What is the position that our government should take in the
conference? While exercising all due courtesy and exhibiting every
care possible for the feelings of those in attendance, it should
still have the Christian courage to face the facts as they have been
and as they are, and to insist upon it that all the nations present
see those facts and, basing their actions upon those facts, adopt so
far as possible the Christian methods that will promote the welfare
of all the peoples of the Far East, including Japan, so far as these
problems of the Conference are concerned. If this is done, it does
not mean that Japan's future or China's future is endangered. It
means that every militaristic policy must be abandoned, but that the
industrial, social, and even political future of all the nations,
including Japan, will be better secured than can be possible in any
other way. It will mean that the welfare of the inhabitants of China,
including Manchuria and Shantung, of Siberia and of the islands of
the Pacific, will be promoted by encouraging in every way possible
their industrial development, by protecting them if necessary by
joint international influence against aggression from without, and so
far as possible by encouraging within those countries policies which
will secure order, peace, and the development of the individuals
toward acquiring a capacity for self-government which they seem to
have been attaining so far only to a most unsatisfactory degree.
Above all, the guiding spirit, with its clear-sightedness and rigid
adherence to practical conditions as they are, should be the spirit
of peace and righteousness.