sovereign rights which were acquired by Germany for the remaining 78 of the 99 years of the lease, and to retain only what other governments have in many other parts of China, namely, the right to build and operate the railway under a corporation and to exploit the mines in the immediate neighbourhood of that railway. In other words, she retains only the rights of economic concessionaries. Personally, I am frank to say that I think all of these nations have invaded some of the essential rights of China by going too far in the concessions which they have demanded, but that is an old story now, and we are beginning a new story. In the new story we all have the right to balk about what they have been doing and to convince them, by the pressure of the public opinion of the world, that a different course of action would be just and right. I am for helping China and not turning away from the only way in which I can help her. Those are the facts about Shantung. Of all the important decisions of the Peace Conference, none worried the President so much as that relating to the Shantung settlement, and in a speech at Des Moines, on September 6, 1919, he expressed his dissatisfaction in the following words: There is the settlement, which you have heard so much discussed, about that rich and ancient province of Shantung in China. I do not like that settlement any better than you do, but these were the circumstances: In order to induce Japan to cooperate in the war and clear the Pacific of the German power, England, and subsequently France, bound themselves without any qualifications to see to it that Japan got anything in China that Germany had and that Japan would take it away from her, upon the strength of which promise Japan proceeded to take away Kiauchow and occupy the portions of Shantung Province which had been ceded by China for a term of years to Germany. The most that could be got out of it was that in view of the fact that America had nothing to do with it, the Japanese were ready to promise that they would give up every item of sovereignty which Germany would otherwise have enjoyed in Shantung Province and return it without restriction to China, and that they would retain in the province only the economic concessions such as other nations already had elsewhere in China—though you do not hear anything about that—concessions in the railway and the mines which had become attached to the railway for operative purposes. But suppose that you say that is not enough. Very well, then, stay out of the Treaty, and how will that accomplish anything? England and France are bound and cannot escape their obligation. Are you going to institute a war against Japan and France and England to get Shantung back for China? That is an operation which does not commend itself to the present generation.