It may not be true that the Japanese customs officials at Dairen (the treaty provides that China shall appoint a Japanese {89} collector at this port), ignorantly or knowingly, allow Japanese goods to be smuggled through to Manchuria--although consuls of three nations a few months ago thought the matter serious enough to suggest an investigation--but the evasion of likin taxes in the interior is an admitted fact.
More flagrant still is another violation of international treaty rights. Under Chinese regulations foreign merchants are not allowed to do business in the Manchurian interior away from the twenty-four open marts, but it has been shown that several thousand Japanese are now stationed within the prohibited area, and Japan's reply to the Chinese Viceroy's protest is that he should have objected sooner and that it is now too late. Meanwhile, many Chinese merchants both in the interior and along the South Manchurian Railway, themselves paying the regular likin and consumption taxes, are finding themselves unable to compete with the Japanese, who refuse to pay these taxes. Thus Japan is gradually rooting out the natives who stand in her way, and, day by day, tightening her grip on the country.
She is advancing step by step as she did in Korea.
On the whole, the Mikado's subjects seem already to count themselves virtual masters of the country. Inside their railway areas and concessions they have their own government; in the majority of cases while in Manchuria I found it more convenient to use the Japanese telegraph or the Japanese postal system than the Chinese; and where I stopped at the little towns along the line it was a Japanese officer who came to inquire my name and nationality. When I was in Mukden the German consul there had just had two Chinese meddlers arrested for spying on his movements, only to find that they were acting under the direction of Japanese officials who claimed immunity for them! The fact that they have their soldiers back of them, and that they can be tried only in their own courts, also gives the Japanese unlimited assurance in bullying the natives. At Mukden the Japanese bellboy struck my Chinese rickshaw {90} man to get his attention. At Taolu some weeks ago some Japanese merchants who were there doing business illegally (for it is not an open mart) were interfered with, with the result that the Japanese authorities when I was in Mukden were preparing a formal demand for satisfaction, including indemnity for any injury to an unlawful business!
Manifestly, the new masters of Manchuria propose to teach the natives their place. "If a Chinaman is killed by a Japanese bullet," as a Chinaman of rank said to me in Manchuria, "the fault is not that of the man who fired the bullet: the Chinaman is to blame for getting in the way of it!"
| VI |
Those who apologize for Japanese aggressiveness in Manchuria, those who excuse or sympathize with her evident purpose to make Manchuria walk the way of Korea, have but one argument for their position--the pitiably abused and threadbare plea that the Japanese have won the country by the blood they shed in the war with Russia. The best answer to this is also a quotation from the distinguished and witty Chinaman just mentioned. "The Japanese," said he, "claimed they were fighting Russia because she was preparing to rob China of Manchuria; now they themselves out-Russia Russia. It is much as if I should knock a man down, saying, 'That man was about to take your watch,' and then take the watch myself!"
The aptness of the simile is evident. My sympathy, and the sympathy of every other American acquaintance of mine as far as I can now recall, was with Japan in her struggle because of our hot indignation over Russian aggressiveness. But if Japan had said, "I am fighting to put Russia out only that I may myself develop every identical policy of aggrandizement that she has inaugurated," it is very easy to see with what different feelings we should have regarded the conflict.
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Moreover, Japan's legitimate fruits of victory do not extend to the control or possession of Manchuria. As one of the ablest Englishmen met on my tour in the Far East pointed out, Japan's purposes in inaugurating the war were four: (1) to get a preponderating influence in Korea; (2) to get the control of the Tsushima Straits, which a preponderating influence in Korea would give her; (3) to drive Russia from her ever-menacing position at Port Arthur; and (4) to arrest (as she alleged) the increasing influence and power of Russia in Manchuria.