and began to slowly push the other powers out, such as the Germans in the Twenty-One Demands (1915). The delineating line between Russian (north) and Japanese (south) spheres of influences in China was the Chinese Eastern Railway. In February 1915, marines from the Imperial Japanese Navy ships based in Singapore helped suppress a mutiny by Indian troops against the British government. Events of 1917 On 18 December 1916 the British Admiralty again requested naval assistance from Japan. The new Japanese cabinet under Prime Minister Terauchi Masatake was more favorably inclined to provide military assistance, provided that the British government back Japan's territorial claims to the newly acquired German possessions in the South Pacific and Shandong. When Germany announced the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare on 1 February 1917, the British government agreed. Two of the four cruisers of the First Special Squadron at Singapore were sent to Cape Town, South Africa, and four destroyers were sent to the Mediterranean for basing out of Malta, headquarters of the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet. Rear-Admiral Kōzō Satō on the cruiser and 10th and 11th destroyer units (eight destroyers) arrived in Malta on 13 April 1917 via Colombo and Port Said. Eventually this Second Special Squadron totaled three cruisers (Akashi, , , 14 destroyers (8 , 4 , 2 ex-British Acorn-class), 2 sloops, 1 tender (Kanto). The 17 ships of Second Special Squadron carried out escort duties for troop transports and anti-submarine operations against attacks from German and Austro-Hungarian submarines operating from bases along the eastern Adriatic, the Aegean Sea, from Constantinople, thus securing the vital eastern Mediterranean sea route between the Suez Canal and Marseilles, France. The Japanese squadron made a total of 348 escort sorties from Malta, escorting 789 ships containing around 700,000 soldiers, thus contributing greatly to the war effort, for a total loss of 72 Japanese sailors killed in action. A total of 7,075 people were rescued by the Japanese from damaged and sinking ships. This included the rescue by the destroyers Matsu and Sakaki of nearly 3000 persons from the troopship which was hit by a German torpedo on 4 May 1917. No Japanese ships were lost during the deployment but on 11 June 1917 Sakaki was hit by a torpedo from Austro-Hungarian submarine U-27 off Crete; 59 Japanese sailors died. With the American entry into World War I on 6 April 1917, the United States and Japan found