nd, and so disgusted on the other that
they put up so patiently with inefficiency and graft most of the time.
There seems to be a general impression that the present situation cannot
continue indefinitely, but must take a turn one way or another. The
student agitation has died down as an active political thing but
continues intellectually. In Tientsin, for example, they publish several
daily newspapers which sell for a copper apiece. A number of students
have been arrested in Shantung lately by the Japanese, so I suppose the
students are actively busy there. I fancy that when vacation began there
was quite an exodus in that direction.

I am told that X----, our Japanese friend, is much disgusted with the
Chinese about the Shantung business--that Japan has promised to return
Shantung, etc., and that Japan can't do it until China gets a stable
government to take care of things, because their present governments are
so weak that China would simply give away her territory to some other
power, and that the Chinese instead of attacking the Japanese ought to
mind their own business and set their own house in order. There is
enough truth in this so that it isn't surprising that so intelligent and
liberal a person as X---- is taken in by it. But what such Japanese as
he cannot realize, because the truth is never told to them, is how
responsible the Japanese government is for fostering a weak and
unrepresentative government here, and what a temptation to it a weak and
divided China will continue to be, for it will serve indefinitely as an
excuse for postponing the return of Shantung--as well as for interfering
elsewhere. Anyone who knows the least thing about not only general
disturbances in China but special causes of friction between China and
Japan, can foresee that there will continue to be a series of plausible
excuses for postponing the return promised--and anyway, as a matter of
fact, what she has actually promised to return compared with the rights
she would keep in her possession amount to little or nothing. Just this
last week there was a clash in Manchuria and fifteen or twenty Japanese
soldiers are reported killed by Chinese--there will always be incidents
of that kind which will have to be settled first. If the other countries
would only surrender their special concessions to the keeping of an
international guarantee, they could force the hand of Japan, but I can't
see Great Britain giving up Hong Kong. On the whole,