readth of the land you have small communities of foreigners, mere drops
in a mighty ocean of four hundred millions, living absolutely secure
although absolutely at the mercy of their huge swarms of neighbours. All
such foreigners--or nearly all--have come to China for purposes of
profit; they depend for their livelihood on co-operation with the
Chinese; and once that co-operation ceases they might as well be dead
and buried for all the good residence will do them. In such
circumstances it would be reasonable to suppose that a certain decency
would inspire their attitude, and that a policy of give-and-take would
always be sedulously practised; and we are happy to say that there is
more of this than there used to be. It is only when incidents such as
the Chengchiatun and Laihsikai affairs occur that the placid population
is stirred to action. Even then, instead of turning and rending the many
little defenceless communities--as European mobs would certainly
do--they simply confine themselves to boycotting the offenders and
hoping that this evidence of their displeasure will finally induce the
world to believe that they are determined to get reasonable treatment.
The Chinese as a people may be very irritating in the slowness with
which they do certain things--though they are as quick in business as
the quickest Anglo-Saxon--but that is no excuse why men who call
themselves superior should treat them with contempt. The Chinese are the
first to acknowledge that it will take them a generation at least to
modernize effectively their country and their government; but they
believe that having erected a Republic and having declared themselves as
disciples of the West they are justified in expecting the same treatment
and consideration which are to be given after the war even to the
smallest and weakest nations of Europe.

FOOTNOTES:

[23] Russian diplomats now deny that the Japanese proposals regarding
the cession of the railway south of the Sungari river have ever been
formally agreed to.

[24] A further illustration of the action of French diplomacy in China
has just been provided (April, 1917) in the protest lodged by France
against the building of a railway in Kwangsi Province by American
engineers with American capital--France claiming _exclusive rights_ in
Kwangsi by virtue of a letter sent by the Chinese Minister of Foreign
Affairs to the French Legation in 1914 as settlement for a frontier
dispute in that year. The text