Page:League of Nations-Appeal by the Chinese Government.pdf/48

 in March 1923, shortly before the expiration of the original twenty-five-year lease of the Liaotung (Kwantung) Territory which China granted in 1898 to Russia, the Chinese Government communicated to Japan a further request for the abrogation of the provisions of 1915, and stated that "the Treaties and Notes of 1915 have been consistently condemned by public opinion in China". Since the Chinese maintained that the agreements of 1915 lacked "fundamental validity", they declined to carry out the provisions relating to Manchuria except in so far as circumstances made it expedient to do so.

The Japanese complained bitterly of the consequent violations of their treaty rights by the Chinese. They contended that the Treaties and Notes of 1915 were duly signed and ratified and were in full force. To be sure, there was a considerable body of public opinion in Japan which from the first did not agree with the "Twenty-one Demands"; and, more recently, it has been common for Japanese speakers and publicists to criticise this policy. But the Japanese Government and people appeared unanimous in insisting upon the validity of those provisions which related to Manchuria.

Two important provisions in the Treaty and Notes of 1915 were those for the extension of the lease of the Kwantung Territory from twenty-five to ninety-nine years, and of the concessions of the South Manchuria and the Antung-Mukden Railways to a similar period of ninety-nine years. For the dual reasons that these extensions were a result of the 1915 agreements and that recovery of the territories originally leased by former Governments was included in the Nationalist "Rights Recovery" movement directed against foreign interests in China, the Kwantung Leased Territory and the South Manchuria Railway were made objects, at various times, of agitation and even diplomatic representation on the part of the Chinese. The policy of Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang of declaring Manchuria's allegiance to the Central Government and of permitting the spread of Kuomintang influence in Manchuria made these issues acute after 1928, although they remained in the background of practical politics.

Associated also with the Treaty and Notes of 1915 was the agitation for the recovery of the South Manchuria Railway, or for stripping that institution of its political character in order to reduce it to a purely economic enterprise. As the earliest date fixed for the recovery of this railway on repayment of the capital and interest outlay was 1939, the mere abrogation of the 1915 Treaties would not in itself have recovered the South Manchuria Railway for China. It was extremely doubtful whether China, in any case, would have been able to obtain the capital for this purpose. The occasional utterances of Chinese Nationalist spokesmen, urging recovery of the South Manchuria Railway, served as an irritant to the Japanese, whose legitimate rights and interests were thereby threatened.

The disagreement between the Japanese and Chinese as to the proper functions of the South Manchuria Railway continued from the time of the railway company's organisation in 1906. Technically, of course, the railway company is organised under Japanese law as a private joint-stock enterprise and is quite beyond the pale of Chinese jurisdiction in practice. Particularly since 1927, there had been an agitation among Chinese groups in Manchuria for divesting the South Manchuria Railway of its political and administrative functions and converting it into a "purely commercial enterprise". No concrete plan for achieving this end seems to have been proposed by the Chinese. The railway company was in fact a political enterprise. It was a Japanese Government agency, the Government controlling a majority of its shares; its administrative policy was so closely controlled by the Government that the company's higher officials were almost invariably changed when a new Cabinet came into power in Japan. Moreover, the company had always been charged, under Japanese