Page:Chang Tso-lin's struggle against the communist menace.pdf/23

AGAINST THE COMMUNIST MENACE 5 BECAME MILITARIZED CHAPTER I

of 1901 with China which gave the Powers the right to garrison the railway between Peking and the sea so that the Legations would never again be placed in the same grim predicament which had almost resulted in their wholesale massacre. It may be remarked, in parentheses, that the precise number of troops then held necessary to carry out this task was 12,000 men; a garrison of 8,000 in Tientsin, 2,000 in Peking as Legation-guards; and the rest distributed in railway-posts along the 250 miles of railway track between the Capital and Shanhaikwan. It is interesting to record that to-day, after the lapse of 27 years, an addition of 4,000 men to this total is all that is held necessary to stave off all the Nationalist armies if they succeed in reaching the north.

The Germans in Shantung, like the Russians in Manchuria, merely felt the backwash of these events. Politically, this great convulsion was more important in its indirect consequences than in any harm actually done. It made the next war inevitable because it bred international truculence, and intensified rivalry and hatred.