Let us now turn to see what explanations Russia had offered, for Japan about January 12[372] and Great Britain on March 4[373] had made inquiries at the Russian Government in respect to the actual text of the Agreement. Lord Lansdowne repeated his query on March 9, adding that if the version reported by Sir Ernest Satow was approximately accurate, it was “impossible to describe it as a contract of a temporary and provisional nature, and our treaty rights were certainly affected by it.” Then, in his oft outspoken vein, the Marquess concluded: “On the other hand, it is surely reasonable that we should ask his Excellency’s [Count Lamsdorff’s] help in exposing the trick, and putting the saddle on the right horse, if, as he suggests, garbled versions of the Agreement are being circulated by the Chinese Government in order to create dissension between the Powers; and you may state that to join the Russian Government in exhibiting in its true light so discreditable a manœuvre would afford the liveliest satisfaction to His Majesty’s Government.”[374] Russia, however, would not communicate the text of the proposed Agreement, and it was explained later by Count Lamsdorff that there had been a “programme,” the detail of which had at one time or another been under discussion, but there had never existed any regular draft Agreement in twelve Articles; that the Czar had at no time given him the full powers indispensable for concluding such an agreement, and that in her negotiations with China [concerning the programme], three different Departments of the Russian Government had been equally engaged. These circumstances, and also “the unwise interference of the press and public, which seemed to assert a very dangerous claim to be admitted to a seat and voice in the councils of the Powers regarding China,” made it very difficult for the Count to be as frankly communicative as he would otherwise have wished to have been. Indeed, “it would have been impossible for him to have discussed the details of these negotiations with a third Government.”[375] To the Japanese Minister, who had been instructed by his Government to make the friendly proposal to Russia that the Representatives of the Powers at Peking should be given an opportunity to consider the draft of the Manchurian Agreement before it was signed, Count Lamsdorff replied in no less interesting manner. He observed, on March 26, that the Agreement solely concerned two independent States, and must be concluded without the intervention of any other Powers, and politely but firmly declined to consider any such proposal as was made by Japan. The Count added, however, that “he could give an official assurance to the Japanese Minister that neither the sovereignty and the integrity of China in Manchuria nor the treaty rights of any other Power were affected by the proposed Agreement; that it was of a provisional nature, and a necessary preliminary to the Russian troops evacuating the province. Its early