The German Government owns all the land in and about Tsing-tau, and will not sell save on condition that approved buildings are erected within three years. The single tax plan has been adopted, that is, there is no tax on buildings but there is a six per cent. tax on all land that is sold. This shuts out the land speculator who has injured so many American cities. No man can buy cheap land and let it lie idle while it rises in value as the result of his neighbour's improvements and the growth of the community. The German Government will do its own speculating and reap for itself the increment of its costly and elaborate improvements. It is making a noble city. Streets, sewers, buildings, docks, sea walls, harbour-dredging, tree planting--all point to great and far-reaching plans, while under pretext of guarding the railroad, troops are being gradually pushed into the interior. The Kaomi garrison, in the hinterland eighteen miles beyond the Kiao-chou city line and sixty- four from Tsing-tau, consisted of 100 men when I was there in the spring of 1901. A few months later it was 1,000. Plainly the Germans are moving in. The ease and dispatch with which Germany succeeded in obtaining an enormously valuable strategic point in the rich province of Shangtung aroused the cupidity of rival nations, and they threw off all pretense to decency in their scramble for further territories. Russian statesmen had long ago seen that the Pacific Ocean was to be the arena of world events of colossal significance to the race. We have noted in a former chapter how she had already extended her territory till she touched the Pacific Ocean on the far north and how, partly that she might develop it, but primarily that she might have a highway through it to the great ocean which lies beyond, she had begun the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, the late Czar, Alexander III, guaranteeing out of his own private funds 350,000,000 rubles towards the necessary expense. The most southern port of Russia on the Pacific Ocean was Vladivostok, which was therefore made the terminus of the line and rapidly and strongly fortified. But Russia was not content with a harbour which is closed by ice six months in the year. She therefore began to press her way southward through Manchuria. In November, 1894, Japan had wrested from China the peninsula terminating in Port Arthur, and the treaty of Shimonoseki, at the close of the war, had given Japan the Liao-tung peninsula, opened four Manchurian ports to foreign trade, and conceded to Japan valuable commercial rights in Manchuria, rights which gave the Japanese virtual ascendancy. Ostensibly in the interests of China, but really of her own ambition, Russia gravely said that it would never do to permit Japan to remain in Manchuria, virtuously declaring that ``the integrity of China must be preserved at all costs.'' She persuaded France and Germany to join her in notifying the Japanese