irritation to the Japanese people, and
the greatest stumbling-block to a permanent understanding in the Far
East.

Chinese suspicion of any invitation coming by way of Tokio has been,
therefore, in every way justified, if it is a reasonable and legitimate
thing for a nation of four hundred millions of people to be acutely
concerned about their independence; for events have already proved up to
the hilt that so far from the expulsion of Germany from Shantung having
resulted in the handing-back of interests which were forcibly acquired
from China in 1898, that expulsion has merely resulted in Japan
succeeding to such interests and thereby obliterating all trace of her
original promise to the world in 1914 that she would restore to China
what was originally taken from her. Here it is necessary to remark that
not only did Japan in her negotiations over the Twenty-one Demands force
China to hand over the twelve million pounds of German improvements in
Shantung province, but that Baron Hayashi, the present Japanese Minister
to China, has recently declared that Japan would demand from China a
vast settlement or concession at Tsingtao, thus making even the alleged
handing-back of the leased territory--which Japan is pledged to force
from Germany at the Peace Conference--wholly illusory, the formula of a
Settlement being adopted because twelve years' experience of Port Arthur
has shown that territorial "leases," with their military garrisons and
administrative offices, are expensive and antiquated things, and that it
is easier to push infiltration by means of a multitude of Settlements in
which police-boxes and policemen form an important element, than to cut
off slices of territory under a nomenclature which is a clamant
advertisement of disruptive aims.

Now although these matters appear to be taking us far from the
particular theme we are discussing, it is not really so. Like a dark
thunder-cloud on the horizon the menace of Japanese action has rendered
frank Chinese co-operation, even in such a simple matter as war-measures
against Germany, a thing of supreme difficulty. The mere rumour that
China might dispatch an Expeditionary Force to Mesopotamia was
sufficient to send the host of unofficial Japanese agents in Peking
scurrying in every direction and insisting that if the Chinese did
anything at all they should limit themselves to sending troops to
Russia, where they would be "lost"--a suggestion made because that was
w