have joined these ancient enemies against a world that has turned upon them an unfriendly back? Can they, having accepted the fact that half a loaf is better than none, have agreed upon a modus vivendi whereby Japan is to be left to pursue, unhampered, her purposes in North China in exchange for permitting Russia a free hand in a new field to the South? Reasons are not few that would appear to make such an arrangement mutually desirable. First, the unsuccessful efforts of Japan and Russia completely to control the arteries of exportation of Northeastern Asia resulting as they have in a futile and vicious deadlock. Second, the obvious desirability of avoiding an appeal to arms, which a further thrust of the red bear's paw into the Manchurian honeycomb seemed inevitably to presage. Third, and in support of the second, the present economic weakness of both Russia and Japan to wage a successful war, the former for reasons well known, the latter because of the 1923 earthquake and a depreciated currency.

But reasons which appear to disprove the existence of a modus vivendi between Japan and Russia seem the more convincing. In the first place, though neither Japan nor Russia are in an economic position to fight each other, Japan is the better prepared, and the international political situation there today is so precarious that those in power might even welcome the counter-irritant of a foreign war. In the second place, because Japan is at present holding the winning hand in Manchuria, there is no vitally pressing reason for the nonce why she should be willing to compromise with Russia. And in the third place, because of the Chinese antagonism that such an arrangement would arouse, to enter into it would endanger Japan's very future.

With respect to this third reason, which is undeniably the most important, Japan must see that China cannot forever remain in her present impotent state. Even in her momentary military and political weakness she has discovered a weapon that has proved more powerful than either military

force or moral suasion. This is the economic boycott. Japan has already felt its results; she knows its strength, and greatly she fears it. Even sweeping aside the solemn duty which the Washington Arms Conference treaties placed upon Japan to refrain from covenanting in secret at the expense of any Pacific power, and the world censure that the discovery of such an agreement would rain down to the irreparable damage of Japanese prestige, Japan, with no more pressing reasons than those already outlined would be weaving her own hang-rope to enter into an understanding with Russia so completely damaging to the one country upon whose continued friendliness her very future depends.

III

We must seek deeper then for an explanation behind this apparent Russian-Japanese laissez-faire.

That General Feng Yu-Hsiang, one of China's outstanding military leaders served in April, 1926, as the spearhead of a Russian thrust at Tientsin, is an undeniable fact, and for it consequently there must be a reason other than Russia's desire for a port on the Pacific. Why should General Feng, frequently spoken of as the "Christian General," have been singled out as the object of Russia's wooing? Soviet wire pullers do not usually choose their accomplices without reason. There is little madness in Moscow's methods. General Feng is the powerful Governor of all the Chinese provinces, Manchuria excepted, lying the nearest to Russian territory. Blocked by Japan in Manchuria, Feng's domain offered an even better field of conquest looking to an eventual sovietization-working from the outside in-of as much of China as possible. Consequently, Feng was approached and proved easy prey, the price of his support being plainly visible. Revenge is sweet to a Chinese general. Feng's vengeance, according to Feng, needed venting upon the alleged pro-Japanese General Chang Tso-lin of Manchuria. But Chang was well muni

tioned and equipped. Feng was neither. Thus it came about that the birthright of sovereignty in China's northwestern provinces was sold for the mess of pottage of Russian military support.

In March of 1925, the Soviet Government on the one hand and General Feng on the other entered into the following agreement:

Article 1. Two railways shall be laid in Outer Mongolia. Article 2. The North-western military division (Sinkiang, Shensi, Kansu, Honan, Chahar and Suiyuan) shall be a neutral zone of a government on the confederated system. This shall not come into force for five years.

The North-western military division shall invite military instructors from Soviet Russia, and their number shall be sixty.

Article 3. The Soviet Government shall support the North-western military division with 100,000 gold rubles every month.

Article 4. The repayment of the principal of the loan for the Arms Agreement signed at Peking on February 13th, 1925, shall begin in 1930 and be liquidated in ten years. In default of which the refund shall be deducted from the subsidy.

Article 5. Soviet Russians retain propaganda and residential liberty in the North-western military division, but they shall not give public lectures.

Article 6. The Soviet propaganda committeemen shall neither criticize the government in the North-western military division nor oppose

it.

Article 7. In the event of a war breaking out between an imperialistic country and the Soviet government, one-third of the troops of the North-western military division shall come to the aid of the latter. In case of hostility between an imperialistic country and China the Soviet Government shall support China with troops not exceeding 50,000 in number.

Article 8. The North-western Army shall not invade the borders of the Urga Soviet Republic.

Article 9. Regarding the political penetration of Japan and Britain in Sinkiang, Mongolia, etc., China, Mongolia and Russia shall mutually control it and jointly strive to hold it in check for the complete retention of sovereignty.

Peking, March 11th, 1925.*

(Signed) FENG YU-HSIANG, Borodin, Katayama Sen.

Supplementary to this treaty was a military map of the northwestern area and a list of arms to be supplied which specified 100,000 rifles and carbines, large quantities of machine rifles, field guns, mountain guns, high elevation guns, aeroplanes, tanks, hand grenades, and gun powder, an unsecured loan of $3,000,000 for military expenses, and in General Feng's Army the commissioning without pay of a large number of Soviet officers.

Thus we find that under the very nose of either an uninformed or indifferent world, Russia successfully has been bargaining with a Chinese military general for what amounts to practical control of one million square miles of Chinese territory stretching from Manchuria in the east to the reaches of India in the West-an all-enveloping buffer, which lies adjacent to Mongolia, between China proper and the U. S. S. R. Mongolia itself, furthermore, has suffered an even more sorry fate. By all the rights of both treaty and conquest Mongolia is Chinese soil. The spring of 1924 saw Russia and China renewing relations severed at the time of the revolution. In this treaty Mongolia was referred to specifically. "Outer Mongolia as an integral part of the Republic of China" was guaranteed. "Chinese sovereignty therein" was recognized. During 1920, however, on the pretext that counter-revolutionary movements were

*Published in "Far Eastern Times" December 7, 1925.

forming there, Russia had occupied Mongolia. Consequently, a withdrawal of these Russian troops was provided for in the treaty. This was promptly effected. But although Russia carried it out with all the aspects of seriousness, actually it was a piece of comedy that would do justice in finesse to a Pinero and in cool audacity to a Villon. For long before Russia, like "The King of France with twenty thousand men, marched up the hill and then marched down again;" she had drilled and trained a Mongolian Army, and had armed it; had set up an autonomous Mongolian Government which defied the authority of Peking; and had established a political and economical control over Mongolia amounting to nothing short of a protectorate.

Russia's military occupation of Mongolia was not usufructuary. Mongolia was Russia's oyster just as surely as was Shantung Japan's-an oyster, furthermore, that would have made the most mammoth of Alice's "carpenter's" seem very small indeed, although, as we remember, he "sorted out those of the largest size." And most significant of all was the wording of the Mongolian Constitution by which independence from China was proclaimed. Mongolia is a country of no industries, no capital, no labor. On steppes and deserts, a nomadic population of two to the square mile roam at will. Yet the new Magna Carta of this State, apparently in all seriousness, makes careful and repeated provision for the protection of the proletariat against the capitalists, and forbids private ownership, exhorting the nonexistent working classes, and proclaiming them the rulers of the land!

IV

Mongolia wholly sovietized; China's "northwestern" provinces semi-sovietized; a powerful Chinese military leader having acted as the battering ram for a further spread of Russian control towards Peking and the sea; and all over China Proper wherever fertile ground has existed, embryonic communism-what does this mean? It means that a care