Page:Chang Tso-lin's struggle against the communist menace.pdf/21

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AGAINST THE COMMUNIST MENACE 3

BECAME MILITARIZED CHAPTER I

A copy of this Cassini Convention was conjured away from the Tsungli-Yamen (as China’s Foreign Office was then called) and duly published throughout the world, causing an immense sensation which was by no means allayed by Russia’s denials. And presently, when the great Statesman Li Hung Chang went to Moscow to attend the coronation of the youthful Nicholas, on his succession to the Throne, fresh reports of secret arrangements became current and created fresh alarm. As Count de Witte’s Memoirs duly reveal, a secret Russo-Chinese Treaty was in point of fact duly signed at Moscow as a pendent to the granting of the trans-Manchurian railway concession, a treaty in which Russia undertook to defend China against the attack of any third Power, a thing incidentally she had no intention of doing. Before the noise of these happenings had died away, Germany (who with France had been associated with Russia in intervening against Japan in the Liaotung Peninsula) suddenly came into the picture, two German missionaries murdered in Shantung being the excuse for the landing of a German naval force at Tsingtao (Kiaochow), the harbour Russia had already earmarked for herself.

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