Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/155



We have said the Treaty of Peace should have been signed in Peking: had that been done it would not have been necessary to have had a double arrangement—one between Japan and Russia, followed by a separate ratification between China and Japan. Too little attention has been directed to the action Japan took in December, 1905, in the Chinese capital: all the essential business—the business really worth recording as a result of the territorial struggle, since it involved the lord of the soil—took place here. Briefly, it was in this month of December, 1905—fourteen years ago—that Japan first clearly showed open political immorality. From the practical point of view all that the Portsmouth Treaty had done, with the exception of recognizing the old Japanese claim to half of Saghalien—was to record an accomplished fact—namely, Russia's international humiliation because of the crass failure of her army and navy. The curious connection of China with the imbroglio, arising from the circumstance that the entire war had been waged on her soil, and was directly concerned with certain grants she had been induced to make in the matter of a harbour, two railways, and the Yalu forest-