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Fujinami Gentaro joined once or twice in these debates, and announced sententiously: "Twenty years ago Japan defeated China and took Korea. Ten years ago we defeated Russia and took Manchuria. This year we defeat Germany and take Tsingtao. In ten years we shall defeat America and take Hawaii and the Philippines. In twenty years we shall defeat England and take India and Australia.
To this plea Baron Makino returned the answer that with the surrender of Tsingtao to Japan in 1914 the whole imperial German protectorates of Shantung had passed to that Power, China being still a neutral. Consequently the entry of China into the war in 1917 could not affect the status of the province which already belonged to Nippon by right of conquest.
On the other hand, the Japanese delegates at the Conference, on behalf of their government, made a voluntary agreement "to hand back the Shantung peninsula in full sovereignty to China, retaining only the economic privileges granted to Germany and the right to establish a settlement under the usual conditions at Tsingtao."
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.
To say that she had intimidated the Chinese, instead of coaxing them or bargaining with them, would be a truism. The fall of Tsingtao gave her a favorable opportunity, and she used and misused it unjustifiably.
At the time when Russian penetration into Mongolia began, Japan had entered upon a similar course in Manchuria, which she regarded as her "sphere of influence". On the outbreak of the first world war Japan occupied the former German-leased territory of Tsingtao, at the extremity of the province of Shantung, and from that point she occupied the railways of the province.
After the Japanese occupation of Kiaochow, Japan shall acquire all the rights and privileges hitherto enjoyed by the Germans in regard to railways, mines and all other interests, and after peace and order is restored in Tsingtao, the place shall be handed back to China to be opened as an International Treaty port.
New Guinea should be allotted to Australia. As the Marshall, Caroline, and Ladrone Islands, although of no intrinsic value, would constitute a danger in Germany's hands, they should be taken over by Japan. Tsingtao and the port of Kiaochow should belong to Japan, as well as the Tainan railway.
My first visit to Shantung was at Tsingtao, the headquarters of the German concession and now of the Japanese concession. I spent a day there, and took photographs of the wharves and town. On the wharves were still standing hundreds of boxes marked with German names and the inevitable phrase "Made in Germany." Those boxes were mute reminders of the evacuation of one nation from a foreign soil.
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