Aug.
Last week we dealt with one aspect of the German commertial outlook in the Far East quoting a contributor to the ''Berliner Tageblatt"' as arguing that Japan offers the best opportunity for the immediate re-building of their interests. The second part of the "Tageblatt' article concerns itself with China and the hopes of Germany for the future there Needless to say, Herr Se the writer, has no doubt of Germany' 's final success, but in the meantime so many difficulties are in the way that the process is going to be slow and laborious. Like all of his countrymen he sees a deeply sinister shadow cast over the German nation by the makers of the Treaty of Versailles. They it was who were responsible for the deportation of two-thirds of the German population from China; equally they robbed the Germans of consular jurisdiction in fact '"'the Treaty of Versailles has taken from us all that we possessed in China in the direction of political and economic and uvate rights based on the most youred nation principle; - Germanism in China has been almost completely felled to the ground not only by the Treaty of Versailles but as a result of Entente policy during the armistice period."' But what did the Germans expect or hope for? A brutal war is forced upon the world with its untold suffering and loss. Only the Germans with their idea of a special deity in charge of their destinies could hope to go unpunished after their outrage on civilization. In China their attitude towards the crimes of their rulers had been too flagrant to allow even the vaguest hint to be entertained of their remaining as a community.
Having indicated the policy which to the German mind has been primarily responsible for preventing an immediate resumption of trade, Herr Secker briefly mentions, as the second factor, the Shantung problem and China's refusal to sign the Treaty. "Until the Shantung question has been cleared up,"' he says, China seems to hesitate to give Germans facilities for resuming their work in China, probably through fear of prejudicing her dealings in foreign politics with the Powers."' All we can say is that neither the Shantung question nor anything else has deterred Germans from an effort to resume their trade immediately. Whatever was the policy of the Entente, of which complaint has been made, it did not succeed in removing from China a considerable number of men who would be useful to Germany, nor has it stayed the return of others. Nearly a year ago, for instance, a British engineer was travelling in the interior in connexion with contracts for electrical plant, and already he found a German in the district with offers to the Chinese of immediate delivery of machinery—a thing which "Allied nations were incapable of doing at the time, and which it is doubtful whether the Germans could do. I¢ is only one of many instances, which are now multiplying, in fact scarcely a week passes but there are reports of German activity from different parts of the country. Herr Secker might have improved his article by mentioning, in contrast to the statement of China's unwillingness to give the Germans full commercial rights for reasons of world-polities, that no such considerations were in-fluoricing the Germans. Probably he thought it quite unnecessary to mention it. Except where the Entente casts its baleful influence, one can read through his sen-fences, Germany is to be warmly welcomed: it is the idea of the chosen race all over again, not even scotched by defeat on land and*sea. However much German writers may declaim against the "armistice policy of the Entente—not the Allied and Associated Powers be it observed—the rest of the nation is busy scheming, and not even this screen of journalism is sufficient to
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.