Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/94

 of the intrigues and counter-intrigues at Harbin—during the first half of 1918—in which Japan characteristically backed the reactionary General Horvath, master of the Chinese Eastern Railway, in order to gain control of the railway—we see a fire being fanned to a blaze so as to allow deft fingers to secure the chestnuts. Had the reactionary Russian element in the Russian Far East, and among the Cossack communities of Transbaikalia, not been incited to attack the Bolshevists, there would not have been any of the complications which still await solution.

But Japan required frontier warfare, since these activities on the rim of Northern Manchuria allowed her to force through the Sino-Japanese Military Secret Agreement which seemed to bind the Peking Government to her chariot-wheel for the term of the war; and although the astute use made by the United States of the Czecho-Slovak impasse finally brought Allied intervention at Vladivostok and prevented the fruition of the full plan, which was the Japanese military occupation of everything east of Lake Baikal, it is necessary to note that Japan has acted independently, in spite of the Allies, in Northern Manchuria, in Transbaikalia, and in the Amur province, and