calculated as to produce an effect also in America.
At the close of the next year he suffered in the Far East what were perhaps the only considerable diplomatic reverses in his career. He was not able to prevent either the Germans from acquiring from China the lease of Kiao-Chau or Russia that of Port Arthur in 1897; nor was he prepared to resent the Russian representation that the presence of two British ships at the latter harbour, where they had a treaty right to be, had 'produced a bad impression at St. Petersburg.' Wei-hai-wei, which he secured for England as a set-off against these cessions to Russia and Germany, has admittedly proved to be a place of no strategic value. On the commercial side, however, his policy was successful. He checked the attempt of Russia to secure exclusive trading rights—in violation of the Treaty of Tientsin (1858)—within her recognised sphere of influence in Manchuria, and he obtained an undertaking from China not to alienate the Valley of the Yangtse, where British interests pre-eminently lay. This insistence upon the policy of the open door was followed by a very remarkable development of British enterprise in China.
His Far-Eastern policy, besides, must not be viewed alone. A dispute with France was already on the horizon. Early in 1897 a French expedition under Major Marchand had left the Congo, and the French flag was planted at Fashoda on the Upper Nile in July 1898. From this place Sir Herbert (Lord) Kitchener dislodged it shortly after the battle of Omdurinan. The action was deeply resented in France, but Salisbury declined any compromise, and boldly faced the likelihood of war. The French eventually gave way, and relinquished any claims in the Sudan by the declaration of 21 March 1899. It is significant of Salisbury's far-sightedness that a secret agreement with Germany about Portuguese Africa was being concluded, when Marchand was discovered at Fashoda. His most characteristic work is however to be found in his Near-Eastern policy. In 1897 the Armenian massacres had aroused indignation, which was fostered by Gladstone. Salisbury, however, was not to be moved. He fully admitted the legitimacy of the feeling against Turkish rule; he solemnly warned the Sultan of the ultimate fate of misgoverned countries; but he steadily maintained that to endanger the peace of Europe for the sake of avenging the Armenians was not to be thought of. Hence he declined to act without the approval of the greater Powers of the 'Concert of Europe,' an expression which in his time became very familiar. And though nothing was effected in Armenia, the use of this cumbrous instrument of diplomacy was vindicated in Crete, where, after the Greco-Turkish war of 1897, an autonomous constitution was established in 1899 by the pressure which the Concert under his leadership brought to bear upon the Porte. His support of arbitration was of a piece with his support of the Concert, and the English deputation to the Hague Conference, which followed upon the Tsar's Rescript (1899), proved perhaps the most efficient of those sent to it.
Meanwhile events in South Africa had brought England into open war with the Boer republics there, as a result of long pending disputes between the Boer rulers and British settlers. It was something of an irony that the largest army England had ever assembled should have been put into the field under the .administration of a man who so earnestly laboured for peace. But to the charge that he ever wavered in his belief in the justice and necessity of the South African war he returned an indignant denial (speech at Albert Hall, 7 May 1902). He firmly refused to entertain any idea of foreign mediation (statement hi the House of Lords, 15 March 1900), and his diplomacy was probably never more skilful than during that period of acute European Anglophobia. But his pre-occupation with foreign affairs had necessarily restricted his activity as prime minister, and at the reconstitution of the ministry in Nov. 1900, after the 'khaki' election of that year had confirmed him in power by a majority of 134, he took the sinecure post of lord privy seal and resigned the foreign office to Lord Lansdowne, retaining, however, a special supervision over its business so that the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of 1902 was concluded under his eye. His health had been failing for some time, but he regarded it as a matter of duty to retain the premiership until the war was finished. During that interval Queen Victoria died on 22 Jan. 1901. His personal devotion to her had been one of the deepest springs of his energy, and she had compared him with Peel and spoken of him as a greater man than Disraeli (Boyd-Carpenter, Some Pages of my Life, p. 236). He was closely associated with some of the leading events in the great movement which gave lustre to the latter part of her reign. The Royal Titles Act making her Empress of India had been
