America. Owing to the peculiar relations between the provincial and imperial administrations in China, the securing of a concession is almost invariably a difficult and complex matter, even when foreign diplomatic opposition is not encountered. The necessity of gaining the support or passive assent of a long line of provincial and petty local officials as well as that of the Imperial Government at Peking, creates innumerable places where antagonistic diplomacy may lurk in ambush to assassinate a project. As a consequence, it has become almost impossible to secure any important concession without gaining for it the passive support of other foreign legations in Peking by a reciprocal arrangement of some kind. For instance, when Russia, Germany and France were respectively endeavoring to carry through at Peking the concessions for the Manchurian, Shantung and Peking-Hankow railways, they only succeeded by diplomatically pooling their issues. Neither would permit the others to progress unless it, too, got what was wanted. Americans are familiar enough with this process at home; but American interests in the Far East have usually been compelled to make such headway as they could without much diplomatic assistance, even while encountering at every hand the hostile machinations of rival projects supported by all the influence their respective governments can exert.
Of the foreign concessions which have been made to cover and advance far-reaching political designs in China, and have at the same time ex-
