To some this railway concession may have appeared at first to have been intended merely to reduce the time and expense of completing the eastern section of the Siberian Railway by allowing it to pass across Manchuria through a route shorter and easier than the one along the Amur and Ussuri rivers. Such a belief was, however, soon dispelled, or rather, modified, by the acquisition by Russia of the lease of the greatest naval harbor in the Yellow Sea, and, simultaneously, of the right to join this naval basis by a new railway with the main Manchurian line, so as to make complete the connection between Port Arthur and the army centres in Siberia and Russia. The Russian lease of this port was, however, preceded by and modeled after the German lease of Kiao-chau, which should therefore receive our brief attention first. ----- Footnote 144: See Henri Cordier, _Histoire des relations de la Chine avec les puissances occidentales_, 1860–1902 (3 vols.), vol. iii (Paris, 1902), pp. 305–306. The loan contract, dated June 24, 1895, appears in _Tokushu Jōyaku_, pp. 660–667. Footnote 145: _Tokushu Jōyaku_, pp. 667–668. Footnote 146: Cf. Art. 15 of the contract. Footnote 147: The other half, £16,000,000, was supplied by some British and German subjects by the contract of March 11, 1896, at 5% interest, and repayable in thirty-six years. Another £16,000,000 loan was later supplied by the same parties.—_Tokushu Jōyaku_, pp. 668–673. Footnote 148: 5,000,000 _taels_ were, however, as will be seen below, used for another purpose. Footnote 149: The contract dated August 25, 1896.—_Tokushu Jōyaku_, pp. 640–641. Footnote 150: According to a Peking correspondent to the _Kokumin_ (May 30, 1904), the Chinese Government had been paying the stipulated 4% interest for this sum to the French creditors, but the Bank had never repaid the interest to China. Moreover, the Niu-chwang branch of the Bank, since the Russians occupied the port in August, 1900, had been receiving the returns of the Chinese maritime customs there, which finally amounted to about 5,000,000 _taels_. Neither the principal nor the interest of this sum had been paid by the Bank to the Chinese Government. Footnote 151: _Tokushu Jōyaku_, pp. 642–660. Footnote 152: _Tokushu Jōyaku_, p. 231. Footnote 153: The Japanese text appears in _ibid._, pp. 231–234. Footnote 154: _Tokushu Jōyaku_, pp. 234–236. A French translation is found in Cordier, _Histoire_, vol. iii. pp. 343–347. Footnote 155: _The British Parliamentary Papers, China, No. 1 (1898)_, Dispatch No. 14, pp. 5–6. Cf. _China, No. 2 (1899)_, No. 2, in which M. Pavloff claims to have secured in December, 1897, a repetition of this pledge. Footnote 156: See _China, No. 2 (1904)_, Nos. 28–29, modified Article 12. Sir Ernest Satow, however, denied that any such agreement existed. See _China, No. 2 (1904)_, No. 30, March 19, 1901. Footnote 157: