Hsi Kai district, consisting of 333 acres of wharfage, streets, warehouses, shops, and dwellings in one of the busiest parts of Tientsin. They arrested and imprisoned the Chinese soldiers on duty in the district, substituted the tricolor for the flag of China, and in the name of France formally annexed this territory to the overseas dominions of the republic. And this, mark you, at a time when France was engaged in a life-and-death struggle with Germany, which had done precisely the same thing, only on a larger scale, in Belgium. The French did not seize Lao Hsi Kai as a punitive measure, or for strategic purposes, or from military necessity, or in payment of unsatisfied claims. They seized it because they wanted it and because they knew that China was powerless to resist them. They could not even offer the excuse that they took it in order to obtain the same advantages as other nations, for they already possessed one of the most valuable and extensive concessions in the city. When I questioned an official of the French Legation as to the reason for the seizure he naïvely explained that France had been asking for Lao Hsi Kai for fifteen years, but that the Chinese authorities had met her demands with procrastination and evasion, whereupon she had decided to help herself to the territory in question. To my way of thinking France's theft of Lao Hsi Kai was on the same moral plane as stealing pennies from a cripple.

As things stand to-day, fully three quarters of all the territory nominally included within the Chinese Republic is under foreign influence, if not actually under foreign control. Tibet is to all intents and purposes a British protectorate, the government at Peking exercising over it only a vicarious rule, and Britain likewise considers the teeming valley of the Yangtze, potentially the greatest market in all Asia, as within her recognized sphere of interest. Hong Kong, Kowloon, and Weihaiwei bristle with British bayonets and British guns. France has appropriated for her sphere of interest the great, rich province of Yunnan and on the coast of Kwantung Province has intrenched herself at Kwang-chau-wan. The flag of Japan flies over the former German leasehold of Kiauchau and over the former Russian territory on the Kwantung peninsula, while Japanese influence, in the form of Japanese railways, banks, traders, and gendarmes, has been extended over the whole of Manchuria and the fringes of Mongolia. Small wonder that the American concession-hunter, studying a map of the republic to discover some region where he could operate without encroaching on territory preëmpted by other nations, finally exclaimed, "But where in hell is China?"

IV

At the opening of the year 1915 Europe found itself in unparalleled turmoil. The triumphant

legions of Germany had overrun Belgium and had pushed deep into France and Russia. The Allies were fighting with their backs to the wall. Paris was in imminent danger, the Channel ports were threatened, the sea-borne commerce of Britain was being slowly throttled by the submarine campaign. America, huge, inert, unprepared, was apathetically looking on. China, with her incalculable wealth in trade and natural resources, was isolated, forgotten, helpless, without a friend on whom she could count for assistance or support. In this situation Japan, whose settled policy had long had as its object the domination of China and the hegemony of Eastern Asia,1 saw her golden opportunity. And that opportunity she was quick to seize. On the eighteenth of January, then, when Western ears were deaf to everything save the cannon-roll in Flanders, the Japanese minister at Peking presented to the Chinese Government the famous Twenty-One Demands.

Because they afford concrete, indisputable evidence of the sinister and predatory character of Japanese policy at that time; because they so clearly explain the universal hatred and distrust which the people of China have for Japan; and because they constitute the most colossal blunder ever committed by the

This is not the policy of the present government of Japan. One of the highest officials of the Empire said to me in December, 1921, "The greatest blessing that could come to Japan would be a prosperous and well-governed China." E. A. P.

Tokyo government, I feel justified, despite the many times they have been quoted, in reproducing them in full:

THE ORIGINAL TWENTY-ONE DEMANDS, AS PRESENTED TO THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT JANUARY 18, 1915

I

The Japanese government and the Chinese government, being desirous of maintaining the general peace in Eastern Asia and further strengthening the friendly relations and good neighborhood existing between the two nations, agree to the following articles:

Article I. The Chinese government engages to give full assent to all matters upon which the Japanese government may hereafter agree with the German government relating to the disposition of all rights, interests, and concessions which Germany, by virtue of treaties or otherwise, possesses in relation to the province of Shantung.

Article II. The Chinese government engages that within the province of Shantung, and along its coast, no territory or island will be ceded or leased to a third power under any pretext.

Article III. The Chinese government consents to Japan's building a railway from Chefoo or Lungkou to join the Kiaochow-Tsinanfu Railway.

Article IV. The Chinese government engages, in the interest of trade and for the residence of foreigners, to open by herself as soon as possible certain important cities and towns in the province of Shantung as commercial ports. What places shall be opened are to be jointly decided upon in a separate agreement.

II

The Japanese government and the Chinese government, since the Chinese government has always acknowledged the