that of the British in Tibet. These two provinces of Outer China, as was pointed out, are of special importance to British India on the one hand and to Siberia on the other, through the geographical position of each respectively. A condition of political stability in Mongolia is to the Siberians as much a matter of interest as a similar condition in Tibet is to British India. M. Sasonoff's speech in the Duma in May 1912 confirmed the popular belief in a pacific Russian policy in Mongolia. "We should not forget," he said, "that Russia is a European Power; that our State was put together not on the banks of the Black Irtish, but on the Dnieper and the Moskva. The expansion of Russia in Asia cannot constitute our aim and policy."
On the other hand, it would be a mistake to assume that Russia has no material object in view in her Mongolian policy. She saw clearly in 1911 that the continuance of Chinese arbitrary methods would sooner or later have caused social unrest among the Tartars in Mongolia, sufficient to threaten her commercial interests in that country.
The fear of Chinese competition, moreover, which, as we have seen, has caused such serious loss to Russian traders within the last decade, has also caused Russia to look with no favourable eye upon Chinese colonization in Mongolia.
Herein is the danger of Russia's action in Mongolia—a danger arising not from the policy of the Russian Government, but from the chauvinistic section of the Russian Nationalist Press. In the spring of 1911 their organs, apparently on their own responsibility, enunciated a policy of aggression in Mongolia and of sympathy with the supposed interests of the
