signature was desired by his Excellency in order that the unjust suspicions aroused by false reports with regard to it might be removed by its publication.”[376] Satisfied neither with this statement nor with China’s refusal to sign the Agreement, the Japanese Government is said to have made a second protest at St. Petersburg in a more resolute tone than in the first, on April 5.[377] On the same day, however, appeared in the Russian _Messager Officiel_ a long statement recapitulating Russia’s relations with China since the beginning of the Boxer affair, and declaring that, owing to the publication in the foreign press of all sorts of false reports of the alleged treaties with China, and to the serious obstacles that had apparently been put in the way of China as regards the conclusion of an agreement with Russia serving as “a starting-point” toward the restoration of Manchuria to China, “it had been found impossible immediately to take the measures contemplated for the gradual evacuation of Manchuria.” The negotiations had been dropped. “With regard to the question of the complete and final restitution of this territory to China,” concluded the official statement, “it is evident that it can only be accomplished after a normal state of affairs has been reëstablished in the Chinese Empire, and a central Government has been secured in the capital, independent and sufficiently strong to guarantee Russia against the renewal of the disturbances of last year. While maintaining the present temporary form of government with the object of insuring order in the neighborhood of the vast Russian frontier, but remaining unalterably true to their original programme, as repeatedly formulated, the Imperial Government will quietly await the future progress of events.”[378] ----- Footnote 341: _China, No. 2 (1904)_, No. 6. Footnote 342: _The Times_, February 20, 1901, p. 5. Footnote 343: _Ibid._ “The Chinese argue,” added Dr. Morrison, “that Russia, having no interests south of the Great Wall, no missionaries, no trade, and no troops, can reasonably expect in return benevolent treatment from China in any agreement proposed outside the Great Wall, especially as Russia is in military occupation.... Russia appears determined to profit by the condition to which China is reduced by the action of the other Powers, just as she profited by obtaining the Primorsk Province after the war of 1860, and Port Arthur and Talien-wan subsequent to the war of 1895.” Footnote 344: _China, No. 2 (1904)_, No. 14. Cf. _ibid._, Nos. 25 and 42. Footnote 345: _The Times_, February 28, 1901, p. 5. Footnote 346: See pp. 91–92, above. Footnote 347: _China, No. 2 (1904)_, No. 42. Other versions are similar in substance to this one, which was forwarded by Sir Ernest Satow. Footnote 348: See _China, No. 2 (1904)_, Nos. 16, 17, 32, 35. Footnote 349: _China, No. 2 (1904)_, No. 30. Footnote 350: _Ibid._, No. 18 (March 1). Footnote 351: