"There is nothing in the Lavs of Nations that can justify it; and unless the Japanese Government mean to invoke the precedent set by. themselves in the years when the subjection of China as defined and worked out in the Twenty-One Demands was the declared policy of Japan, there is hardly a parallel to the military expedition in question. This assertion is made deliberately and with the British exp force in Shanghai in mind. necessary and criminally provoeative though the latter may be, it at Teasts pretends to clutch at' some shadow of legality by packing most of its gunmen within territory under so-called international control, the case of the Japanese expedition there is and can be no stich pretence because neither at Tsingtao nor at Tsinan is there any international settlement or Japanese concession.
"Besides lacking juridical sanetion, the Japanese expedition cannot even find support in the real facts of the general situation envisaged in the declarations issued respectively by the Foreign Office and the War Office at Tokyo. It is a notorious fact that not a single Japanese civilian life has been lost anywhere on territory under direct control of the Nationalist Government whose seat is at Wuhan, This has been true of the Nationalist Government when its seat was at Canton; and it shall continue to be true when the'
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.