Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/131

 to-day leans absolutely and entirely on the West—no matter what else may be pretended; and instead of rebuffing the widespread desire to benefit by the superior political knowledge of Europe and America, that desire should be stimulated in every possible way and the fact made perfectly clear by the acts of the accredited foreign representatives that a strong government, based on constitutionalism, is their one and only concern.

This viewpoint is fortified when we consider the actual nature of the contact between the foreign legations and the metropolitan government. That contact is not diplomatic in the ordinary sense of the word: rather is it financial and economic, having come by direct descent from the time when the first foreign representatives in the Canton factory days were Superintendents of Trade. The foreign ministers are therefore principally concerned with questions arising out of loan contracts; with questions concerning the periodic release of surpluses of the Customs and Salt collections which have been almost entirely hypothecated abroad; with disputes arising from the interpretation of treaties and covenants governing commerce and residence and land-ownership—in a word, with all the disjecta membra of a