of the Chinese territory, whose integrity was thereby respected? Yet Count von Bülow, imperial chancellor of Germany, said in the Reichstag on March 15, 1901, as he again did toward the end of 1903, that the Anglo-German agreement had no reference to Manchuria. "I can imagine nothing," he was reported to have said, "which we regard with more indifference" than Manchuria. "The Yang-tse agreement" was the name given to the document by the Germans, who were pleased to interpret it as applying with particular force, not to Manchuria, but to the British sphere in the basin of the great river which had always been an eyesore to Germany. With one of the contracting parties at variance with the very aim of the agreement, it was useless for the marquis of Lansdowne to declare, on August 6, 1901, that it "most unquestionably extended to Manchuria, which was part of the Chinese empire." It is to be doubted that the convention had exerted the slightest influence in staying the hand of Russia in the three eastern provinces.