stice. They were sent home through the Tropics in
overcrowded ships, sometimes with only 24 hours' notice; no degree of
hardship was sufficient to secure exemption. The British authorities
insisted on expelling delicate pregnant women, whom they officially knew
to be very likely to die on the voyage. All this was done after the
Armistice, for the sake of British trade. The kindly Chinese often took
upon themselves to hide Germans, in hard cases, from the merciless
persecution of the Allies; otherwise, the miseries inflicted would have
been much greater.

The confiscation of private property during the war and by the Treaty of
Versailles was a new departure, showing that on this point all the
belligerents agreed with the Bolsheviks. Dr. Reid places side by side
two statements, one by President Wilson when asking Congress to agree to
the Declaration of War: "We shall, I feel confident, conduct our
operations as belligerents without passion, and ourselves observe with
proud punctilio the principles of right and fairplay we profess to be
fighting for"; the other by Senator Hitchcock, when the war was over,
after a day spent with President Wilson in learning the case for
ratification of the Versailles Treaty: "Through the Treaty, we will yet
get very much of importance.... In violation of all international law
and treaties we have made disposition of a billion dollars of
German-owned properly here. The Treaty validates all that."[77] The
European Allies secured very similar advantages from inducing China to
enter the war for righteousness.

We have seen what England and France gained by the Chinese declaration
of war. What Japan gained was somewhat different.

The Northern military faction, which controlled the Peking Government,
was completely dependent upon Japan, and could do nothing to resist
Japanese aggression. All the other Powers were fully occupied with the
war, and had sold China to Japan in return for Japanese neutrality--for
Japan can hardly be counted as a belligerent after the capture of
Tsingtau in November 1914. The Southern Government and all the liberal
elements in the North were against the clique which had seized the
Central Government. In March 1918, military and naval agreements were
concluded between China and Japan, of which the text, never officially
published, is given by Millard.[78] By these agreements the Japanese
were enabled, under pretence of military needs in Manchuria and
Mongolia, to sen