The last but not the least difficulty about the Agreement was its absolute silence regarding the so-called “railway guards,” organized ostensibly by the Eastern Chinese Railway Company, whose existence would make the promised evacuation almost entirely nominal. It will be remembered that, so far as the published agreements between China and Russia are concerned, one fails to find any conventional ground for the organization of the railway guards, save in Article 8 of the Statutes—not a Russo-Chinese agreement, but purely Russian statutes—published on December 11/13, 1896, which provided: “The preservation of order and decorum on the lands assigned to the railway and its appurtenances should be confined to the _police agents_ appointed by the Company. The Company should draw up and establish police regulations.”[424] This right of Russia to police the railway lands seems to have been tacitly perpetuated by the present Convention of 1902,[425] and, from this, it may perhaps be assumed that the Chinese Government had some time before April 8, 1902, agreed to the statutory rule of Russia which has just been quoted. However that may be, a permission to establish a police force could scarcely justify the organization of railway guards selected from the regular troops and receiving a higher pay than the latter. Moreover, it still remains to be officially declared that the numbers of the guards would not be determined by Russia at will and without consulting China. These guards seem to have numbered only 2000 or 3000 before the Manchurian campaign of 1900, but in October of that year Mr. Charles Hardinge, the British _Chargé d’Affaires_ at St. Petersburg, wrote to Lord Salisbury: “I learn that active recruiting for this force is now in progress, and its numbers are to be raised to 12,000 men under command of officers in the regular army. Intrenched camps are also being constructed at all the strategic positions along the line.”[426] Then, on the eve of the termination of the first period of evacuation in 1902, it was reported by Consul Hosie: “I am credibly informed that the number of the military guard of the Russian railways in Manchuria has been fixed at 30,000 men.”[427] Latterly, the name has been changed to the “frontier guards,” which, after the beginning of the present war, were said to have been made up of fifty-five mounted squadrons, fifty-five foot companies, and six batteries of artillery, aggregating 25,000 men, instead of 30,000, and guarding the railways in sections of thirty-three miles.[428] There is no intention here to maintain the accuracy of these reports, or to decide whether the numbers are adequate for the purpose in view, but one would be tempted to think that the Russian Government made a regrettable omission in the new Manchurian Agreement, when it made no reference to the forces which were justified by no open contract with China, and, theoretically speaking, were not incapable of an indefinite expansion. -----