Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/226



.—The annexed documents, copies of which only reached Peking via the Trans-Siberian railway at the beginning of April, throw a new and important light on all the subject-matter in the present volume. They prove conclusively that Japanese policy has consistently followed certain lines during the whole course of the war and that domination and exploitation of China is but one phase of a tortuous and incredible diplomacy.

That dynastic considerations enter more and more into the problem is also clear. Plainly, the Japanese oligarchy is desperately struggling by every means in its power to postpone the inevitable day of reckoning.

From a fully reliable source we are informed that:

At the end of October there was received fully reliable and exact information about the arrival in Stockholm of the Japanese Extraordinary Representative Oda, with the aim of carrying on secret conversation with the German Ambassador Lutzius concerning the conclusion of a German-Japanese secret treaty. An agreement in principle was reached, after which Oda went to Berlin for the final working out of the treaty itself. The result of the conversa-