The Government of St. Petersburg, well pleased with this success, proceeded to strengthen its policy in China by further financial operations, and with the assistance of the Bank of Russia next created the Russo-Chinese Bank, Parisian financiers supplying the greater part of the capital, but leaving the direction of affairs almost exclusively in Russian hands. The Comptoir d’Escompte transferred its agencies in China to Russia, and the new bank established at the same time branches at Peking, Tien-tsin, Shanghai, and Hankow. Since then this bank has continued to be the principal agent of Russian influence in China, and undoubtedly it was at first almost entirely through its mediation that Russia negotiated the concession of the East Chinese Railway, which enabled her to continue her Trans-Siberian Railway southward through Manchuria, thus shortening the original line by several hundred miles, and enabling it to pass within 350 miles of the Gulf of Pe-chi-li. Russia, moreover, obtained the authorization to protect the works by her own troops, whereby she made herself mistress of Manchuria, whence she was able to dominate Peking until events allowed her to occupy Liao-tung. Whilst she was amply paid for her services by China, Russia made herself no less active in Korea. The Japanese, who had occupied that country, perpetrated error on error. They had attempted to impose upon the Koreans with great abruptness the most varied and radical reforms. Many of these were possibly useful enough, but they ought to have been introduced with discretion; others were unnecessary, and greatly irritated the people by wounding their most cherished customs and traditions. The Koreans, although not particularly clean in their habits, are invariably clad in white, are, moreover, addicted to smoking very long pipes, and to rolling their hair up into a huge chignon, which they surmount by an enormously broad-brimmed hat, whose crown is so small that they are obliged to fasten it to their heads by a long string. The Mikado issued a sumptuary law against long pipes, chignons, and wide-brimmed hats, and, moreover, ordered that the traditional white robe should henceforth be replaced by the dark-blue one usually worn by the Japanese. It is said that this unfortunate incident was the result of a conviction that Koreans, being obliged to hold their pipe with one hand, and to balance their enormous hats with the other, could never become hard workers. Be this as it may, the Japanese sentinels at the gates of Seoul made life unendurable to the unfortunate Koreans. Armed with a big pair of scissors, they pounced upon the unfortunate peasants as they entered the town on their way to market, and cut not only the strings of their monumental hats, but severed their beloved chignons, and shortened by at least three-quarters of their length the stems of their pipes—arbitrary measures well calculated to break their hearts with mortification and vexation of spirit.