1914 Part 1
Bai Lang had not remained idle, in a surprise pivot he had departed his wintering camps in Honan shifted east, recrossed into Anhui, where he had been campaigning in November and commenced to a pillaging well in excess of what he'd been up to before. That should have actually been a relief as far as news went, even accounting for Percy's warning regarding guns flowing out of Canadian cities like Vancouver and Victoria to support the White Wolf. It wasn't, among Bai Lang's latest victims were a French spy... well officially he was 'just a catholic priest', but it wasn't as if Allen hadn't known the man was a spy... Whether or not Bai Lang had known was debatable, but since it was known to the US and the British, Hayashi had probably known so it wasn't impossible that such had passed to the brigand. He probably hadn't, but it didn't matter.
It didn't matter if he knew or not. It didn't matter if he had been a spy. The public didn't care. A French national, and a member of the clergy, was dead and that was enough to put the French into a furorious clamor (and demand further concessions of course), and spook the missionary community just as they had been starting to settle back down. So, no this shift and pivot back into Anhui was not actually good news.
"Do we tell the state department?" about the French sneering to Yuan behind the scenes...
"I'll mention it, I'm more leery about telling Jordan... or Japan for that matter." A pause, "Everything going on and all,"
There was the shuffling of feet, "Speaking of ongoings with England and Japan," Griswold muttered, "This business in the papers,"
"The army is investigating,"
"Thats gonna be great," Someone to his left muttered, and Allen had to agree. Obviously the Navy had just been caught with its hand in the cookie jar so to speak, but with Navy Prime Minister, and Siemens having explictly admitted to bribery over the telegraph of all damned things this was going to get messy... or rather already had.
"Mitsui is involved too," Another member of the Cadre added stirring the pot. Not that it needed stirring, but the whole thing was a great way to start the year, "I mean they had to be given their siemens's side of things." The man continued rambling on as looks were exchanged. Not that bribery was unheard, far from it. The British might have had laws against making such overtures, but it was no secret that it happened, and as long as it stayed out of the public eye the English had been lapse... well selective about enforcing it. There was no telling though how Berlin would react to this.
... realistically if it had been an army scandal telling Japan about the French machinations on rail development they'd probably raise a fuss, "I think we should go ahead and tell Shinnosuke, if he passes it along he does." It was not the sort of thing to put in the telegram, but if it was passed to the Army headquarters in Korea and then on to Tokyo well then that was that.
"Should we really be getting involved in the Army Navy game?"
They were involved. By participating as a foreign observer in the Russo-Japanese War Allen had defacto picked sides, and realistically the Japanese service branches had a tendency to transpose their associations to other countries the same. If you were army, barring select distinctions, generally assumed to be at least sympathetic to the Army's political objectives. The bigger issue was getting involved in the factional cliquish tendencies that sub divided the army, and this might have been easier if Taro hadn't gotten the cancer. "We tell Shinnosuke, he does with it what he will."
"And assuming your pops hasn't heard," Bill interjected leaning on the table, "We'll tell him. He can tell the new guy," Not that Reinsch seemed like to do anything about it... "Be easier if Rockhill was still in the job, even if he'd be partial to Paris's position."
He'd rather Hayashi not been ambassador to Japan. It was so much easier to abide agreements between gentlemen when you didn't want to shoot the son of a bitch, Allen nodded, "The Beiyang are scrambling the divisions under Qirui, but the move back into Anhui have taken them by surprise, and its going to be expensive." Which if the French were angling for more concessions in exchange for money would still have likely set the English off, even if the French were angling under the misunderstanding with the bankers of London and Jordan late last year. "We didn't expect Bai Lang to do this, and doubt anyone else did either, but he can engage in the whole sale looting of Anhui to feed his army." Which besides allowing Bai Lang to rampaging through the countryside would make Yuan Shikai look bad, and probably piss Yuan off, which was probably the point.
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He tossed the Tokyo paper on the desk, and shook his head. There would be a Diet inquiry, but that was no surprise... it didn't help the Navy had been preparing to ask for an even bigger budget of course so that had been latched on to as well.
Cole snorted at his expression, turned popped the latch on the trunk to inspect the delivery.
"Did you want self loading rifles or not?" He demanded.
"I'll take them, but the business of the matter is always going to be keeping them clean." Cole shrugged, "I'll have the commandos start with them immediately, but the fact that its designed to switch to a bolt action still irks me."
"Please don't let Perce hear you use that word," Graves would go into conniptions, or have the vapors... or both. He was already leery of Cole's volunteers when they'd been strictly mining and other technical experts, never mind when they'd been armed during the Xinhai as part of the Railway Protection Force.
"Don't see why he's so finicky Dennys is pretty well rehabilitated. England letting them have self government and all," A snort as he worked the bolt of the rifle open, "If you ask me Graves is just putting on airs." Which could very well be true, but that wasn't the point, "I'll have the guns taken to my 'gentlemen volunteers'," Eye roll, "And the sporting club will evaluate the guns from the perspective of amateurs engaging their favored hobby."
"Alright, go on then."
Cole passed the elder Forrest on the way out, "The vickers guns?"
"Indeed. The Spanish contract order, as well as the guns the Mexicans decided not to pay for from Neuhausen."
A nod. "As to the other business, it doesn't matter about the priest's other activities. Washington doesn't like priests getting killed, and the papers back home are already clutching their pearls over the matter. As to the French machinations on Kwangsi," He reached inside his jacket and pulled out an envelope, unpacked the papers and laid them out, "Reinsch likely hasn't time to get through them, with all of his sight seeing, but when he gets back it'll probably upset him nearly as much as it will Grey." Though for different policy reasons of course, Open Door versus British Sphere of Influence games. "We will see how that plays out."
He did wonder what Reinsch's response would be though to such a flagrant French violation of the existing status quo when the secret agreement was put out... of course Yuan's government hadn't agreed to anything yet, but they probably would... and of course Kwangsi to Yunnan was one thing. "What?"
A set of second papers appeared, "As if the French weren't agitating enough with that, they also want to run a rail into Szechwan which will certainly put the English up in arms."
It was all southern China, and well beyond his own sphere of influence... but this... "The second of the opium wars, China was able to drive the French out of the province then,"
"Lest you forget, the game is the game." The elder Forrest replied, "And they have a point, The British inability to get the proposed linkage of a single line running north south has proven an issue," Never mind pesky little things like rebellion that had made such difficult. "That is ultimately just a fig leaf to trot out, and the Brits will just turn to bang on the law, and then to just make things more complicated is Japan's interest in Hankow."
That was still far enough south he was uncomfortable trying to reach down there. They just didn't have the resources, and Washington was to prone to being pulled in too many different directions. "So it is," He agreed, and quieted lamented the habit of endlessly litigating disagreements that such disagreements so frequently resulted... which of course would then be ignored entirely if one side thought they could get away with, which was almost surely going to be the case here. He had been ordering his thoughts but the old man spoke up.
"What are the chances this will cause Bai Lang, or that he is already in the process of, making another pivot south."
He considered, "I think that would predicated on if this news," if it came out to the general public, "stirred something along the lines of the Huakuang Railway debacle," That which toppled the dynasty as John Jordan called it. "You disagree?"
"The British are opposed to any further expansions, 'encroachments' as they would say, into the sphere of influence into the Yangtze basin. France and Russia have agreed to support one another's existing conditions in the valley, but," The Russian coal and iron works were hemorrhaging money and had been for a few years now, and not in any small part to being out competed by Japanese competitors, and Japan who wanted more say there, "Japan will inevitably push for more influence... I don't think they could afford the foreign entanglement at the moment... in that respect the scandal is useful... if only that it buys time. Now would be an ideal time to promulgate whatever economic machinations and planning you have in Shansi."
"We're already in the process of that, besides petroleum prospecting, and new mines, coal in particular will start to switch from replacing imported sources," And China had imported vast volumes of coal simply because the inefficiencies of the domestic mines largely still labored as if it were the middle ages with only limited use of dynamite... and that was ridiculous. The country shouldn't have been imported some two million tonnes. "And we'll increase exports to Japan commiserate over this year, and next. Iron and then steel will likely follow suit," or would have since the principle consumer would have been Japan's domestic shipyards, which was something of an uncertainty if the Navy was being investigated.
A nod, "I would get that out there, given the other mission to Europe that's running." He half expected that to turn into a crack about five year plans for corporate expansion and development, but it didn't come. There were no comments for or against moving towards acquiring aircraft, or even a pivot towards more machine tooling from the state... just the matter of what was sure to bring in or at least look at whatever new developments in arms Europe had invented.
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Commentary: So it is now February of 1914, this starts the last stretch of chapters leading into June and then the epilogue that will conclude the period of the timeline basically prior to Yuan Shikai's death, with all of the effects that will have on China. Obviously the epilogue as I've said is the news that Europe is now at war, that what will be the first world war has begun with everyone mobilizing. The next part in this timeline will open after the fizzling out of the national protection war after Yuan Shikai's death in 1916; so sometime in late July 1916 after Duan Qirui has taken up as prime minister in Peking. Yuan Shikai's death, and Qirui's power struggles mark the separating out from national authority, and also comes at time where not only is world war 1 going on but also that as a by product of that and the internal struggles there are a lot of external pressures.
[White Wolf should be somewhere of the ballpark of about 100k words, 1916-1918 will probably be shorter than that, but not substantively so.]
As I mentioned in the Follow on extra when the Manchu Restoration happens in 1917 is what marks the transition to autonomous zone or region, and this change in status coincides with other events internal and external, but is important for what happens in 1918. Never mind 1919, when on May 4
th the riots break out in response to Versailles, or on May 5
th when John Jordan and the diplomatic body introduced the Arms Embargo.
As is often quoted Stimson who will be heading State at the end of the decade would go to say that 'Gentlemen do not read each other's mail.' Which of course is utter poppycock the US had been intercepting cable traffic, and reading mail since at least the civil war, and the intercepting of mail by post occurred during the revolution (and quite frankly probably before, given the colonial sentiments in the 1760s and 70s, but that's harder to prove.) The idea that we weren't, or shouldn't read other people's cables may have been intended as we shouldn't read our allies, but given the context I think Stimson was probably just out of touch with political reality. And yes, historically Russia didn't encrypt most of its communications until well into the first world war, and that was intermittent at best at times. This would go on to plague both the Reds and Whites in the civil war where it was relatively lackluster and this only really changed in the late twenties where most countries began to make the cryptographic improvements that world war 2 often talks about.
To sidebar back to population, Chirol stated that China had a population of some eight hundred fifty million inhabitants (compared to fifty million japanese) though it does seem like he didn't write everything in one go given his essay has some time matters. (Specifically 'august 12 last' referring to the renewal of the Anglo-Japanese alliance, which means that the completed paper was probably published no earlier than 1912, yet I don't recall any mentions of the Xinhai revolt having taken place. This is interesting because most of the British distrust of Japan began to circulate after the rebellion, and only really began to build up in British East Asia policy wonks following 1916. (Also its hilarious to read British versus American perspectives on each other.)
