connecting Peking with the Siberian Railway and with Europe.  Germany built the Shantung Railway, from Tsingtau to Tsinanfu.  The French built a railway in the south.  England sought to obtain a monopoly of the railways in the Yangtze valley.  All these railways were to be owned by foreigners and managed by foreign officials of the respective countries which had obtained the concessions.  The Boxer rising, however, made Europe aware that some caution was needed if the Chinese were not to be exasperated beyond endurance.  After this, ownership of new railways was left to the Chinese Government, but with so much foreign control as to rob it of most of its value.  By this time, Chinese public opinion had come to realize that there must be railways in China, and that the real problem was how to keep them under Chinese control.  In 1908, the Tientsin-Pukow line and the Shanghai-Hangchow line were sanctioned, to be built by the help of foreign loans, but with all the administrative control in the hands of the Chinese Government.  At the same time, the Peking-Hankow line was bought back by the Government, and the Peking-Kalgan line was constructed by the Chinese without foreign financial assistance.  Of the big main lines of China, this left not much foreign control outside the Manchurian Railway (Chinese Eastern Railway) and the Shantung Railway.  The first of these is mainly under foreign control and must now be regarded as permanently lost, until such time as China becomes strong enough to defeat Japan in war; and the whole of Manchuria has come more or less under Japanese control.  But the Shantung Railway, by the agreement reached at Washington, is to be bought back by China—­five years hence, if all goes well.  Thus, except in regions practically lost to China, the Chinese now have control of all their more important railways, or will have before long.  This is a very hopeful feature of the situation, and a distinct credit to Chinese sagacity.

Putnam Weale (Mr. Lennox Simpson) strongly urges—­quite rightly, as I think—­the great importance of nationalizing all Chinese railways.  At Washington recently, he helped to secure the Shantung Railway award, and to concentrate attention on the railway as the main issue.  Writing early in 1919, he said[100]:—­

The key to the proper control of China and the building-up of the new Republican State is the railway key....  The revolution of 1911, and the acceptance in principle of Western ideas of popular government, removed the danger of foreign provinces being carved out of the old Manchu Empire.  There was, however, left behind a more subtle weapon. This weapon is the railway.  Russia with her Manchurian Railway scheme taught Japan the new method.  Japan, by the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905, not only inherited the richer half of the Manchurian railways, but was able to put into practice a new technique, based on a mixture of twisted economics, police control,