Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/230

Rh the Foreign Representatives, accompanied with a request that, during the acute stages of the crisis, they would move abroad as little as possible. From the Japanese point of view the peril was very vivid and very disquieting. But the Foreign Ministers convinced themselves that a deliberate piece of chicanery was being practised at their expense; that statecraft rather than truth had dictated the representations made to them by the Japanese authorities, and that the alarm of the latter was simulated for the purpose of finding a pretext to curtail the liberty enjoyed by foreigners. Therefore the suggestion that the inmates of the Legations should show themselves as little as possible in the streets of the capital, where at any moment a desperado might cut them down, was treated almost as an insult. Then the Japanese authorities saw no recourse except to attach an armed escort to the person of every foreigner when he moved abroad. Even this precaution, which certainly was not adopted out of mere caprice or with any sinister design, excited fresh suspicions. The Representative of one of the Great Powers, in reporting the event to his Government, said that the Japanese had taken the opportunity to graft upon the establishment of spies, watchmen, and police officers at the several Legations, a mounted escort to accompany the members whenever they moved out.

It has been shown above—to cite another