Later on Tuesday the House of Commons entered upon heated
and not very profitable discussion of the Chinese ques- tion. Mr. Curzon, who spoke for the Government, was in
earlier part of his speech not only confused in matter, but somewhat irritating and irritable in manner. He was z more efficient defender of the Ministerial policy when he gave a summary of the work actually accomplished by a Government which it has most absurdly come to be the fashion to regard as having not only achieved nothing, but actually lost valuable national assets in China. (1) The Government had got for England the most valuable mining concession ever given in China ; (2) they were backing the New-chang Railway ; (3) they had obtained regulations which would open every river in China ; (4) they were pressing on the matter of great trunk lines in China, but the difficulty here was not to get concessions but conces- sionaires; (5) they had obtained a great strip of territory at Kowloon; (6) they had permission to extend our Burman railway system into China ; (7) they had got new treaty ports opened; (8) they had obtained the lease of Wei-hai-wei ; (9} they had got the headship of the Customs. All this was secured in six months. Sir Edward Grey followed in a weighty speech, which tended, however, to force the Government on to wrong lines of policy, and was, therefore in our opinion, extremely mischievous. In the Yangtse region he declared that we had been given no special interest at all. We were in danger of falling between the two stools of "the open door" and "the spheres of influence."
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