As soon as her hands were freer in Manchuria, Russia, represented at Seul by the ambitious Pavlov, and also by the semiofficial diplomats, Baron Gunzburg and Miss Sonntag, employed such means as befitted the peculiar situation of Korea in their persistent effort to overthrow Japanese and promote Russian influence in the peninsula. For this purpose they made to the Korean court propositions of almost every conceivable nature, including demands for concessions at Masampo, Chinhai Bay, and Kojedo Island, in the south, for the right to build telegraph and railway lines in the north, and for the employment of Russian financial advisers and military instructors. It was not till April, 1903, however, that, simultaneously with her pressure upon Peking, Russia began to work the timber concession which she was said to have secured in 1896, when the Korean king had taken refuge in the Russian legation at Seul. Early in May, ostensibly to defend the forest land, forty-seven Russian soldiers arrived at Yongam-po on the Yalu, where, despite protests from the Korean government, an extensive tract of land was seized and fortification was begun. Presently, one hundred, and then two hundred more Russian troops arrived, while on the Manchurian side of the frontier fresh troops entered An-tung and Feng-hwang-Cheng, so that the pressure of the Russian forces was heavily felt upon the Korean border. At length the Japanese government came to the decision that it should deal directly with the government of the tsar in order to establish once and for all the integrity of China in Manchuria, as well as the independence and reform of Korea, to define the respective rights and interests in those countries of Japan and Russia, and radically and fundamentally to free the general peace of the Far East from the factors that had continually and profoundly threatened it. The decision in its main points had been reached by the press and the entire nation long before the cabinet ministers and privy councilors met before the throne, on June 23, and built thereon a definite policy to be pursued in the coming negotiations with Russia. These negotiations were attended by tortuous delays on the part of Russia, but the Japanese nation, realizing that never in their long history had they been confronted with a graver national problem, met it with a remarkable perseverance. The government, also, conducted itself with dignity and consideration, for none knew better than it that the immediate peace of the East was dependent upon the success of the pending negotiations. The different motives of Russia and Japan for these negotiations and the different spirit in which each carried them on may be well seen in the following official statements made by the respective governments soon after the diplomatic relations between them had been severed. The Russian communication, issued on February 9, 1904, by the foreign office at St. Petersburg, said: