xxiv The British Sphere of Influence 



have been no war. As things now are, Russia has cancelled 

 a British lien on the railway connecting the Treaty Port of 

 Newchwang with the existing Tientsin line ; Germany has 

 warned us off Shantung; France puts a transit duty of 

 ten per cent, on British goods from Hong Kong for the 

 200 miles distance by the Red River of Tongking to Laokai, 

 on the Yunnan border ; at the same time she has compelled 

 the wretched Chinese Government to admit goods over her 

 border for two-thirds of the five per cent, duty collected by 

 the Maritime Customs at the other Chinese ports. This is 

 one instance of many how the object of France and Russia is 

 to steal a revenue from our trade with China rather than the 

 promotion of trade itself. Our ports and the Chinese Treaty 

 Ports are free to all. Our rivals will not grant this 

 reciprocity. Hence, if our Government does not wake up 

 and take hold of the subject seriously, and make the occupa- 

 tion of our sphere effective while there is yet time to do so, 

 we shall learn some fine morning that our rivals have 

 arranged Chinese affairs to suit their own interests exclusively. 

 Then with preferential transit and other tariffs directed 

 against us, we shall have handed over the solid work of 

 three generations of Britons in China to our unscrupulous 

 rivals ; or else at last the British people will be aroused, and 

 the Government, nolens volens, driven to fight for our tradal 

 existence in the Far East ; and this is the course to which 

 we seem helplessly drifting. Two years ago by a firm 

 stand we might have prevented the partition of the venerable 

 Empire whose weakness we have done so much to expose. It 

 is a sad alternative, but to-day there is no other left us but to 

 take our share in the partition now going on, and this no more 

 in our own interest than in that of the people of China. 



Oriental Club, London, 

 October, 1898. 



