SHANTUNG RIDDLE

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 9, 12 January 1938, Page 16

SHANTUNG RIDDLE

ATTITUDE TO THE WAR

CHINESE AT TSINGTAO

A DECISIVE ACTION

The recent Chinese destruction of! the Japanese cotton mills at Tsingtao may lead to solving the riddle of Shantung—the question, namely, as to the real attitude of its Governor, the benevolent autocrat Han Chu-chen, to the Japanese invasion, writes Professor A. H. Charteris in the "Sydney Morning Herald." Although the Japanese forces are only some 25 miles from its northern boundary, the Yellow River, the towns in Shantung have so far been- spared by the merciless invading craft. Why? (A cablegram this week reports that the Chinese are evacuating Shantung before the advance of Japanese forces.) The problem is important for a double reason—(a) the strategical position of Shantung in relation to the Yellow River, and (b) the sheer magnitude and wealth of the Province which, with its 30,000,000 inhabitants, has half the population of Germany, and with its territory of 90,600 square miles, onethird of her area. The Governor, who, though still under 45, has been in office more than seven years, is not much of a democrat. Rather he is a benevolent autocrat who gives short shrift to bandits, political mischief-makers, and Communists; and if his taxes are higher than elsewhere in China, he gives good value in asphalted city streets, public baths, sports grounds, and theatres. His province is reputed to be the best administered of them all. Not long after the outbreak of hostilities the Nanking officials of the Maritime Customs and Salt Gabelle Services went south. In August, Japanese civilians were evacuated to a man, and Japanese property of great value was thereafter left under Chinese control: until recently entirely without detriment to its substance. ■ • MILLS DESTROYED. For example, there are five coalmines—two that date from the German protectorate, with others founded in 1928 as mixed Sino-Japanese enterprises, as required by Chinese mining law for foreign-owned mines. From 1928, moreover, date the 17,000,000----dollar cotton mills which went up in smoke on December 21. The Shantung railway, which earned ' for the Germans a steady 1\ per cent, per annum, is still run by Japan, notwithstanding the agreement of Washington, 1922, for retrocession of the ex-German rights to China. This because China has not paid a cent of the redemption price. Now that the so-called "Communist" elements in the General Chiang Kaishek's Supreme Military Council have enforced their policy of destroying Japanese property, the province is hardly likely to continue to enjoy its immunity from active violence from the Japanese side—unless, indeed, this new economic blow is sufficient to give Japan pause. It must not be forgotten, however, that for China the loss of Nanking is the crossing of the Rubicon. The Chinese Government has now no alternative but to fight to a finish. And property destruction is all in the day's work. The name Tsingtao carries old stagers back to the nineties, when the tidal wave of Imperialism was enriching the language of diplomacy with new expressions every year. In 1896 we harvested "moral and intellectual damages" as the English equivalent of the "solatium" due to President Kruger for the Jamieson raid; and in 1898 the Tsar's advisers furnished us with "cession in usufruct" as a euphemism for territory-grabbing. As territory-grabber it was Germany, however, which was the first to burst into the silent China Sea. On November 14, 1897, 600 men from her fleet landed at Kiaochau Bay in Shantung in search of compensation to Germany (eager for a Far Eastern naval base) for the opportune murder of two Germany missionaries—Fathers Nies and Henie, at the hands of bandits in the interior of Shantung. Without disrespect to the memory of these saintly men, there is no blinking the fact that, dead, they were of greater value to their Fatherland than alive. PROTECTION ASSUMED. As members of the Catholic Church their protection in the Far East 'devolved, by diplomatic custom, upon France as protector of the faithful in the lands of the infidel. But Hohenlohe knew a trick worth two of that. Brushing the proffered French assistance aside, he took direct action for cession of territory, disguised—to save the face of China—under the name of a "lease." The compensation which Germany, by Sino-Chinese Agreement of March 6, 1898, accepted in satisfaction of her claim, was no bagatelle, viz., a "lease" for 99 years of (a) Tsingtao, and a district of 214 square miles around it, and (b) the Bay of Kiaochow—a magnificent, ice-free, and well-protected body of water 215 square miles in area—and the neighbouring islands. The purpose of the lease was declared to be "for the repairing and equipment of ships for the storing of materials and supplies for the same, as for all other furnishings belonging thereto" (in short, for a naval base). The treaty also contained provisions for railway construction in Shantung and the grant of mining concessions for a distance of nine miles along these railroads, as well as for the establishment of fortifications for the protection of the harbour. Russia straightway followed the German lead. She obtained a "lease" for twenty-five years of Port Arthur, and the Liaotung Peninsula—that very Port Arthur, if you please, which Japan had conquered from China in 1896, but had restored to China on the "advice" of Russia aided by France and Germany. Against her will, Great Britain obtained a lease of Wei-hai-wei, on the north side of the Shantung Peninsula (facing Port Arthur) "to maintain the balance of power in the Gulf of Pechili," menaced by Russian action in the Liaotung Territory, and this for "the period during which Russia should be in occupation of Port Arthur." TKANSFER TO JAPAN. In 1905 the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the Russo-Japanese War, compelled Russia to transfer the remainder of the lease of Port Arthur, Tabenwan, and adjacent territory to Japan subject to the consent of China, which was afterwards obtained by the Treaty of Peking, 1906. The lease would have come to an end in 1922 had it not been extended until 1997 by virtue of No. 1 of Group Two of the famous XXV Demands of January 15, 1915, which China accepted on May 25, 1915, under the pressure of a two days 1 ultimatum from Japan. In' the World War, the German Protectorate surrendered to an AngloJapanese naval expedition on Novem-1 ber 7, 1914. The British contingent was withdrawn, but Japan continued in military occupation of the territory pending the conclusion of peace. Owing to the pressure of the German submarine campaign. Great Britain applied to Japan in 1917 for further naval assistance, which Japan was willing to afford provided her European Allies agreed to support at

the Peace Conference her claim to retain Kiaochow and the ex-German islands north of. the equator. Having no option but to agree, the Allies accepted this condition, Great Britain, however, stipulating in turn for Japan's support of her claim to retain the exGerman islands south of the equator, viz., Nauru, Now Guinea, and Samoa. Reduced to writing the Agreement, received the approval of France and Russia, but was kept secret until revealed by the Bolshevists after the November Revolution in 1917. These are the secret treaties of which President Wilson denied knowledge until he learned of them at the Peace Conference in Paris.

BEARING ON COLONIAL CLAIMS.

Ancient history as all this is, it is not without its relevance to current colonial claims. Concluded long before the President's Fourteen Points were launched on January 8, 1918, it is these secret and inescapable agreements which effectively prevented the Allies from returning to Germany her former possessions in the Pacific, or indeed from considering in their regard the bearing of Point V, which stipulated for "a free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims. . . ."

Now, although Japan, by her ultimatum to Germany of August 17,1914, had demanded the surrender of Kiaochow "for restoration to China," she made no move to this end after the peace. On the contrary, the Shantung Clauses of the Treaty of Versailles, Art. 156-8, giving effect to the secret agreements of 1915, confirmed Japan in permanent possession of the ex-German rights. China, in protest, refused to sign or ratify the Treaty of Versailles, and in the United States a veritable whirlwind of sympathetic indignation raged from coast to coast. Indeed, it is not too much to say that this nation-wide anti-Japanese agitation had at; least as much to do with the ultimate American rejection of the Treaty of Versailles as had American objections to the League of Nations itself. Caught unawares by the sudden cracking of the German front in a war to which they gave two years more in November, 1918, the Japanese had not consolidated their position in the Shantung Peninsula by the date of the Armistice; and they, presently found themselves "frozen out" of their illicit, gains at China's expense by the AngloAmerican diplomatic pressure exerted during the Washington Conference in 1922-23. By virtue of agreements made with China under Anglo-American mediation on December 10, 1922, Japan gave up possession of the ex-German rights, subject to certain conditions. And she retired hurt to nurse her grievances against the meddlers.

In the following year the earthquake and subsequent fire ravaged Tokio. The fortunes of Japan were at their lowest ebb. But only for the moment, as we have since seen for ourselves.