The city was under naval control, the German Governor being a naval officer. Several war-ships were lying in the harbour. A large force of marines was on shore, and the hills commanding the city and harbour were bristling with cannon. The Germans were spending money without stint. No less than 11,000,000 marks were being expended that year for streets, sewers, water and electric light works, barracks, fortifications, wharves, a handsome hotel and public buildings, while the Government had appropriated 50,000,000 Mex. (5,000,000 a year for ten years) for deepening and enlarging the inner harbour. But in addition to these Government expenditures, many enterprising business men were undertaking large enterprises on their own account. It was apparent to the most casual observer that Germany had entered Shantung to stay and that she considered the whole vast province of Shantung as her sphere of influence. The railway, already referred to in a former chapter, was being constructed into the interior with solid road-bed, steel ties and substantial stone stations. German mining engineers were prospecting for minerals and everything indicated large plans for a permanent occupation.
The site of Tsing-tau is beautiful and exceptionally healthful. While the ports of Teng-chou and Chefoo are also in Shantung, the first is now of little importance, for it is on the northeastern part of the promontory with a mountain range behind it so that it is difficult of access from the interior. Chefoo, which was not opened as a port until later, rapidly superseded Teng-chou in importance and continues to grow with great rapidity. But it is plain that the Germans intend to make Tsing-tau, only twenty hours distant by steamer, the chief port of Shantung, and as they have the railroad, they will doubtless succeed.
From hundreds of outlying villages, the Chinese are flocking into Tsing-tau, attracted by the remunerative employment which the Germans offer, for of course, tens of thousands of labourers are necessary to carry out the extensive improvements that are planned. The thrifty Chinese are quite willing to take the foreigner's money, however much they may dislike him. Since the white man is here, we might as well get what we can out of him, the Celestials philosophically argue. And so the Germans, who had ruthlessly destroyed the old, unsani- tary Chinese villages which they had found on their arrival, laid out model Chinese villages on the outskirts of the city. The new Chinese city is about two and a half miles from the foreign city and is connected with it by a splendid macadamized road for which the Germans filled ravines, cut through the solid rock of the hillsides and made retaining walls and culverts of solid masonry. Some of the old stone houses were allowed to remain, but many of the poorer houses were demolished, streets were straightened and the whole city placed under strict sanitary supervision. The Chinese as they came in were told where and how their houses must be erected on the regularly laid out streets. The houses are numbered and many of the stores have signs in both German and Chinese. At the time of my visit, the Chinese city had a population of 8,000, the streets were crowded, and marketing, picture and theatrical exhibitions and all the forms of life, so common in Chinese cities, were to be seen on every side. Since then, the population has greatly increased, while another Chinese city has been laid out on the open ground on the other side of the foreign city. There is every indication that Tsing-tau is to become one of the great port cities of China, and the opportunities for trade, the coming of steamships and the construction of the railway are making it an attractive place to multitudes of ambitious Chinese.
The German Government owns all the land in and about Tsing-tau, and will not sell save on condition that approved buildings are erected within three years. The single tax plan has been adopted, that is, there is no tax on buildings but there is a six per cent. tax on all land that is sold. This shuts out the land speculator who has injured so many American cities. No man can buy cheap land and let it lie idle while it rises in value as the result of his neighbour's improvements and the growth of the community. The German Government will do its own speculating and reap for itself the increment of its costly and elaborate improvements. It is making a noble city. Streets, sewers, buildings, docks, sea walls, harbour-dredging, tree planting—all point to great and far-reaching plans, while under pretext of guarding the railroad, troops are being gradually pushed into the interior. The Kaomi garrison, in the hinterland eighteen miles beyond the Kiao-chou city line and sixty- four from Tsing-tau, consisted of 100 men when I was there in the spring of 1901. A few months later it was 1,000. Plainly the Germans are moving in.
The ease and dispatch with which Germany succeeded in obtaining an enormously valuable strategic point in the rich province of Shangtung aroused the cupidity of rival nations, and they threw off all pretense to decency in their scramble for further territories. Russian statesmen had long ago seen that the Pacific Ocean was to be the arena of world events of colossal significance to the race. We have noted in a former chapter how she had already extended her territory till she touched the Pacific Ocean on the far north and how, partly that she might develop it, but primarily that she might have a highway through it to the great ocean which lies beyond, she had begun the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, the late Czar, Alexander III, guaranteeing out of his own private funds 350,000,000 rubles towards the necessary expense. The most southern port of Russia on the Pacific Ocean was Vladivostok, which was therefore made the terminus of the line and rapidly and strongly fortified. But Russia was not content with a harbour which is closed by ice six months in the year. She therefore began to press her way southward through Manchuria. In November, 1894, Japan had wrested from China the peninsula terminating in Port Arthur, and the treaty of Shimonoseki, at the close of the war, had given Japan the Liao-tung peninsula, opened four Manchurian ports to foreign trade, and conceded to Japan valuable commercial rights in Manchuria, rights which gave the Japanese virtual ascendancy. Ostensibly in the interests of China, but really of her own ambition, Russia gravely said that it would never do to permit Japan to remain in Manchuria, virtuously declaring that ``the integrity of China must be preserved at all costs.'' She persuaded France and Germany to join her in notifying the Japanese Government that ``it would not be permitted to retain permanent possession of any portion of the mainland of Asia.'' Japan, feeling at that time unprepared to fight three European powers, was forced to relinquish the prize of victory. The solicitude of Russia for the integrity of helpless China was quite touching, but it did not prevent her from making one encroachment after another upon the coveted territory until March 8, 1898, to the rage and chagrin of Japan, she peremptorily demanded for herself and March 27th of the same year obtained Port Arthur including Ta-lien-wan and 800 square miles of adjoining territory. She speciously declared that ``her occupation of Port Arthur was merely temporary and only to secure a harbour for wintering the Russian fleet.'' But grim significance was given to her action by the prompt appearance at Port Arthur of 20,000 Russian soldiers and 90,000 coolies who were set to work developing a great modern fortification almost under the eyes of the Chinese capital.
As it was expedient, however, to have a commercial city on the peninsula as well as a fortification, as the harbour of Port Arthur was not large enough for both naval and commercial purposes, and as the Russians did not wish anyway to make their fortified base accessible to the rest of the world, they decided to build a city forty-five miles north of Port Arthur and call it Dalny, which quite appropriately means ``far away.'' Most cities grow, but this was too slow a method for the purpose of the Slav, and therefore, a metropolis was forthwith made to order as a result of an edict issued by the Czar, July 30, 1899.
The harbour of Dalny is an exceptionally fine one with over thirty feet of water at low tide so that the largest vessels can lie alongside the docks and transfer their cargoes directly to trains for Europe. Great piers were constructed; enormous warehouses and elevators erected; gas, electric light, water and street-car plants installed; wide and well-sewered streets laid out; and a thoroughly modern and handsome city planned in four sections, the first of which was administrative, the second mercantile, the third residence, and the fourth Chinese. The Russians were sparing neither labour nor expense in the construction of this ambitious city which, by January, 1904, already had a population of over 50,000, and represented a reported expenditure of about $150,000,000. April 9, 1902, Russia solemnly promised to evacuate Manchuria October 8, 1903. But when that day came, she remained, as every one knew that she would, under the unblushing pretext that Manchuria was not yet sufficiently pacified to justify her withdrawal from a region where her interests were so great. As Manchuria was at the time as quiet as some of Russia's European provinces, the reason alleged reminds one of the Arab's reply to a man who wished to borrow his rope—``I need it myself to tie up some sand with.'' ``But,'' expostulated the would-be borrower, ``that is a poor excuse for you cannot tie up sand with a rope.'' ``I know that,'' was the calm rejoinder, ``but any excuse will serve when I don't want to do a thing.'' So to the concern of China, the envy of Europe and the wrath of Japan, Manchuria practically became a Russian province until Japan, unable to restrain her exasperation longer and feeling that Russia's plans were a menace to her own safety, had developed her army and navy and begun the war which not only arrested the advance of the Slav but expelled him from most of the territory he had seized.
Not to be outdone by Germany and Russia, other nations made haste to seize what they could find. April 2, 1898, England secured the lease of Lin-kung, with all the islands and a strip ten miles wide on the mainland, thus giving the British a strong post at Wei-hai Wei. April 22d, France peremptorily demanded, and May 2d obtained, the bay of Kwangchou-wan, while Japan found her share in a concession for Foochow, Woosung, Fan-ning, Yo-chou and Chung-wan-tao. By 1899, in all China's 3,000 miles of coast line, there was not a harbour in which she could mobilize her own ships without the consent of the hated foreigner.
A clever Chinese artist in Hongkong grimly drew a cartoon of the situation of his country as he and his countrymen saw it. The Russian Bear, coming down from the north, his feet planted in Manchuria and northern Korea, sees the British Bulldog seated in southern China, while ``The Sun Elf'' ( Japan), sitting upon its Island Kingdom, proclaims that ``John Bull and I will watch the Bear.'' The German Sausage around Kiau-chou makes no sign of life, but the French Frog, jumping about in Tonquin and Annam and branded ``Fashoda and Colonial Expansion,'' tries to stretch a friendly hand to the Bear over the Bulldog's head. Then, to offset this proffered assistance to the Bear, the Chinese artist, with characteristic cunning, brings in the New World power. He places the American Eagle over the Philippines, its beak extended towards the Bulldog, and writes upon it the phrase, ``Blood is thicker than water.''[57]
[57] Reproduced in the Newark, N. J., Evening News, January 9, 1904