My opinions on the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese frontiers I will, on account of their importance, quote verbatim, where possible, from my report: “From the Pamirs almost to the Pacific, we march with China for 6,074 miles. China is about 4,267,000 square miles in extent, and contains about 400,000,000 inhabitants, so that it has the largest population in the world. The great mass of the people are Buddhists, about 20,000,000 are Mohammedans, and about 1,150,000 Christians. Our trade with China, which has been gradually increasing during the last ten years, has risen from £3,100,000 in 1888 to £4,560,000 in 1897. “Notwithstanding the immense length of this frontier, our exports are insignificant; but it is to be hoped that the railway-line through Manchuria, with its branch to Port Arthur, will alter this unprofitable state of affairs in our favour.[28] Although we have had relations with China for two centuries, and although our frontiers are identical for over 6,000 miles, they have not once been violated by military operations. The number of troops kept in Siberia has always been exceedingly small. This has been due to the generally peaceful disposition of the Chinese, to the position of the River Amur, and other natural obstacles—lofty mountain ranges and vast steppes—and to the absence of any really close tie between China and her subject races nearest to our frontier. “Our occupation of the Ussuri district necessitated raising new bodies of troops for garrison purposes. Finally, the Chino-Japanese War and its consequences compelled us to take further and rapid action to strengthen our forces in the Far East. This war showed up the extreme political weakness of China on the one hand, and the great power and energy of Japan on the other—facts of immense significance in East Asian affairs. Our frontier with China is of such length that we naturally cannot remain indifferent to this development. Japan betrayed an intention of taking possession of Korea, our neighbour; we were therefore compelled, by force of circumstances, to establish a sort of temporary protectorate over it, and, by an agreement with Japan, Korea was declared to be independent, and was ostensibly left to itself. But we did not confine ourselves to this. For the great services we had rendered China in the war, we obtained on commercial pretexts a concession for a railway through Manchuria from Trans-Baikalia to Vladivostok, and as the immediate consequence of this, we found it necessary to try and get a concession of part of the Kuan-tung Peninsula, with the ports of Dalny and Port Arthur.[29] This forward policy compelled us to augment our forces in the east with troops withdrawn from European Russia, thereby weakening, to a certain extent, our position in the west.[30] Notwithstanding the more active line we have taken up, and the inclusion of the whole of