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Chinese suspicion of any invitation coming by way of Tokio has been, therefore, in every way justified, if it is a reasonable and legitimate thing for a nation of four hundred millions of people to be acutely concerned about their independence; for events have already proved up to the hilt that so far from the expulsion of Germany from Shantung having resulted in the handing-back of interests which were forcibly acquired from China in 1898, that expulsion has merely resulted in Japan succeeding to such interests and thereby obliterating all trace of her original promise to the world in 1914 that she would restore to China what was originally taken from her.
Chinese suspicion of any invitation coming by way of Tokyo has been, therefore, in every way justified, if it is a reasonable and legitimate thing for a nation of four hundred millions of people to be acutely concerned about their independence; for events have already proved up to the hilt that so far from the expulsion of Germany from Shantung having resulted in the handing-back of interests which were forcibly acquired from China in 1898, that expulsion has merely resulted in Japan succeeding to such interests and thereby obliterating all trace of her original promise to the world in 1914 that she would restore to China what was originally taken from her.
Here it is necessary to remark that not only did Japan in her negotiations over the Twenty-one Demands force China to hand over the twelve million pounds of German improvements in Shantung province, but that Baron Hayashi, the present Japanese Minister to China, "has recently declared that Japan would demand from China a vast settlement or concession at Tsingtao, thus making even the alleged handing-back of the leased territory which Japan is pledged to force from Germany at the Peace Conference wholly illusory, the formula of a Settlement being adopted because twelve years' experience of Port Arthur has shown that territorial "leases," with their military garrisons and administrative offices, are expensive and antiquated things, and that it is easier to push infiltration by means of a multitude of Settlements in which police-boxes and policemen form an important element, than to cut off slices of territory under a nomenclature which is a clamant advertisement of disruptive aims.
Here it is necessary to remark that not only did Japan in her negotiations over the Twenty-one Demands force China to hand over the twelve million pounds of German improvements in Shantung province, but that Baron Hayashi, the present Japanese Minister to China, has recently declared that Japan would demand from China a vast settlement or concession at Tsingtao, thus making even the alleged handing-back of the leased territory which Japan is pledged to force from Germany at the Peace Conference wholly illusory, the formula of a Settlement being adopted because twelve years' experience of Port Arthur has shown that territorial "leases," with their military garrisons and administrative offices, are expensive and antiquated things, and that it is easier to push infiltration by means of a multitude of Settlements in which police-boxes and policemen form an important element, than to cut off slices of territory under a nomenclature which is a clamant advertisement of disruptive aims.
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