of money which has ever been afforded in the history of Asia.

The phenomenon, however, was complex and we must be careful to
understand its workings. A mercantile curiosity, to find the
parallel for which we must go back to the Middle Ages in Europe,
when "free cities" such as those of the Hanseatic League
plentifully dotted river and coast line, served to increase the
general difficulties of a situation which no one formula could
adequately cover. Extraterritoriality, by creating the "treaty
port" in China, had been the most powerful weapon in undermining
native economics; yet at the same time it had been the agent for
creating powerful new counter-balancing interests. Though the
increasingly large groups of foreigners, residing under their own
laws, and building up, under their own specially protected system
of international exchange, a new and imposing edifice, had made
the hovel-like nature of Chinese economics glaringly evident, the
mercantile classes of the New China, being always quick to avail
themselves of money-making devices, had not only taken shelter
under this new and imposing edifice, but were rapidly extending it
of their own accord. In brief, the trading Chinese were
identifying themselves and their major interests with the treaty-
ports; they were transferring thither their specie and their
credits; making huge investments in land and properties, under the
aegis of foreign flags in which they absolutely trusted. The
money-interests of the country knew instinctively that the native
system was doomed and that with this doom there would come many
changes; these interests, in the way common to money all the world
over, were insuring themselves against the inevitable.

The force of this--politically--became finally evident in 1911;