90 BRITONS V. GERMANS IN CHINA
source of strength. Not by men who have sought to undermine our commercial prestige, and endeavoured to incite the natives to trouble and rebellion. No; in the light of our now ripened experience it would obviously be folly to give our Teu- tonic friends the same liberty as heretofore.
After war was declared the Germans only gave British and enemy subjects a few days in which to clear out of their colony of Kiachow, and there was certainly no intention of allowing the British to continue their business pursuits in this place. Under the circumstances it is impossible to under- stand why our Colonial Authorities acted with such peculiar leniency. Perhaps they, too, were under the impression that we owe a great debt to the Germans.
The wholesale incarceration of all Bri- tish subjects in Germany immediately war
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It
was declared was an innovation by Germany and was carried out with far less considera. tion to foreigners than we have shown. is a remarkable fact that the Germans both in trade and war, after doing us injury, ex- pect us continually to present them with the other cheek, so that they can smack that hard also. They are also the first to cry out and make an elegant fuss if their own interests are threatened, or if anything in the nature of retaliation is employed. There may have been no exact precedent for the liquidations in Hongkong, Singapore and elsewhere, but there was a very real necessity which led our authorities to take action, and it is regrettable that such action did not take place earlier and reciprocate in detail the treatment prepared for British subjects in Kiachow by the Germans.
It is known the Government of Hong-
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