The Secretary of State to Chargé Wilson.
Washington, March 30, 1906.
(In answer to Mr. Wilson’s telegram of March 28, Mr. Root says that obstructions due to military exigencies, while perhaps explaining temporary restrictions of visiting aliens, does not meet the rapidly developing situation of the absorption of a great part of the commercial and mining opportunities of Manchuria by the freely admitted Japanese. Such opportunities are absolutely closed now to aliens, and even the establishment and recovery of rights acquired, before the late war by American citizens and others are so impeded as to occasion loss and injury to the interested parties. The department is informed that in some quarters, as at Newchwang, the military authorities have decreed land registration for effecting valuable transfers with a view to their subsequent validation by China. If this condition continues China may find herself, after the Japanese occupancy has ceased, the merely nominal sovereign of a territory of which the temporary occupants have appropriated the material advantages.)