Turning to the general tenor of the documents, the student will at once observe their marked characteristics. It is at least singular, one would think, that the “most perfect calm” and the “impassive attitude” of the Russian Government should be expressed in so many words. If, again, the allied Powers were, as they declare, in perfect accord with the principles of Great Britain and Japan, it is not intelligible why they should entertain, as it appears, so deep a suspicion toward the “political spheres” in which the Russian calmness was said to have been deliberately misinterpreted, and also toward the “third Powers” “whose aggressive action” might “jeopardize the integrity and free development” of China. This sense of distrust becomes all the more pronounced when it is contrasted with the assertion that the agreement between Great Britain and Japan brought no change on the political horizon of the East. It was reported about the time when the Russian Minister and the French _Chargé d’Affaires_ at Tokio handed the Declaration to Baron Komura, that the allied Powers had made their Declaration because they feared that Great Britain and Japan might, in virtue of the first Article of their Agreement, object even to legitimate means of protecting the French and Russian interests in the Far East.[408] If the four Powers upheld the same principles, no such apprehension of two of them against the other two could be either cordial or even justifiable. Under these considerations, one can hardly avoid the conclusion that the allied Governments of Russia and France must have been animated less by the principles they professed than by the deep rivalry of their interests with those of the other allies. For it is at least certain that, ever since their memorable coalition with Germany in 1895, in the coercion of Japan, Russia and France had acted in mutual good-will, the former being mainly aided by the latter in Manchuria and Korea, and the latter by the former in the southern Chinese provinces,[409] in their diplomatic manœuvres in those countries and in their struggles with Japan and Great Britain.[410] If the Agreement and the Declaration are considered the formal expression of the cordial sentiment which had long existed and been growing between the two sets of the Powers, they may be said to have brought no change upon the political horizon; but it seems impossible to deny that their publication greatly clarified the political atmosphere in the East, and, in spite of the verbal meaning of the declaration, not a little accentuated the widening contrast between the two different policies upheld by the two powerful coalitions. In this sense, the political evolution of the Far East may be said to have now reached an important stage after the European intervention in Japan in 1895.[411] ----- Footnote 397: