d within the prohibited area, and Japan's reply to the Chinese
Viceroy's protest is that he should have objected sooner and that it
is now too late. Meanwhile, many Chinese merchants both in the
interior and along the South Manchurian Railway, themselves paying the
regular likin and consumption taxes, are finding themselves unable to
compete with the Japanese, who refuse to pay these taxes. Thus Japan
is gradually rooting out the natives who stand in her way, and, day by
day, tightening her grip on the country.

She is advancing step by step as she did in Korea.

On the whole, the Mikado's subjects seem already to count themselves
virtual masters of the country. Inside their railway areas and
concessions they have their own government; in the majority of cases
while in Manchuria I found it more convenient to use the Japanese
telegraph or the Japanese postal system than the Chinese; and where I
stopped at the little towns along the line it was a Japanese officer
who came to inquire my name and nationality. When I was in Mukden the
German consul there had just had two Chinese meddlers arrested for
spying on his movements, only to find that they were acting under the
direction of Japanese officials who claimed immunity for them! The
fact that they have their soldiers back of them, and that they can be
tried only in their own courts, also gives the Japanese unlimited
assurance in bullying the natives. At Mukden the Japanese bellboy
struck my Chinese rickshaw {90} man to get his attention. At Taolu
some weeks ago some Japanese merchants who were there doing business
illegally (for it is not an open mart) were interfered with, with the
result that the Japanese authorities when I was in Mukden were
preparing a formal demand for satisfaction, including indemnity for
any injury to an unlawful business!

Manifestly, the new masters of Manchuria propose to teach the natives
their place. "If a Chinaman is killed by a Japanese bullet," as a
Chinaman of rank said to me in Manchuria, "the fault is not that of
the man who fired the bullet: the Chinaman is to blame for getting in
the way of it!"

VI

Those who apologize for Japanese aggressiveness in Manchuria, those
who excuse or sympathize with her evident purpose to make Manchuria
walk the way of Korea, have but one argument for their position--the
pitiably abused and threadbare plea that the Japanese have won the
country by the blood they shed in the war with Russia. The bes