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startling reports seem to have left the people at large comparatively indifferent; nowhere in the interior do they appear to have been stirred up to any very high pitch of feeling.
However, not content with appealing to the people, the Society for the Protection of the Mines approached the Governor himself. The latter was requested to call upon Germany officially to renounce all her mining rights in Shantung, and he was expected, if necessary, actively to support the anti-German boycott. But the agitators were destined to suffer a severe disappointment. Whatever the actual sentiments of the Governor may have been towards the Germans and the German position in Shantung, be lost no time in making it quite clear that he did not propose to be made the tool of any sect or party, and that he intended to retain the control of affairs in his own hands, and to take whatever action seemed best to him, without yielding to popular clamour. Whatever his own private views on the Treaty relations subsisting between Germany and China, he afforded ample evidence of his determination to give no handle for a complaint, and to preserve a correct, if not necessarily a sympathetic, attitude towards the Germans.
In a Report to Peking some time ago the Governor dealt at length with the agitation for the preservation of the mining rights along the Tien-tsin-Pak'ou line; subsequently, however, he stated the leaders of the movement had gone further, and now clamoured for the cancellation of the Agreement of the 22nd August, 1907, confirming the grant of mining rights to a German Company in I-choufu, I-shuihsien, Chuchenghsien, Peita, and the Chefoo district (the five zones), and extending the time allowed for prospecting from ten months to two years. He went on to say that the movement was led and organized entirely by passed students, who claimed that the mining question was purely a commercial one, and that the negotiations should there- fore have been left in the hands of the merchants. They also criticized the details of the Agreement under which Concessions for seven mines, of an area of 30 square li each, bad been granted in the five zones. Others claimed (as in the leaflet annexed to this despatch) that the people of Shantung had not been consulted beforehand, and that the Agreement was consequently null and void. The Governor in his Report pointed out that the Concessions granted to the Germans were perfectly in order; that the Agreement had been signed a year before the new Mining Law of 1907 came into force, and that it had received the Imperial sanction; that the periud allowed for prospecting had not expired; and that, consequently, there was no pretext whatever for cancelling the Concessions. He went on to say that, as China did not as yet possess a Constitution, the assent of the people was not necessary to the Agreement, and added that he had originally looked upon the Society for the Protection of the Mines as a harmless institu- tion, but that recently the leaders, in a Memorial presented to him, had threatened, without any circumlocution, that, unless the Concessions were cancelled, they would protect their rights by hindering the working of the mines and by boycotting all German goods, and that if these measures proved futile there would undoubtedly be disturbances among the people sooner or later. Continuing, the Governor asked why these patriots did not oppose the signing of the Agreement while there was yet time, instead of demanding its cancellation now that it was too late; he apprehended mischief as a result of the agitation, and declared that the ringleaders must be proceeded against at once in order to avoid a conflict with foreigners which could only be productive of harm. He concluded by saying that any teachers or students who started such Societies, or even joined them, were acting in defiance of the law, and would be punished with the utmost severity. He therefore declared the Society for the Protection of Mines to be an illegal one, and ordered it to be dissolved,
The Germans, while fully aware that the Governor's action was dictated by At the policy alone, are also conscious how much they owe to him in the matter, feast given in Governor Yüan's honour at Tsingtau on the 21st October, Governor Truppel, in proposing his health, thanked him for the resolute manner in which he had dealt with the unlawful agitation for the cancellation of the German Mining Concessions in Shantung, to which Governor Yüan replied that, in acting thus, he had merely done his duty.
In spite, however, of the determined attitude of the Governor, the anti-German movement has by no means been definitely suppressed; at the present moment it is being carried ou as actively as ever, this being possibly due, in part at least, to the Whether the existing ill-feeling Governor's temporary absence from Chinan." engendered by the oppressive taxation at Tsingtan, combined with the agitation against the German Mining Concessious, will subside in the near future is very doubtful, and it is quite within the bounds of possibility that the threatened boycott
5
against the Germans throughout the Province of Shantung will eventually come to a
head.
I have, &c. (Signed)
BERTRAM GILES.
Inclosure 2 in No. 1.
Anti-German Leaflet circulated in Chinan.
Letter from the Work-people of Shantung, expressing their views on the struggle for the Mines. (Translation.)
ALAS! the life and death of our country of Shantung has now become a burning question. Here, in Tsingtau, we are not even allowed to work for other people in peace, and we have a few words to say to our elders and brethren which will cut them to the heart. We have recently heard that German merchants are about to ask permission to open mines in five zones in our country of Shantung; all of you have, doubtless, already heard of this. Since you have heard of it, it behores all of you with one heart to rise up and struggle with them. Why do you stand there looking around you, refusing to come forth and act? We suppose it is because you do not fully realize the danger which threatens you. So now we will explain to all of you the horrors which we have undergone.
For instance, this place, Tsingtau, was originally a piece of our own country of Shan- tung. But ten years ago a German missionary was killed, for which in other countries But only a certain amount of money compensation is paid, and that finishes the matter. our Government, being ignorant of the rules governing foreign relations, cut off Tsingtau and handed it over. Nowadays all the land, all the property, and all the lives of the people are in the hands of the Ciermans. There is a tax on dwelling-houses, there is a tax on fishing, there is a tax on agriculture, there is even a tax on funerals; in very truth there is neither ground for the living to stand on nor ground for the dead to be buried in. These things we in our own persons have suffered; our own eyes have seen.
At that time a Tsingtau-Chinan Railway Agreement was also made, wherein it was laid down that for thirty i on either side of the line no Chinese were to be allowed to work mines. Thereby were the sources of wealth of our own country of Shantung in a large measure torn from us and pocketed by them. Bat it is clear that this does not satisfy their covetousness, and they are preparing to swallow our country of Shantung at one mouthful.
They further caused their merchants to discuss and make an Agreement with a few of our officials behind our backs. Now, this Five Mines Agreement is not an Agreement for working mines at all; it is clearly a bond for the destruction of Shantung. If you do not believe this, just note that wherever mines are started by foreigners a railway is constructed thither; when the railway is constructed thither, soldiers are then sent thither; once the soldiers have come, our people are then merely food for their powder, meat under their knives, mud beneath their horses' hoofs. This is called conquest by mines followed up by a railway, and the annihilation of a race through the agency of mines. At present, whenever any country starts out to conquer another country and to annihilate another race, this is always the method adopted, and it is called the scheme of the control of railways and mines,1
And now, elders and brethren, what we say is awake without delay! If the five mines can be preserved, then our country of Shantung can also be preserved; if the five mines are lost, then our Shantung people will one and all be destroyed. If Shantung is preserved, Tsingtau. may also be recovered in the future; but if we cannot preserve Shantung, what is the use of talking about Tsingtau? And then, not only are we at the present moment the dogs and the horses and the slaves of other people, but our sons and our grandsons, down to the remotest generations, will all of them also be the dogs and the horses and the slaves of other people.
Besides, as regards the Agreement concerning the five mines, it is only their merchants who have made it with a few of our officials; among our Shantung people there is not one man who knows about it; there is not one single man who acknowledges it; it is a thing of no account. If you people of Shantung will come forward as one mau and struggle with them, then later on you will be able to tear up that Agreen.ent of theirs. But if do not You must not fight with them or raise a disturbance against them. rise up now to struggle with them, they will think that our Shantung people have already
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