have intermarried with the Manchu Imperial family. Since the outbreak of the recent revolution, however, ending in the downfall of the Manchu dynasty, the Mongol khans have taken the opportunity to regain that autonomy, which has been threatened during the last decade. The expulsion of the Chinese Amban and his followers from Urga and the coronation of the "Hutuchtu" Lama in that city as "Great Khan of Mongolia," was followed by an appeal to Russia to guarantee the Mongol rights of local autonomy.
And so Russia becomes a factor in the revolution of Outer China. She informed China by note, and by an official communiqué issued by the St Petersburg Foreign Office on 10th January 1912, that she would regard Mongolia as an autonomous province under Chinese suzerainty only. Moreover, she indicated her desire that China should control only the external relations of Mongolia, leaving all internal administration to the local khans; that Chinese military exactions on the Mongols should cease; and that Chinese immigrants should not deprive the tribesmen of their best land in future. The moral rôle which Russia, perhaps somewhat unwittingly, has played in this scene should arouse the sympathy, if not the approbation, of those who desire the protection of weak and struggling nationalities.
Russia has in fact undertaken to protect the Mongols against Chinese aggression, which, if continued in the recent manner, would eventually have threatened them with extinction.
The Russian Government's position was rendered all the more convincing in January 1912 by the comparison of the Russian policy in Mongolia with
