LIST OF TREATIES CONNECTED WITH THE CHINA QUESTION, 1689-1898.

LIST OF TREATIES CONNECTED WITH THE CHINA QUESTION, 1689-1898.-Continued.

? Tien-tsin. Peking.

LIST OF TREATIES CONNECTED WITH THE CHINA QUESTION, 1689-1898.—Continued.

London
Seoul
Peking.

N

XV

RENEWED AGGRESSIONS

OT content with innumerable aggressions and ex

torted treaty concessions, Western nations boldly discussed the dismemberment of China as certain to come, and authors and journalists disputed as to which country should possess the richest parts of the Empire whose impotence to defend itself was taken for granted. Chinese ministers in Europe and America reported these discussions to their superiors in Peking. The English papers in China republished some of the articles and added many effective ones of their own, so that speedily all the better-informed Chinese came to know that foreigners regarded China as "the carcass of the East."

Nor was all this talk empty boasting.

China saw that France

was absorbing Siam and had designs on Syria; that Britain was already lord of India and Egypt and the Straits Settlements; that Germany was pressing her claims in Asiatic Turkey; that Russia had absorbed Siberia and was striving to obtain control of Palestine, Persia and Korea; and that Italy was trying to take Abyssinia. Moreover the Chinese perceived that of the numerous islands of the world, France had the Loyalty, Society, Marquesas, New Hebrides and New Caledonia groups, and claimed the Taumotu or Low Archipelago; that Great Britain had the Fiji, Cook, Gilbert, Ellice, Phoenix, Tokelan and New Zealand groups, with northern Borneo, Tasmania, and the whole of continental Australia, besides a large assortment of miscellaneous islands scattered over the world wherever they would do the most good; that Germany possessed the Marshall group and Northeast New Guinea, and divided with England

THE BRITISH LEGATION GUARD, PEKING (From a photograph by the Rev. C. A. Killie)