angsha, the capital of the
turbulent Hunan province. Changsha for years remained a secret centre
possessing the greatest political importance for her, and serving as a
focus for most varied activities involving Hunan, Hupeh, and Kiangsi, as
well as a vast hinterland. The great Tayeh iron-mines, although entirely
Chinese-owned, were already being tapped to supply iron-ore for the
Japanese Government Foundry at Wakamatsu on the island of Kiushiu. The
rich coal mines of Pinghsiang, being conveniently near, supplied the
great Chinese Government arsenal of Hanyang with fuel; and since Japan
had very little coal or iron of her own, she decided that it would be
best to embrace as soon as possible the whole area of interests in one
categorical demand--that is, to claim a dominant share in the Hanyang
arsenal, the Tayeh iron-mines and the Pinghsiang collieries.[14] By
lending money to these enterprises, which were grouped together under
the name of Hanyehping, she had early established a claim on them which
she turned at the psychological moment into an international question.

We can pass quickly by Group IV which is of little importance, except to
say that in taking upon herself, without consultation with the senior
ally, the duty of asking from China a declaration concerning the future
non-leasing of harbours and islands, Japan has attempted to assume a
protectorship of Chinese territory which does not belong to her
historically. It is well also to note that although Japan wished it to
appear to the world that this action was dictated by her desire to
prevent Germany from acquiring a fresh foothold in China after the war,
in reality Group IV was drafted as a general warning to the nations, one
point being that she believed that the United States was contemplating
the reorganization of the Foochow Arsenal in Fuhkien province, and that
as a corollary to that reorganization would be given the lease of an
adjoining harbour such as Santuao.

It is not, however, until we reach Group V that the real purpose of the
Japanese demands becomes unalterably clear, for in this Group we have
seven sketches of things designed to serve as the _coup de grace_. Not
only is a new sphere--Fuhkien province--indicated; not only is the
mid-Yangtsze, from the vicinity of Kiukiang, to serve as the terminus
for a system of Japanese railways, radiating from the great river to the
coasts of South China; but the gleaming knife of the Japanese surgeon is
t