Events Leading up to the Tientsin Blockade

THE SITUATION I found in Tientsin was so abnormal that I must devote some space to an outline of the events which had led up to the blockade that was in force when I arrived. I should never have found myself Consul-General in Tientsin but for the China Incident. Until a few years ago, the Consular Service in China, like that in Japan, was a closed one. The Chinese language, again like that of Japan, is a life-time study, while the Chinese mentality is sufficiently different from that of other nationalities to make it only understandable after long experience. Finally, extra-territoriality presents problems such as are not met with by Consuls in other countries. Consequently the Consular officer appointed to China remained there throughout his career unless he was translated to higher spheres and all the Consular posts were naturally filled from the China Service.

But in 1937 a local scrap at the Marco Polo Bridge between Chinese troops and the Japanese garrison stationed in North China developed into what was actually war between China and Japan though the latter country, for reasons of its own, never declared war but insisted on calling it an incident – the China Incident. By 1939 Japan had occupied the greater part of China's seaboard and had seized most of China's railways as far inland as Hankow. They had already occupied Tientsin and Peking in the early days of the war and had set up a puppet Chinese regime. This, however, had to obey the orders of the Japanese army and, for all practical purposes, North China (and other occupied territories) was under martial law.

The foreign concessions in Tientsin were enclaves of foreign interest that soon proved obnoxious to the Japanese conqueror. There were still four remaining – the British, the French, the Italian and the Japanese. These concessions had, by Treaty and custom, rights of local self-administration and managed their own domestic affairs. The British concession was administered by a Municipal Council consisting of six British and six Chinese members elected by the rate-payers, the Chairman being British. Its ‘constitution’ was laid down by the Municipal Regulations, popularly known as the Land Regulations, issued by the British Ambassador under authority from the British Government.