s the uncomfortable and precarious position of a fat
walnut clinched firmly between the jaws of a nut-cracker, the jaws
being formed by British Burmah and French Indo-China. And for the past
thirty years those jaws have been slowly but remorselessly closing.
Until 1893 the eastern frontier of Siam was separated from the China
Sea by the narrow strip of Annam, at one point barely thirty miles in
width, which was under French protection. Its western boundary was the
Lu Kiang River, which likewise formed the eastern boundary of the
British possessions in Burmah. On the south the kingdom reached down to
the Grand Lac of Cambodia, while on the north its frontiers were
coterminous with those of the great, rich Chinese province of Yunnan.
Now here was a condition of affairs which was as annoying as it was
intolerable to the land-hungry statesmen of Downing Street and the
Quai d'Orsay. That a small and defenseless Oriental nation should be
permitted to block the colonial expansion of two powerful and
acquisitive European nations was unthinkable.

The first step in the spoilation of the helpless little kingdom was
taken by France in 1893, when, claiming that the Mekong--which the
French were eager to acquire under the impression that it would provide
them with a trade-route into Southern China--formed the true boundary
between Siam and Annam, she demanded that the Siamese evacuate the
great strip of territory to the east of that river. Greatly to the
delight of the French imperialists, the Siamese refused to yield,
whereupon, in accordance with the time-honored rules of the game of
territory grabbing, French gunboats were dispatched to make a naval
demonstration off Bangkok. The forts at the mouth of the Menam fired
upon the gunboats, whereupon the French instituted a blockade of the
Siamese capital and at the same time enormously increased their
demands. England, which had long professed to be a disinterested friend
of the Siamese, shrugged her shoulders whereupon they yielded to the
threat of a French invasion and ceded to France the eastern marches of
the kingdom. Meanwhile the frontier between Siam and the new British
possessions in Burmah had been settled amicably, though, as might have
been expected, in Britain's favor, Siam being shorn of a small strip of
territory on the northwest. In 1904 the French again brought pressure
to bear, their territorial booty on this occasion amounting to some
eight thousand square miles, co