Although many of the best Koreans who had trusted in the Japanese had been disappointed to see none of the promised reforms, great was their added anger and alarm when on the seventeenth of June the Japanese authorities made the suggestion “that all uncultivated land in the Peninsula as well as all other national resources should be open to the Japanese. The Koreans now indeed raised a storm of protest. The time was unpropitious. Koreans recognized that the carrying out of this would result in a Japanese protectorate, though the latter had probably not believed the Koreans capable of following out the logic of this.”[7] [7] Hulbert’s “History of Korea.” They however, not being prepared at that time to carry matters to extremes, after repeated attempts at a compromise, at length temporarily dropped it. The Koreans, in order to oppose the encroachments of the Japanese, had organized a society “for the promotion of peace and safety” (Po an Whai) and many exciting discussions took place as to how to defeat the purposes of the Japanese, while continually a stream of memorials poured in to the Emperor, beseeching him not to yield to the demands of the invaders. The latter, therefore, forcibly broke in on one of the meetings and carried leading members to the police station, and at other times raided the meeting-place, arrested other members and confiscated their papers. They further warned the Korean government that these doings must be firmly put down, and insisted that those who kept on sending memorials against the Japanese must be arrested and punished. The position of the Emperor at that time, as ever since, was certainly not an enviable one, and then if ever was it true that “uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” Indeed the poor Korean Emperor’s crown was sitting very loosely just then and there seemed no way in sight to keep it from rolling quite away. Japanese troops in Seoul were increased at this time to six thousand. The members of the Po an Whai, on the other hand, sent circular letters throughout the country. News spreads in a marvellous way in Korea, faster than by mail, almost as by telegraph the human wireless flies from mouth to mouth, from hand to hand, and thousands of members were enrolled in every province. In August Japanese military authorities asked for six thousand coolies to work on the railroad at handsome wages, but the report got out that these men were to be on the fighting line. Perhaps they distrusted their employers, but, whatever the reason, only two thousand men could be obtained and there were frequent bloody fights in the villages when the effort was made to force men to work. The tide of public opinion was now running high against them on account of the waste land measure and the violation of the right of free speech, which had hitherto rarely been interfered with by their own government in spite of all its faults.