f to last for a thousand years. Tunnel after tunnel
through solid rock, the most superb masonry and bridges wherever
streams intervene, the best of ballast to make an enduring
roadbed--all these indicate the style of the new, not "improved" but
utterly reconstructed, line which is building for Japan's benefit at
China's expense--at China's expense directly if she buys it back in
1932, at China's expense indirectly if she doesn't.

It will be remembered, of course, that according to her agreement with
China, Japan was to begin the work of "improving" the Antung-Mukden
line within two years. Whether she was strangely unable to make any
sort of beginning in the period, or whether she purposely delayed it
in order to show her contempt for Chinese sovereignty in Manchuria, it
is difficult to say; what is known is only that the Mikado's
government let its treaty rights lapse, and then when China objected
to a renewal, defied China, and proceeded with the work of
"improvement" by what was euphemistically termed "independent action."

{85}

Incidentally, it may be recalled just here that in the Portsmouth
Peace Treaty Japan and Russia jointly promised the rest of the world
"to exploit their respective railways in Manchuria exclusively for
commercial and industrial purposes and in no wise for strategic
purpose."

That Japan (in the event no other method of getting control of
Manchuria appears) hopes to make the railroads too expensive for the
hard-pressed Peking government to buy back is self-evident. She is
looking far ahead, as those interested in the continuance of the Open
Door policy must also look far ahead. The real Open Door question is
not a matter of the last four or five years or of the next four or
five years, but whether after a comparatively short time the Door is
to be permanently closed as in Korea. If it be said that Japan is only
human in laying many plans to gain so rich an empire, let it also be
said that other nations are only human if they wish to protect their
own interests.

IV

For one thing, as has been suggested, Japan has a perfectly obvious
plan to make the railways too expensive for China to purchase when the
lease expires, and just here some comparisons may be in order. In
Japan proper the government-owned railway stations are severe and
inexpensive structures in which not one yen is wasted for display and
but little for convenience. When I was in Tokyo, for example,
Ex-Premier Okuma, in