Here then is a matter which will require careful
consideration when the Powers meet to revise their Chinese
Treaties as they must revise them after the world-war; for Japan
in Manchuria is fundamentally in no different a position from
England in the Yangtsze Valley and what applies to one must apply
to the other. The new Chinese police which are being distributed
in ever greater numbers throughout China form an admirable force
and are superior to Japanese police in the performance of nearly
all their duties. It is monstrous that Japan, as well as other
Powers, should act in such a reprehensible manner when the Chinese
administration is doing all it can to provide efficient guardians
of the peace.
The second case was one in which French officialdom by a curious
act of folly gravely alienated Chinese sympathies and gave a
powerful weapon to the German propaganda in China at the end of
1916. The Lao-hsi-kai dispute, which involved a bare 333 acres of
land in Tientsin, has now taken its place beside the Chengchiatun
affair, and has become a leading case in that great dossier of
griefs which many Chinese declare make up the corpus of Euro-
Chinese relations. Here again the facts are absolutely simple and
absolutely undisputed. In 1902 the French consular authorities in
Tientsin filed a request to have their Concession extended on the
ground that they were becoming cramped.
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