Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/166

 ticipation Bureau, i.e. a Special Military Office, with a number of well-equipped divisions depending upon it, nominally for dealing with the question of organizing an expeditionary force to proceed to France, but in reality (since it was under the control of the Northern military party) to continue the fight with the South and to crush Canton. For a number of months this amiable object was assiduously pursued, fed by funds from Japan acquired by secret agreements, and with not the slightest regard for China's international pledges. Although France went so far as to offer to finance a Chinese expeditionary force, division by division as they were shipped, and drew up many memoranda to that end, Japan saw to it that the plan was killed. When intervention in Siberia seemed inevitable in May, 1918, Japan signed with the War Participation Bureau the secret Sino-Japanese military agreement in a last effort to defeat America's plan of helping Russia. By creating a new international imbroglio in which railways, Bolsheviks, and