The Chinese authorities,
although not wishing to grant the request and indeed ignoring it
for a long time, were finally induced to begin fitful
negotiations; and in October, 1916, after having passed through
various processes of alteration, reduction, and re-statement
during the interval of fourteen years, the issue had been so fined
down that a virtual agreement regarding the administration of the
new area had been reached--an agreement which the Peking
Government was prepared to put into force subject to one
reasonable stipulation, that the local opposition to the new grant
of territory which was very real, as Chinese feel passionately on
the subject of the police-control of their land-acreage, was first
overcome. The whole essence or soul of the disputes lay therein:
that the lords of the soil, the people of China, and in this case
more particularly the population of Tientsin, should accept the
decision arrived at which was that a joint Franco-Chinese
administration be established under a Chinese Chairman.
When the terms of this proposed agreement were communicated to the
Tientsin Consulate by the French Legation the arrangement did not
please the French Consul-General, who was under transfer to
Shanghai and who proposed to settle the case to the satisfaction
of his nationals before he left. There is absolutely no dispute
about this fact either--namely that the main pre-occupation of a
consular officer, charged primarily under the Treaties with the
simple preservation of law and order among his nationals, was the
closing-up of a vexatious outstanding case, by force if necessary,
before he handed over his office to his successor.
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