Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/132

 mercantile imperialism. And because of this peculiar heredity—with ninety years of strife and gunboat methods behind it—Peking diplomacy, encased since 1900 in a fortified diplomatic quarter, has developed a peculiar mentality among those who interpret it, making them small, irritable, and meticulous when imagination and common-sense and personal acquaintance with the liberating world-movement of the day are emphatically required. No better illustration of this could be given than to recall that when a decade ago China ordered the reform of the archaic system under which the Maritime Customs was controlled from the Chinese Foreign Office, Great Britain instead of agreeing on the necessity, and simply