United States Subserviency to Russia in China
Commenting upon the real status of affairs in China, an exchange, the Church Standard, of Philadelphia, says: “The curious thing in the Chinese situation is the position of subserviency to Russia into which the administration of the United States seems to be gradually falling. It is a good many weeks since the attention of our readers was called in this column to the astonishing impudence of the demand of Russia that ‘the Powers’ should evacuate China. Naturally, the other Powers, including the United States, did not accede to that rather peculiar invitation. The next thing that turned up was the discovery that, while professing to co-operate with the other Powers, Russia has been quietly making a private treaty with China; and now it is the government of the United States which has been renewing Russia’s invitation to the Powers to go somewhere else, to Washington, to London, to The Hague, anywhere to be out of Russia’s way. It would be somewhat remarkable, though not amusing, if Russia were to be able to play off the United States in the next few years as it has been playing off poor France for several years past. . . . Who will be benefited if the United States shall help Russia to establish her control in China, and consequently in Corea, and ultimately in the Orient? Not the people of the United States; for what the people of this country want is the open door of commerce with the Orient, and the door of commerce is precisely what Russia has never yet been known to open. Every province of the far East that she possesses or controls, will be closed against the commerce of all other nations. It may be worth while for Mr. Hay to bear that fact in mind in his coquetting with the Northern Bear.”