Note 600 — Chapter XVIII · THE RUSSO-JAPANESE NEGOTIATIONS, I

The Russian Government explained later, in the note delivered on January 6, 1904, that the creation of a neutral zone was “for the very purpose which the Imperial Japanese Government had likewise in view, namely, ‘to eliminate everything that might lead to misunderstandings in the future;’ a similar zone, for example, existed between the Russian and British possessions in Central Asia.”—N.-R., No. 38.

It is easy to see, however, that neutralization is merely common appropriation in a negative form, and might, like cases of the latter, as in Primorsk and Sakhalien, result in absorption by one of the two Powers between which the territory was neutralized.