Moreover, this request of the Tsarist Russian government also gave Li Hui the opportunity to extort money, before he considered that even if a high compensation demand was issued, it must be paid in installments according to international practice (it is not impossible to ask for immediate payment, but it is easy to arouse suspicion, and Li Hui does not want to take this risk.) Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info), and once the Red Army returned to China and revealed its true colors, the little bit of collusion between China and the Bolsheviks would be revealed, and the treaty signed with Tsarist Russia would inevitably be torn up, that is, the indemnity could actually only get a small part, so Li Hui focused more on land cession when making the offer, and did not ask too much for the indemnity. But now since Tsarist Russia is in a hurry to ask for arms, then the ransom should always be given, right? I've never heard of paying in installments......

However, due to the damage in the war, the Russian-style weapons captured by the Chinese army were not enough to equip all the prisoners of war, and even less if they needed to be equipped with sufficient ammunition, and the Tsarist Russian government was not able to provide it with weapons and ammunition (as soon as the treaty was signed, the US aid would be broken, and the Tsarist Russian government would only be able to supply the troops at hand. Therefore, the Tsarist government is only willing to accept 1.2 million prisoners of war for the time being, and the rest will have to wait until some factories in Tsarist Russia switch to ammunition production and at least ensure the supply of ammunition. As a result, including a limited amount of the first indemnity, the Chinese government received a total of more than 200 tons of gold, much to the disappointment of the greedy Li Hui......

But even with "such a small amount of money", the Tsarist government, whose treasury was already empty enough to run off horses, could not come up with it now, and fortunately the British banks were willing to lend money. Later, after the establishment of the Soviet Russian government, it refused to admit all the debts owed by the Tsarist government, and the money was naturally lost, that is to say, Li Hui's blackmailing of Maozi this time was actually a trap for Niu Niu, of course, this is a later story......

However, the British deserved to be trapped, and they did not provide loans to the Tsarist government out of the spirit of internationalism, but just did not want the fall of the Tsarist government to allow Germany to take advantage of the situation, and Britain could also strengthen its control over the Russian economy through this loan, and seize huge political and economic benefits, in the final analysis, for its own national interests. The elder Chamberlain adhered to the tradition of realism that politicians of the British Empire had always had, and he did not care about good or evil, everything was centered on the national interests of Britain.

In fact, it was precisely because of the fear that the Americans would obstruct and sabotage the matter before the completion of the matter, the location of the secret talks was changed to Portsmouth, and the peace treaty was named after it, which happened to be the same as the peace treaty between the two sides after the end of the Russo-Japanese War in history, which cannot but be said to be a historical coincidence. The difference is that the United States has historically made a lot of money through the Portsmouth Treaty, but this time it has been covered in blood......

When US President Theodore Roosevelt burst to the ground on the spot on the news of the formal conclusion of the peace treaty between China and Russia, he was outraged by the treachery of the Russians, but also because he thought of a series of serious consequences that were obvious......

After Tsarist Russia withdrew from the war, the United States could only face the powerful China alone, and the difficulty of the counteroffensive would inevitably increase several times, which was the most direct impact; After Tsarist Russia withdrew from the war, France could stay out of the matter, and naturally it was impossible to continue to sell all kinds of war materials to the United States at a low price as before. However, if there is one thing that made President Roosevelt despair the most, it was that the British secretly brokered peace between China and Russia, which showed that the European powers no longer had the same sympathetic and supportive attitude towards the United States as before......

When Chinese troops landed in Mexico, the European powers, led by Britain, came close to forming a grand alliance against China, because politicians in various countries knew how terrible it would be if the United States were annexed by China. But now that the Chinese Navy has withdrawn from the Atlantic, the U.S. military has stabilized the battle line, no longer lost its divisions and lost ground, and even invaded Mexico and launched a local counteroffensive. In that case, why should the European powers spend their national strength to support the United States, just to add icing on the cake and reduce the losses of the Americans?

Among them, the British Empire, the former world hegemon, simply wished that China and the United States would continue to stalemate in this way and continue to consume national strength meaninglessly, and the United States would drain its blood so that Britain could secure its position as the hegemon of the West, and if China could be dragged down, the old Chamberlain's ideal of restoring the former hegemony would also be hopeful. Therefore, the attitude of the British government in the future will only be to watch from the sidelines, and may even think that the Sino-US war is not as lively as before, and add a few more fires to it......

In such a situation, the wisest course of action, for either China or the United States, would be to cease the war immediately. In fact, as soon as the Portsmouth Treaty was signed, Li Hui expressed his desire to negotiate peace with the United States in an interview with his old friend Morrisson, although those words sounded very harsh......

"In fact, at the beginning, we only wanted to return the more than one million square kilometers of lost land illegally occupied by the Russian invaders in history, but the Russian tsarist government was not only unwilling to return it, but took advantage of the opportunity of the Sino-US war to invade again, and this war has been fought until now, the total number of casualties of the Chinese military and civilians has been hundreds of thousands of people (exaggerated), the total military expenditure and direct economic losses have increased to more than 10 billion yuan (even more exaggerated), and the indirect economic losses are only afraid of hundreds of billions of yuan (I don't know how to describe it)......". Li Hui was only halfway through this nonsense, but he was interrupted by Morrisun, who is now a little familiar with informality......

Morrison, who is now considered by the Western society to be the number one "China expert", shrugged his shoulders speechlessly, and reminded Li Hui in a very fluent Chinese Chinese, "Your Excellency, as far as I know, your country's losses are far less great, and the number of Russian casualties is much greater than yours, whether military or civilian......"