Manchurian beans was practically limited to south China. The sugar plantations in the South Seas took bean cake for fertilizer. Japanese armies came back from Manchuria with a keen appreciation of the food value of the Manchurian beans. And just about this time Japanese farmers had a troublesome time over the high cost of fertilizer. Fish manure, which they had been using for generations past, was getting scarce. Why not try the virtues of the Manchurian bean cake on their paddy fields? They did. The result was sensational: it was free from the pest-breeding annoyance of fish manure. By 1899, as Alexander Hosie, who was British consul at the Newchwang port at the time, pointed out, Japanese purchases of Manchurian products "exceeded the total export to South China."

RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR

At the time of the Russian war, Japanese forces entered Manchuria along the same old trails which they had followed in the Chinese War of 1894-5, but they covered the country much more extensively. The Portsmouth Treaty of September 5th, 1905 (Appendix 18), which ended the war, turned over to Japan much of what Russia had taken through her highwayman tactics at the end of the Chinese war. The articles V and VI of the treaty read:

"ARTICLE V.-The Imperial Russian Government transfer and assign to the Imperial Government of Japan, with the consent of the Government of China, the lease of Port Arthur, Talien and adjacent territory and territorial waters and all rights, privileges and concessions connected with or forming part of such lease and they also transfer and assign to the Imperial Government of Japan all public works and properties in the territory affected by the above-mentioned lease. .

"ARTICLE VI.-The Imperial Russian Government engage to transfer and assign to the Imperial Government of Japan, without compensation and with the consent of the Chinese Government, the railway between Changchun (Kuancheng-tzu) and Port Arthur and all its branches, together with all rights, privileges and properties appertaining thereto in that region, as well as all coal mines in the said region belonging to or worked for the benefit of the railway.

"The two High Contracting Parties mutually engage to obtain the consent of the Government of China mentioned in the foregoing stipulation."

HARRIMAN AND THE MANCHURIAN RAILWAYS

Everything, therefore, depended on the consent of

China.

A phrase of a few words sometimes spins the destiny of a nation like a top and changes the complexion of a continent. In this case a mere phrase of seven words -"with the consent of the Chinese Government"-was fated to do just that thing. What happened is of particular interest to the people of the United States. For just about this time Mr. Edward H. Harriman sat upon the throne of the Railway King of America. For some time he had been nursing the dream of a world-belt transportation system. He was in Tokyo shortly after the conclusion of the Portsmouth Treaty, on a trip not altogether for pleasure. When he left Tokyo for the United States he had with him a memorandum dated October 12th, 1905. It was an understanding between himself and the corporations he represented on the one hand and Count Katsura of Japan on the other (not between Harriman and Prince Ito as an American writer has it) concerning nothing short of the formation of an American syndicate for the purpose of taking over the Man

churian line which Japan had received from Russia through the Portsmouth Treaty (Appendix 18). Mr. Harriman's idea was to take over the South Manchurian line from Japan and the Chinese Eastern line from Russia and form them into a link in his world-chain of transportation-an economic imperialism worthy of a great American railway potentate. It made the militant imperialism of Russia in its halcyon days look like an opening stanza of a nursery rime by comparison. The stupendous scope of the thing, the romance of it all, must have appealed to the Japanese statesmen of the day. If Mr. Harriman's scheme had gone through the command and control of a world-circling transportation system would have fallen into the hands of the United States. That meant something when the railways were proving themselves mightier Empire-builders than any conquerors known to history.

A few days after Mr. Harriman had left the shores of Japan Baron Komura reached Tokyo, back from Portsmouth. Premier Katsura showed him a copy of the Harriman memorandum.

"But this is not in tune with Article VI of the Portsmouth Treaty," said Komura. "The thing is not oursyet. China's consent is standing between it and us. Anything might happen between the cup and the lip." Of course these are not the exact words of Komura, but they paint his meaning pretty accurately.

The premier saw the point. A cable message was sent to San Francisco to catch Mr. Harriman as soon as he landed there. It advised him that the deal was off, for the time being at any rate. Baron Komura went over to the continent to get the "consent of the Chinese Government." When he returned to Tokyo with the Treaty of Peking of December 22d, 1905, in which China had given her consent for the transfer of the Russian railway line and Russian lease to Japan, he

found a decided change in the Tokyo atmosphere over the Harriman scheme. It has never been revived since.

In addition to the Peking Treaty and an additional agreement, which were published at the time, Baron Komura was reported to have brought back with him still another agreement, which was "to be kept strictly secret in deference to the desire of the Chinese Government." The text of the Peking Treaty and the additional agreement and a summary of the alleged secret agreement are given in Appendices 19, 20, and 21.

JAPANESE TRADERS AT THE HEELS OF THE
JAPANESE ARMY

While the Russians were the masters of Manchuria Japanese met not only a frigid reception there, but practically a locked door. Russians could not see much difference between the Japanese, the British, and the bubonic plague: they had no enthusiasm for taking any of them into their fond embrace. But the Japanese had become the greatest buyers of Manchurian products since the days that followed the Chinese War. Japan was taking more beans and bean cake than any other country at the time when the Russians entered upon their Manchurian adventure. There was another thing, too. The post-war boom following the Chinese scrap brought on inevitable years of depression. There was over-production in Japan. She had to find an outlet somewhere, everywhere. Manchuria was one of the nearest foreign markets. Moreover, the fact that Japan bought so much in Manchuria made the country a natural channel through which the Japanese traders tried to push their wares. Το pass into Manchuria under the Russian influence one had to have either a permit from the Russian military office or a friendly nod from the officials of the Chinese Eastern Railway. These, as hinted above, were the rar

est commodities in the possession of the Japanese. In spite of that, however, and as a matter of fact, a number of shrewd Japanese merchants used to make their way into different parts of Russian Manchuria. The fact that there was quite a number of these invaders shows more pointedly than anything else how persistent and eager were Japanese merchants to push their way into the Manchurian markets.

When the Japanese army began to drive the Russians north, the Japanese merchants crowded in at its heels. At one time the Japanese population at the port of Yingkou was reported to be close to 20,000—which at the time was an astounding figure. They were of all sorts: not a few of them mere bold adventurers. They caused the Japanese army régime no end of trouble. From that day on for years afterward, to this very day in fact, the Japanese authorities have been exceedingly strict with them. While American and other anti-Japanese propagandists are painting in flaming colors the picture of the Japanese authorities nursing, supporting, pushing Japanese merchants into Manchuria by all sorts of unfair means and at the expense of all American and other foreign commercial interests, the actual truth of the matter is that the Japanese merchants have been kicking loud and long against their step-fatherly treatment at the hand of their own authorities.

Japanese cotton textiles drove out the American goods there to a large extent: that is a fact. It is not through governmental partialities, though. Two causes accounted for that amply: Japanese goods were cheaper and served Manchurian needs quite as well as the higher-priced American goods. And the American exporters did not work for the trade there one tenth as much as did the Japanese merchants and manufacturers. And this is not saying anything about the incomparably shorter distance the Japanese mills are from Manchuria than the Ameri