erial officials to
intervene, there is clear evidence of the attitude and intention of
the Japanese government in Shantung._

Because the population of Shantung is directly confronted with an
immense amount of just such evidence, it cannot take seriously the
professions of vague diplomatic utterances. What foreign nation is
going to intervene to enforce Chinese rights in such a case as
Po-shan? Which one is going effectively to call the attention of Japan
to such evidences of its failure to carry out its promise? Yet the
accumulation of precisely such seemingly petty incidents, and not any
single dramatic great wrong, will secure Japan's economic and
political domination of Shantung. It is for this reason that
foreigners resident in Shantung, no matter in what part, say that they
see no sign whatever that Japan is going to get out; that, on the
contrary, everything points to a determination to consolidate her
position. How long ago was the Portsmouth treaty signed, and what were
its nominal pledges about evacuation of Manchurian territory?

Not a month will pass without something happening which will give a
pretext for delay, and for making the surrender of Shantung
conditional upon this, that and the other thing. Meantime the
penetration of Shantung by means of railway discrimination, railway
military guards, continual nibblings here and there, will be going on.
It would make the chapter too long to speak of the part played by
manipulation of finance in achieving this process of attrition of
sovereignty. Two incidents must suffice. During the war, Japanese
traders with the connivance of their government gathered up immense
amounts of copper cash from Shantung and shipped it to Japan against
the protests of the Chinese government. What does sovereignty amount
to when a country cannot control even its own currency system? In
Manchuria the Japanese have forced the introduction of several hundred
million dollars of paper currency, nominally, of course, based on a
gold reserve. These notes are redeemable, however, only in Japan
proper. And there is a law in Japan forbidding the exportation of
gold. And there you are.

Japan itself has recently afforded an object lesson in the actual
connection of economic and political rights in China. It is so
beautifully complete a demonstration that it was surely unconscious.
Within the last two weeks, Mr. Obata, the Japanese minister in Peking,
has waited upon the government with a