This Iand has been acquired on an eighty years lease dating from 1903 and of the whole total some 2,500 acres -have been let by the railway, on long leases, a very direct contradiction of the contention that the railway has been guilty of wholesale subletting, and when it is remembered that about half of this is represented by the city of Harbin, and that the existence of such a city is necessary to the railway, or the direct outcome of its existence, it cannot very well be argued either that the sub-leasing was excessive or that it was not entirely in the service of the railway. For where it becomes necessary to house such a staff as that of the Chinese Eastern Railway, it is only in the nature of things that from a small railway settlement Harbin should have become the imposing city it now is. Further it has to be remembered that all question of leases had to be passed on by the Board of Directors of the railway on which there were five Chinese members representing the Chinese government. It has yet to be established that the Russian members of the directorate granted these leases contrary to the wishes and in spite of the protests of the Chinese representatives, and if these latter, agreed to the leases, the Chinese Government was bound and cannot now plead breach of the original agreement, if such in fact has been comitied. It is safe to say that not a single lot was sub-leased by the railway without the consent of the Chinese members. It is not unfair, therefore, to argue that if in fact such subleasing was in breach of the original agreement—a contention which has yet to be proved—it was done with the consent of the Chinese Government through their representatives and cannot, therefore, be called in aid to support the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.