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 what
Japan herself offered to do when she declined in 1915 the Allies'
proposal to dispatch troops to Europe.
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