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Show I JAPAN'S INTENTIONS I AS I SAW THEM J IM SHANTUNG I (By G. Chatles Hodges, Lecturer I t ore Far Eastern Trade, School of I ' ' Commerce. vNew York University) JK " 0o has but to pass through. Shan- , " 'tttttg to see- the tremendous poten- (' tlallttea of this Chinese province un- It , dcr the domination of an aggressive , neighbor. Prom the moment I enter- I od the ex-Qcrman railway rone, now y under Japanese control, one was made to feel that It mattered very llttlo what any peace conference did in Shantung; Japan know what ?v- F orybody knows who has been thero- - .; that economically. Shantung was a i i wedge which could bo driven Into tho I . heart of China by n ropltltioa of Manchurin railway tactics and used ' to shift tho entlro flow of trade north of tho Yangtze; that pol'tlcul- ! ly U brought the warning hand of Japan within reach of China's np'tal '! f Just as Japan's sphere encircled Pek- f tng from tho north In Manchuria. That la why one Is struck by the ! hugo masts of the Japanese military " "wireless standing out against the Shantung skyline In Tainan, 256 i 11 lies from tho port of Tslnguo. This wireless Is a violation of Chlneso I Jr sovcrolgrity, but a vital link In .Tn- t w pan's schemes of state, for It talks I "with other Illegal wireless instllatlon 6(10 mles up tho Yangtze at Hankow, nso Japanese, connecting it with tho old German station in the Klachow leasehold and with Dalren across the "I'cchlll Straits In Manchuria. Stopped by Japanese sentries from a too closo scrutiny of the plant I saw tho feverish fever-ish building of barracks for the so-called so-called railway guards; the German accommodations, It seems, after a decade of their occupation, proved too small for Japan's purposes in Shantung. . It Is the same story at overy sta tion between Shantung's capital mul the Klaochow leasehold Japanese ; soldiers and new barracks. While on y paper1 Japan' has assented to 'tho or- .V ganlzatlon of special guards in def crenee to Chinese susceptibilities It is not likely that it will carry n m.v t"Nal change; for tho control of theo guards remains under Japan's thumb which is allt ho statesmen in Tokyo want. Japan does not are aoout words, excepting as she makes them act in her own" Interests. The train, German In everything but the filthy condition, of tho cars, crawls after eight hours through ll.e Klaochow hills and skirts the bay that Teutonic ruthl-esncss Belted from China and which Japanese re-lcntlessness re-lcntlessness In the east purposes to retain. The ted clay hills, gashed with the cuts mnde by tho devouring brick kilns lining the way, are put behiud as one winds Into what appeals ap-peals to bo a German city on tho Uhlno. The nicely paved streets winding over the hills of Tslngtao tho bracing air, tho precise layout of the city, the buildings patterned after the new archltectuie of the Vlenesse designers, the permanence was all German but under tho imperial im-perial flag of Japan. It was a German Ger-man shell teeming with Japanese; the popuatlon of slngtao Itself, whlcn contained but 350 Jnpanese traders In 1913, In tho three years of Nipponese Nippon-ese occupation has become over flt-teen flt-teen thousand. At first one could not distinguish the Japanese buildings fiom their Germnn prototypes, for Japanese architecture ar-chitecture is painfully German In inspiration. in-spiration. Hut nu American official showed mo n map which revealed tho extent of Japaneso building; a new town has arisen to tho north of tho old Get man Bectlon which Is turning the area about the Great Harbor where the Germans built the finest docks in tho east into a great in-dustilal in-dustilal region. It is typically Japanese Jap-anese thnt the heart of this new town should be a rod-light district of geisha gei-sha houses and restaurants such as only Japanese could place in tho midst of schools, homes and stores over the protests of missionaries, foreigners for-eigners and the better class of Japanese Jap-anese subjects. But the military officials of-ficials were ruling Tslngtao thenj and there the Yoshlwara was put, though It remains to the lasting regret re-gret of the farslghted minority of Jap anese. In Tslngtao factories are being built on land reclaimed from the tidal ti-dal marshes to the north of the Great Harbor. Things standing in the way such as tho Standard Oil installation woro being forced to vacate for the expansion of Japanese. Interests It was only when I had talks with tho civil governor and the military officials who were pushing tho railorad projects by which they frankly Intend to dominato Nm.'i China that I understood. The civil governor obviously wanted want-ed to do what ho could; but It was easy to feel that after all on vital issues It did not mattor what ho did. Ho said ho wanted to correct tho mistakes of tho Japanese military administration along the 2GC miles of railway to Tslnnn; that ho wanted I tos eo foreign enterprises establish themselves; that no thought Japan made mistakes sometimes In deullntr' with China. Yet ho wanted mo to go to the "highway administration I when wo get down to the ciux of the situation; the railway administration I Is a part of the Japanese military machine. Tho officials there were very polite and could not do enough to make me feel at home at they hunted for the precise words. But what they said Japan Intended to do and what tho civil governor hoped he could do were two different things. It Interested Inter-ested me vastly to see this struggle between llbernllsm and military lin-' perlallsm cropping out hero In China' Just as It Is a cleavage one moots with In Japanese politics and government govern-ment overy day. Tho outlook was i no more assuring; tho railway administration admin-istration deferentially spread out a map and showed mo the lines they intended in-tended to build, what they Intended .to retain whntover peace might brln.r There Is no need for mo to detail this tho terms nro in the peace treaty Germany has signed. When I suggested that perhaps this had complications In It, tho railway rail-way administration officials smiled. It meant much; they were too poll'o (o say that they knew I meant thnt America Am-erica had shown great concern over all this that they did not take us as a serious obstnclc which could no: bo oveicomo. As I left Tslngtao two thoughts porsltstcd: What Is going to hnppo'i i when foiolgn enterprise finds thnt tho Jnpanese concession which she forced to agree to and which tho peaco treaty concedes takes In all .the portions of Tslngtao worth hnv-Ing hnv-Ing tho port area and all tho railway rail-way terminals, the business scctl m and the customs house, tho bets of the residential area, tho economically economical-ly desirable factory sites and the strategic forelands and hills Secondly, Second-ly, what arc we going to do when we find the railway Japan is rnak.ng n prc.it scheme of pont radon nfft rebates on nil raw materials it car-rlos car-rlos to theso factories In Tsln"tao for manufacture, that coal and waiei arc ghen on spoclnlly favoubla terms that Japan Is doing ovuy-thlng ovuy-thlng in her power to mnko slngtao possess n marginal economic adjutage adju-tage which her competitors cannot oveicome? Those who expect Japan to evit-uate evit-uate this key to North China mlghf do well to gnre long at a scries tif herculean steps gnshlng tho side of what was once Mount Moltke. Tlicro Is something striking In tho hundreds hun-dreds of steps cut Into tho granite 'side of that hill, capped by tho Mich of n huge torll before what Is to bo ,i crowning Shinto slulno It Is symbolic sym-bolic of the Japanese occupation It clhit.8 to tho hillside, uneMcapnblo a'ld challenging, seemlngl) tho nuirU of Jnpiin foi huudmls of eaia |
