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cerned, especially those connected with the former German concessions at Kiaochou and in other sections of Shantung. The chief considerations which Japan received through the Treaty of May 25th, 1915, as far as Manchuria and the Eastern Inner Mongolia went, were put into Articles I and II (Appendix 26):

ARTICLE I.-The two High Contracting Powers agree that the term of lease of Port Arthur and Dalny and the terms of the South Manchuria Railway and the Antung Mukden Railway, shall be extended to 99 years.

ARTICLE II.-Japanese subjects in South Manchuria may, by negotiation, lease land necessary for erecting suitable buildings for trade and manufacture or for prosecuting agricultural enterprises."

NEW FOUR-POWER CONSORTIUM AND MANCHURIA

At Paris in May, 1919, the talk of forming a new consortium to finance China came to the fore. Japan was perfectly willing to join it—with a reservation, as she had done in 1912 in joining the old Four-Power Group of Germany, France, England, and the United States. There was nothing new in this Japanese attitude. Banking circles the world over were thoroughly acquainted with her point of view. The reservation was over Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia, over her special interests which had been created in them. This did not quite satisfy the other members of the proposed consortium. Mr. Thomas W. Lamont, representing the American banking group, made a special trip to Japan and to China in 1920 for two things:

"The first was to find out," in his own words, "whether the Japanese banking group, with the approval of its government, intended to come into the consortium for China without reservations, on the same terms as the banking groups of the United States, Great Britain, and

France.

The second object was to visit China and make a report for the American group upon economic, financial and political conditions there."

Mr. Lamont had no easy job at Tokyo. Japan was asked to throw into the common contribution box her interests and concessions in Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia. What was she going to gain for that? A partnership in the interests and concessions in other parts of China. That meant to Japan-nothing. Worse than nothing in fact. For Japan had no surplus funds to invest at the time; and what's more she knew she would not get any such capital funds for many years to come. She had not enough for her own use. Her concessions and special interests in Manchuria had cost her dear in efforts and in funds which she could ill afford to place outside of her own land, where her new-born industries were crying insistently for needed capital funds. Everything she had in Manchuria and in Eastern Inner Mongolia spelt sacrifice for her. She invested in Manchuria for just one reason: she invested under the profound conviction that it was nothing short of a question of her national preservation. The haunting thought that she had to have the essential raw materials which she did not have at home, such as iron and foodstuff, somewhere and somehow, had driven her to it. To America, England, and France, Manchuria is simply another field of exploitation of more or less promise. To Japan, Manchuria is a source of life and of national peace. There is a difference-a difference as big as between the moon and a mud turtle. Small wonder she hesitated.

For another thing it did not need a financial prophet to see that this loan consortium was nothing more or less than the creation of a financial dictatorship of a rather autocratic type. All the members of the consortium stood on absolutely equal footing. But the

United States was practically the only country which really had the money to loan to China. Japan might have gone to the New York market and got money and loaned it and so have held her end in the consortium; but that was simply going around the circle and would not have got her anywhere. Other members were in the same boat to a more or less extent. Under the circumstances, there was, there could be, only one voice that could speak with authority. In the hour of emergency, was Japan to have equal freedom of action-was she entitled, in all fairness, to have equal voice with the United States in dictating what to do and how to protect the loan when all she had put up was an American fund she had borrowed, or when she had put up only one million dollars to America's hundred millions, simply because every member of the consortium was on an equal footing?

Autocracy is the best form of government if-yes, IF the autocrat happens to be naturally too good to be bad or entirely too wise to be wicked.

In Tokyo, on the 11th of May, 1920, at a dinner given in honor of Mr. Thomas W. Lamont, it was announced that Japan threw all her reservations to the wind and joined the New Consortium on precisely the same terms as the United States, England, and France.

That was a rather heroic manner in which Japan registered her faith and confidence in the intelligence, fairness, and integrity of the American financiers. Through that one act Japan simply came out before all the world and said: "We believe we can bank safely on the intelligence of our friends the American financiers to understand our position and our needs in Manchuria clearly and sanely. We believe they are entirely too wise to be wicked, to be taken in by all the clamorous antiJapanese propaganda. We hesitated at first, for our Manchurian interests mean a lot to us. But on second

thought we are rather glad of this opportunity of proving in as convincing a manner as possible that we harbor no scheme in Manchuria too dark for their wisdom to approve."

I have said that Japan had nothing to gain in throwing away her reservation over Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia. I was then speaking of material advantages only. A viewless asset of inestimable value was at stake: the confidence of Financial America. Japan wisely decided that even some of her Manchurian interests should not be permitted to stand between her and the American confidence. So she has pooled her Manchurian concessions with the rest.

meaning of Japan's After this, it would

That was the larger, the real, entry into the New Consortium. seem to me, she is entitled to be placed, once for all, beyond the cheap blatant barkings of anti-Japanese propagandists slandering her as the chief sinner against the American Doctrine of the Open Door.

MANCHURIAN RAILWAYS BUILT WITH JAPANESE LOANS

China built the Kirin-Changchun Railway partly with funds furnished by the South Manchuria Railway Company. The line is seventy-nine miles long. It connects the northern terminus of the South Manchuria Railway with Kirin, the capital city of the Province of the same name. The construction work on it was completed in October, 1912. This line is looked upon as the first step in the building of the Kirin-Kainei (Hueining or Hoilyong) line, which in connection with the North Chosen line is expected some day to reach the port of Chungjin on the Sea of Japan. The completion of such a line would open up an entirely new line of outlet for the central plain of Manchuria. Such a line would also cut down the distance between the productive Sungari

basin of Manchuria and the Japanese ports on the Sea of Japan by hundreds of miles. The promise of the short Changchun-Kirin line is therefore very great.

China also built the fifty-five-mile line between Ssupingkai on the main line of the South Manchuria Railway and Chengchiatung near the border of Mongolia by the money furnished by the Yokohama Specie Bank of Japan through the loan agreement of December 27th, 1915. It was started in the summer of 1916 and completed in October, 1917. This forms a section of the SsupingkaiTaonan line, connecting the chief city of Eastern Inner Mongolia with the main line of the South Manchuria Railway.

China signed the preliminary loan agreement for the building of the Kirin-Kainei (Hueining) line on June 18th, 1918 (Appendix 27). Through it, she got an advance loan of $10,000,000 immediately after the signing of the agreement.

China got the money. That is to say, the Japanese banking group made good their end of the bargain. China spent it. For what? No official statement is available here, but one thing is clear: China did not spend the $10,000,000 for the building of the KirinKainei line. That much is certain.

Article 5 of the loan agreement reads: "A [Chinese Government] shall pledge the following assets to B [Japanese banks] as security for payment of interest and redemption of the present loan bonds:

"All the property owned by and the revenue due to the railway either at present or in the future."

If a mere citizen of any of the civilized countries on the face of the globe borrow money from a bank to build a house, offering the prospective house as security, and then spend the money for drinks and current expenses, he is not apt to be put up as a candidate for the high and noble sympathy and moral support of his neighbors.

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