Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/52

 between the two countries. Thus friendship shall be increased.

Article III declares:—

The system of administration and the laws of the two countries being different, each country shall be free to conduct its own administration independently. Neither country shall be permitted to interfere in the concerns of the other and press for the adoption of things prohibited by law. Assistance shall be rendered mutually for the enforcement of laws, and each country shall give orders to its merchants that they must not lead astray the people of the other country or commit any offence whatsoever.

Was there any discussion, it may be asked, about Korea or did both plenipotentiaries avoid the issue? No one knows, for the treaty-makers are dead—and their diaries have been destroyed.

But even more interesting than these general political maxims, in which the two sovereign states dimly take cognizance of each other's existence, are the two articles which. China (and the fact has capital importance to-day) possessed in the period