Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/163

 placed the Manchurian railways and the Port Arthur lease on ninety-nine-year Kiaochow terms—an action which is absolutely ultra vires; and moreover, she has not only taken over all the German enterprises in Shantung by force, but she has pushed through, by means of loans to the Peking military party, a railway extension scheme on a German-made plan, secretly prepared by Germany before the European war, aiming at making Tsingtao the sea-terminus for a railway system which at some distant date is to stretch through Central Asia and link-up with the Middle East.

The problem growing out of Manchuria and Shantung has therefore a new character. It is no longer a local Far Eastern problem: it is a world-problem which has to be faced and solved or else there will be fresh world-disaster.

One final aspect has to be made clear.

Until the death of Yuan Shih-kai, Japan treated China as a country with a united government which could be held responsible and which must be treated with; after his death she deliberately abandoned this policy and dealt with specified persons as fully-authorized