TERRITOEIAL  EXPANSION  AND  FOREIGN  POLICY    635

armed  resistance  of  the  native  races  liad  never  inflicted  on  her
anything  worse  than  pin-pricks.  From  decrepit  China,  which
possessed  no  army  in  the  European  sense  of  the  term,  a  more  ener-
getic resistance  was  not  to  be  expected.  Had  not  Muravieff  Amurski
with  a  few  Cossacks  quietly  occupied  her  Amur  territories  without
provoking  anything  more  dangerous  than  a  diplomatic  protest ;
and  had  not  Ignatief  annexed  her  rich  Primorsk  provinces,  includ-
ing the  site  of  Vladivostok,  by  purely  diplomatic  means?  Why
should  not  Count  Cassini,  a  diplomatist  of  the  same  type  as  Igna-
tief, imitate  his  adroit  predecessor,  and  secure  for  Russia,  if  not
the  formal  annexation,  at  least  the  permanent  occupation,  of  Man-
churia? Remembering  all  this,  we  can  perceive  that  the  great
mistake  of  the  Russian  Government  is  not  so  very  difficult  to
explain.  It  certainly  did  not  want  war — far  from  it — but  it  wanted
to  obtain  Manchuria  by  a  gradual,  painless  process  of  absorption,
and  it  did  not  perceive  that  this  could  not  be  attained  without  a
life-and-death  struggle  with  a  young,  vigorous  nationality,  which
has  contrived  to  combine  the  passions  and  virtues  of  a  primitive
race  with  the  organising  powers  and  scientific  appliances  of  the
most  advanced  civilisation.
