And when the Korean Government protested, Russian agents claimed the right to construct railways, erect telegraphs or take any required measures for the protection of Russian settlers in Korea; and every diplomatic attempt to open Manchuria or Korea to foreign trade and residents was opposed by Russia as if it were an attack upon her own individual rights.
Surprising as this was to all the Treaty Powers, it had for Japan the added sting of injustice.

She had been ejected from her own territory, fairly won in war, because her presence would endanger the independence of Korea and the peace of the Orient.

She now saw Russia in full occupation of this very territory, and the absorption of Korea itself threatened.
And what was the object of all this scheming?
Not more land! Certainly a nation owning more than a sixth of the earth's surface could not be hungering for land! And no doubt Russia would long ago gladly have given one-half of Siberia to the sea in exchange for a few good harbors such as existed on the east coast of Korea.

It was that ever-existent thirst for access to the ocean which tempted her into tortuous diplomacy, drawing her on and on, like the hand of fate.
Manchuria itself would be unavailing unless she could control Korea, which alone possessed the ocean facilities for which she had struggled since the first year of her existence.
In the year 1900 the Trans-Siberian Railway was completed.

Its 6,600 miles of rails, if laid in a straight line, would pass one-quarter of the distance around the earth! It had traversed an unexplored continent, creating, as it moved along, homes for the workmen, schools for their technical instruction, churches, hospitals, inns, stores; converting a wilderness, in fact, into a semi-civilization at the rate of a mile a day for nine years! And whereas in the days of the Mongol subjection it required four years for the Grand Princes to go from Moscow to Sarai, near Pekin, to prostrate themselves before the Great Khan, many perishing by the way from fatigue and exposure, the journey from Moscow to Pekin may now be accomplished in two weeks.