Continuing, the Count stated: “But Manchuria would require many things that Russia could not supply, or supply at figures reasonable enough to create a market. In Russia, agriculture is, comparatively speaking, more important than manufacturing, and those goods which are made in my country are not such as Manchuria would need. Russia, too, would be obliged to use the railway with its high freight tariffs....”—_Ibid._ Footnote 107: One can seldom find a more outspoken confession of a diplomacy consisting of a series of deliberate falsehoods than the chapters on the Russian relations with China, Korea, and Japan, in a diplomatic history by a Russian writer, as translated in the _Dōbun-kwai Hōkoku_, Nos. 45, 46, 48, 49, and 50 (August, September, November, and December, 1903, and January, 1904). Footnote 108: The Russian diplomatic historian to whom frequent reference has been made frankly says that the feebleness and internal disorder of China are welcome conditions for the expansion of Russian influence in the Far East, and that it would be the height of folly to displace the weak China with a colonial possession of a European power.—The _Dōbun-kwai Hōkoku_, No. 48, p. 36. Footnote 109: See p. 55, note 1, above. Footnote 110: The _Shiberiya oyobi Manshū_, pp. 221–223. Footnote 111: The _Shiberiya oyobi Manshū_, pp. 223–225, 490–495. Footnote 112: The _Tsūshō Isan_, July 8, 1903, p. 4. Footnote 113: The New York _Evening Post_, January 20, 1903. Footnote 114: The U. S. daily _Consular Reports_, April 22, 1903 (No. 1627). Footnote 115: The U. S. daily _Consular Reports_, February 24, 1904 (No. 1884). Footnote 116: The _North American Review_, May, 1904, p. 688. CHAPTER I RETROCESSION OF THE LIAO-TUNG PENINSULA