oration. And the galleries above, behaving more and more like a first
night audience, interrupted with rounds of applause whenever there were
definite allusions to disarmament. He finished and declared the
conference open and departed. Mr. Balfour followed, echoing the
President’s sentiments in a few well chosen words and proposing
Secretary Hughes for the Chairman of the conference.
The Hall became aware of a check in the onward flow of the proceedings.
An interpreter got up and repeated Mr. Balfour’s speech in French for
the benefit of the French delegation. He had made a shorthand note as
Mr. Balfour spoke. This, we learned, was to be the procedure throughout
the conference. Every speech, question and interruption was to be dealt
with in this interlinear manner. Fortunately, it was not necessary to do
this in the case of the President’s address, nor was it necessary in the
case of the address of Secretary Hughes, which was now impending because
these had already been printed and distributed and a translation made of
them.
Their linguistic isolation is likely to prove unfortunate for the
French. The Belgian, the Dutch, the Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese
delegations all speak in English and listen to the English speeches.
Consequently, the French are in a position in which they seem to be the
most foreign people present. This must be disconcerting to them now.
It will be much more disconcerting if, at a later stage, German
delegates speaking English should appear upon some extension or side
committee of the conference. But I do not see how it can be avoided. The
French are a little out of touch in the conference because of this; they
must be much more out of touch with the incessant conversation in clubs
and at dinner tables and everywhere in Washington, which makes the
atmosphere in which the conference is working.
This, however, is a note by the way. Secretary Hughes took the chair and
delivered his address. It was a very carefully arranged surprise and its
effect was really dramatical. It jumped the conference abruptly from the
fine generalizations that had hitherto engaged it to immediately
practical things. Secretary Hughes sketched out what was evidently a
carefully worked out scheme, a most explicit scheme, for the complete
cessation of naval armament competition.
America wanted at the very outset, he said, to convince the world that
she meant business in the conference, and so she had taken this
unexpected step of putting immediate practical proposals upon the table.
She would scrap completely all the ships she had still under
construction and all her older ships and she would discontinue all naval
construction for ten years if Britain and Japan would do the same.
She proposed that the naval strength of the three powers concerned
should remain for ten years in the ratio of: Britain, 22; America, 18,
and Japan, 10. In other words, she proposed so to fix things that no two
of these three powers can wage a conclusive naval war against each
other, but with America and Britain in a position to do so jointly
against Japan and with Japan at a great disadvantage against America,
even if she were to risk an inconclusive war with America on the chance
of Britain’s not coming in. And having unfolded this scheme, Secretary
Hughes concluded.
We were a little stunned. We had expected the opening meeting to be
preliminary, to stick to generalities. After Secretary Hughes had
finished, there was a feeling that we wanted to go away and think. But
the members of the House of Representatives were enjoying an unwonted
sense of being in the gallery, quite irresponsibly in the gallery, with
somebody else upon the floor. They burst in upon our statesmanlike
thoughts below with loud cries for “Briand!”
The atmosphere of friendly festival was reestablished. M. Briand spoke
eloquently—saying nothing whatever about the proposals of Secretary
Hughes—and sat down, and his still quite abstract praises of peace were
translated into English.
“Japan!” shouted the members of the House of Representatives, a theatre
gallery now in full cry. Japan spoke in English and its sentiments were
translated into French for the benefit of the foreigners. Japan
expressed admirable sentiments and said nothing whatever about the
proposals of Secretary Hughes.
Thereafter it would have been discourteous not to call for something
from Italy, China, Belgium, Holland and Portugal. They all spoke in
English, even Belgium spoke in English, and what they said was
translated into French. Nobody said anything whatever about the
proposals of Secretary Hughes. The gallery applauded each speech
heartily and the atmosphere of a first night was completely restored. We
dispersed to luncheons and tea parties and to talk before we wrote about
it. And as we tried to get it into focus in our minds it became clear
that much more than a ceremonial opening of the conference had occurred.
Secretary Hughes has made proposals that challenge the whole situation
in the Pacific. For if Japan accepts them—I do not see how they could be
otherwise than acceptable to the British—it puts Japan to so definite
and permanent a disadvantage that it amounts to an abandonment on the
part of Japan of the idea of fighting a war on the Pacific except as the
last desperate defensive resort under the pressure of an unavoidable
attack, and Japan can abandon that idea only if she can see her way
clearly without a war to all that she believes to be vitally necessary
to her.
It is possible to say that Secretary Hughes has narrowed down the work
of the conference by this sudden focusing of attention upon naval
warfare and Japan. But I do not think that is the case. The challenge he
has made cannot be taken up until a number of associated issues are
settled. Certainly his proposals have precipitated the work of the
conference from the clouds and beautiful generalities to the earth and
very concrete realities.
“You accept these proposals,” America says in effect. “If not, why not?”
Japan must accept or reply so and so. So from armaments we shall get to
the aims behind armaments; for no battleship is launched except against
a specific antagonist and for a specific end. And in the matter of aims
also the conference will presently have to consider what each power must
scrap for the common good and what it may be permitted to keep for its
own satisfaction.
Since Secretary Hughes made it clear that the conference is to approach
the inevitable general discussion of world peace by way of the sea and
the Pacific, since for a time France and Europe generally will sit
somewhat out of the limelight, it will be well, perhaps, if in my next
article I discuss a few elementary considerations about Japan.
VII
WHAT IS JAPAN?
Washington, Nov. 15.
Of all the national delegations assembled here in Washington, the most
acutely scrutinized, the most discussed and probably the least
understood is the Japanese. The limelight gravitates toward it, moved,
one feels, not so much by an extreme respect as by an inordinate
curiosity.
Of only one other people—I write as a spectator from overseas—does one
feel the same sense of the possibility of dramatically unexpected
things, and that is the Americans. The Japanese, we feel, we have not
found out, and the Americans, we feel, have not found out themselves.
Already the Americans have sprung one great surprise upon the
conference. Britain, France, Italy and the other powers in attendance
are comparatively calculable—so far as their representation goes. But
Japan is different; it is not built upon the same lines, it follows
different laws.
I went on Sunday night to the press reception at the Japanese
headquarters. The Ambassador is a buoyant man of the world, speaking
excellent English and thoroughly acclimatized to an American press
gathering. But many of the Japanese faces about him set my imagination
busy, putting them back into the voluminous robes and the sashes holding
the double swords with which I had first met them long ago in Japanese
prints, and which would have become them so much better.
Admiral Kato spoke in Japanese and Prince Tokugawa in English; they
welcomed the Hughes proposals with warm generalities and hopes for
peace—as we all hope for peace—with insufficient particulars. I got no
conversation with any Japanese; they were not talking to us; they did
not want to talk; it was a reception of hearty politeness and no
exchanges. I found myself falling back upon an earlier impression.
Some weeks ago I had a very illuminating talk in my garden at home with
two Japanese visitors, Mr. Mashiko and Mr. Negushi, who had come to
discuss various educational ideas with me. And they told me things that
seem to me to be fundamentally important in this question. “We build up
our children,” said Mr. Mushiko, “upon a diametrically different plan
from yours. We turn them the other way round. Obedience and devotion are
our leading thoughts. All our sentiment, all our stories and poetry, the
traditions of centuries, teach loyalty, blind, unquestioning loyalty, of
wife to husband, of man to his lord, of every one to the monarch.
“The loyalty is religious. So far as political and social questions go,
it is fundamental. But your training cultivates independence, free
thought, the unsparing criticism of superiors, institutions,
relationships. Perhaps it is better in the end and more invigorating;
but it seems to us wild and dangerous. * * * We begin to have a sort of
public opinion, but it is still diffident and timid.”
An American and an Englishman, he said, cared for his country because he
believed it belonged to him. A Japanese cared for his country because he
believed he belonged to it. One could not pass from one habit of mind to
the other, he thought, without grave risks and dangers. It is easier to
destroy obedience than to create responsibility.
I was reminded of that conversation the other day by a remark made by a
fellow journalist on the train to Washington:
“A Chinese will tell you what he thinks—like an American—but a Japanese
always feels he is an agent, even if he isn’t an accredited one.”
Now, this is very interesting and probably a very fundamental
comparison. This difference in spirit will make the Japanese people a
very different instrument from the American and English or French
people. It will make the Japanese Government a different thing from the
Governments it will be meeting in Washington. A people built up on
obedience can be held and wielded as no modern democratic people can be
held and wielded. It is different in kind.
Unless this point is kept in mind, there are certain to be great and
possibly dangerous misunderstandings in the Washington discussions.
There have possibly been very dangerous misunderstandings already of the
European powers by the Japanese. The Japanese are likely to think the
Atlantic Governments are more free to decide than they really are, and
that what they say is more conclusive than it really is, and the
Atlantic peoples are likely to think too much of the appearance of a
liberal public opinion in Japan and to imagine that a Japanese
Government may be thrown out and its policy changed much more easily
than is the case. But indeed Japan is a Government, a military
Government, holding its people in its hand like a staff or a weapon,
while America and France and Britain are people operating the
Governments, more or less imperfectly. In no relationship is confusion
upon this point more probable and more dangerous than between Japan and
Britain or France at the present time, and in no connection is there
greater need of perfectly plain statement.
Seeing that Britain is still a monarchy with many aristocratic forms, it
is fatally easy for a Japanese statesman to fall into the belief that
the British Government is as completely in control, and its officials as
able to bind or loose, as the Japanese Government and officials, and
because of this belief to trust to the private assurance and general
attitude of personages in high places far more than they are justified
in doing. The British democracy is very like the American democracy in
its inability to keep watching what is happening overseas; it is
preoccupied by domestic questions and things that are near to it. You
cannot expect a Wiltshire farmer or a Lancashire cotton spinner to keep
up, day by day, with the concession-hunting game in Persia or South
China. But if that game of concession hunting piles up to sufficiently
serious consequences, these democracies are likely to wake up in a
manner quite outside the Japanese range of possibilities. And to a large
extent the same is true of France.
It is the blessed privilege of an irresponsible journalist to say things
that no diplomatist could ever say, and upon the relations of Japan,
America and England there are certain truths that seem to need saying
very plainly at the present time. But though I am an irresponsible
journalist, it is also to be noted that I am a very English Englishman
and that I know the way of thinking of my people.
The British people have been sleeping happily upon the belief that war
with America is impossible. And for them it is impossible. In this
matter the British have a special and extraordinary instinct. They will
not fight the United States of America. I will not go into the peculiar
feelings that produce this disposition; they are feelings great numbers
of Americans do not understand and have indeed taken great pains not to
understand. But to the common British, fighting Americans would have
much the same relation to fighting other peoples that cannibalism would
have to eating meat.
I hear a certain type of American over here slowly and heavily debating
the Hughes proposals on the assumption that there may be a war of
America against Britain and Japan. Such an assumption is—if I may be
permitted the word—idiotic. As a people, the British have not been
thinking very much about the Pacific question. They have been
preoccupied by Ireland and their own economic troubles. But if that
question presently moves toward a level of intensity where war is
possible, let there be no mistake about it in Japan, the ordinary
English will be thinking with the Americans. They will read much the
same stuff because they have the same language, and think in the same
way because they have kindred habits of thought.
It will not matter then what assurances and sentiments the Japanese may
have had for official personages in Great Britain. For we are dealing
here not with a matter of agreements but with a kind of moral
gravitation. If there is a conflict the British masses will want to come
in on the American side, and if it seems likely to be in the least an
inconclusive conflict they will certainly come in. If the rulers of the
Japanese dream that any other combination is possible in the Pacific
they are under as dangerous a delusion as ever lured a great nation to
disaster.
But there are many signs that if ever the ruling people of Japan
entertained this delusion they are being disillusionized and that they
begin to realize that a war with America in the Pacific will mean a war
with America, Britain, and possibly—to judge from the recent astonishing
remark by that able writer “Pertinax”—France. France may use her
influence at Washington on behalf of Japan in certain matters, but that
is all Japan will get from France. The Japanese, I believe, now fully
realize this, and the trend of recent Japanese utterances is all in the
direction of discussion and the disavowal of any belligerent dreams.
Yet, Japan continues to arm, and though she now disavows war as her
method, she sits very proudly and stiffly in her weapons at the parley.
She may have limited and restrained her dreams, but there is still some
minimum in her mind beyond which she will not retreat without a
struggle. What is that minimum which will satisfy her without war? Will
it satisfy her for good, will it seem so permanently satisfactory to her
that she will be willing not only to set aside the thought of and
preparation for an immediate war, but—what is of far more
importance—enter into such a binding contract for her future
international relationships as will enable her to beat the swords of her
Samurai into ploughshares for good and all?
Is Japan peculiarly an obstacle to the practical, if informal,
federation of the world to which we all hope that things are moving?
When I try to frame a hopeful answer to that question, it occurs to me
with added force that Japan is not a people trying to express itself
through a Government as we Atlantic peoples are, but a Government, a
small ruling class, in effective possession of an obedience-loving
people. And I remember that that small ruling class has a long tradition
of romantic and chivalrous swordsmanship. Is that ruling class going to
keep its power and is it going to preserve its tradition? No one would
be more urgent than I for the complete disarmament of the entire world,
but no one could be more convinced of the unwisdom of disarmament by
America or any other power while any single country in the world
maintains a spirit that must lead at last to a resumption of warfare. TO
DISARM IN SUCH A SITUATION IS TO LEAVE THE TROUBLE TO ACCUMULATE UPON
OUR GRAND-CHILDREN; TO PATCH UP A TEMPORARY PEACE BASED ON THE PERMITTED
“EXPANSION” OF SUCH A POWER IS SIMPLY TO PREPARE FOR AN EXPANDED WAR IN
THE FUTURE.
But is that Japanese ruling class resolved at any cost, even at the cost
of another World War and at the risk of destroying Japan, to hold onto
its present power and to adhere rigidly to its tradition? In the last
hundred years Japan, because of her aristocracy and because of her
general obedience, has achieved feats of adaptation to new conditions
that are unparalleled in history. As we have noted, there have recently
been indications of further changes in the spirit of Japan.
She is said to be pressing forward with the education of the common
people and the liberation of thought and discussion. In the long run,
what is happening in the schools of Japan is of more importance to
mankind than what is happening in her dockyards. But at present we do
not know what is happening in the schools of Japan. One hears much of
New Japan and Liberal Japan, and there is even an unofficial
representative of the Japanese Opposition in Washington. But, so far as
we can judge at this distance, we must be guided by the policy and
methods of the Japanese Government.
Before we can judge these we must consider the nature of the field in
which they seem to clash most with American ideas and with American and
European interests, namely, China and Eastern Asia generally. In my next
paper I will ask, “What is China?” and consider the nature of the needs
and claims of Japan in regard to China and the prohibitions and the
renunciations the Western powers want to impose upon her. For it is on
account of these restrictions and prohibitions that Japan has been
building her battleships. Her fighting fleet is to secure her a free
hand in China and Siberia; it can have no other purpose. And I shall
take up the question whether the prohibitions and renunciations we want
to force upon Japan are not prohibitions and restrictions that we are
bound in fairness to impose equally upon all powers concerned with China
and the Far East. If the other powers are not prepared for extreme
general retractions and renunciation in China; if they want to bar out
Japan from aggressive practices and exclusive advantages that other
powers retain; if we cling to any sort of racial distinction in these
matters, then I shall submit, we are asking impossible things from Japan
and we are forcing her toward what must must be indeed a very desperate
gamble for her, a refusal to enter into this proposed disarmament
agreement—and that means war.
VIII
CHINA IN THE BACKGROUND
Washington, Nov. 16.
The Chinese propaganda in America and Western Europe seems on the whole
to be conducted more efficiently than the Japanese. And the Chinese
student, it seems to me, gets into closer touch with the educated
American and European because his is a democratic and not an
aristocratic habit of mind. He has an intensely Western sense of public
opinion.
The masses of China may be destitute, ignorant and disordered, but in
their mental habits they are modern and not mediæval, in the same sense
that the Japanese are mediæval and not modern. The Chinese seem to “get
on” with their Western social equivalents better than any of the Asiatic
people. And increasing multitudes of Chinese are learning English today;
it is the second language in China.
Now, if Japan is the figure in the limelight at Washington today, China
is the giant in the background and scene of the present Pacific drama.
We have had so much in the papers lately about these two countries, we
have been treated to such a feast of particulars about them, that most
of us have long since forgotten very thoroughly the broad facts of the
case, and it will be refreshing to recall them here and now.
Let us remind ourselves that China is a country with a population
amounting at the lowest estimate to between twice and three times the
population of the United States, or of France and England put together.
This population has the longest unbroken tradition of peaceful industry
in the world. It is essentially civilized; it respects learning and
civility profoundly. A common literature and ancient traditions keep its
people one.
In the past China has been divided again and again—always to reunite.
But it has become “old-fashioned,” dangerously old-fashioned, perhaps by
reason of its very stability; it has lagged behind most of the world in
the development of its transport and economic possibilities. In mineral
deposits and other natural resources and in the industrial capability of
its sturdy and intelligent population it has more undeveloped wealth
than any other single people in the world. It is only in the last
century or so that China has lagged behind.
Only a few centuries ago China was as civilized as Europe and
politically more stable. In a century or so she may be again the most
civilized and intelligent power in the world, flourishing in fellowship
and perfect understanding with the great states of America and Europe.
She may be—if she is not torn to pieces and kept in a state of
enfeeblement and disorder by the hostile action of external powers.
But at present China is in a state of political impotence. Her Manchu
imperialism has proved itself to be hopelessly inefficient and China is
now struggling to reconstruct upon modern republican lines, obviously
suggested by the American example. A few decades ago Japan astonished
the world by Europeanizing herself upon Prussian lines. China now, under
far less favorable conditions and with a vaster country and a less
disciplined people, is struggling to Americanize herself.
But it is no easy task to make over a people at one stride from a
mediæval autocracy to a modern democracy. It is far easier to
Prussianize than to Americanize, for in the one case you have only to
train an official class and in the other you must educate a whole
people. China is torn by dissensions; the south jars with the north; she
has two or more Governments, each claiming to be THE Chinese Government,
and whole provinces have fallen under the sway of military adventurers.
It is a distressing spectacle, but it was probably an inevitable phase
in the development of New China.
Before we fall a prey to anti-Chinese propaganda it is well to recall
how long it has always taken to build up the necessary understandings
and habits of association upon which a new political system rests.
France, for example, was a land of revolutions and political instability
for nearly a century after the Great Revolution. America wrangled feebly
and dangerously for several years after the War of Independence, before
she established her Federal Government; she only cemented her union
after a colossal struggle; she was not really and securely one until a
century had elapsed.