These men were, according to Article 2 of the Statutes of September 30, “the Ministers of the Interior, of Finance, of Foreign Affairs, and of War, the head of the Ministry of Marine, and such persons as His Majesty the Emperor may find it expedient to summon, either to sit permanently on the committee, or to take part temporarily at its meetings. The Viceroy of the Far East, being, by his duties, a member of the committee, shall be present at the meetings when he is in St. Petersburg.” Footnote 588: The _British Parliamentary Papers: China, No. 2 (1904)_, No. 144. Footnote 589: _Ibid._, No. 155. Footnote 590: After the opening of hostilities in February of the present year, the Russian Foreign Office made a statement of Russia’s case, in which it was said that, when the Japanese Government proposed in August, 1903, to open the negotiations, “Russia consented, and Viceroy Alexieff was charged to draw up a project for a new understanding with Japan in coöperation with the Russian Minister at Tokio....” See p. 327, note 9, below. Footnote 591: _N.-R._, No. 6. Footnote 592: Evidently the reference is to the three Russo-Japanese agreements concerning Korea concluded in 1896 and 1898. Footnote 593: _N.-R._, No. 3, originally dated Tokio, August 6. Footnote 594: _N.-R._, No. 7. Footnote 595: The _British Parliamentary Papers: China, No. 1 (1898)_, Nos. 100 and 109. Footnote 596: _N.-R._, Nos. 8, 11. Footnote 597: _N.-R._, Nos. 10, 11. Footnote 598: _Ibid._, No. 14, September 7. Footnote 599: _N.-R._, No. 17. Footnote 600: The Russian Government explained later, in the note delivered on January 6, 1904, that the creation of a neutral zone was “for the very purpose which the Imperial Japanese Government had likewise in view, namely, ‘to eliminate everything that might lead to misunderstandings in the future;’ a similar zone, for example, existed between the Russian and British possessions in Central Asia.”—_N.-R._, No. 38. It is easy to see, however, that _neutralization_ is merely _common appropriation_ in a negative form, and might, like cases of the latter, as in Primorsk and Sakhalien, result in _absorption_ by one of the two Powers between which the territory was neutralized. Footnote 601: _N.-R._, No. 20. Footnote 602: Before August 13, when he was appointed Viceroy of the Far East, Alexieff was as yet Governor-General of the Kwan-tung region. Footnote 603: The Japanese dailies. Footnote 604: The italics in the quotation are the author’s. Footnote 605: _China, No. 2 (1904)_, No. 133 (Lansdowne to Scott). Footnote 606: See pp. 246–248, above. Footnote 607: