endlessly about the fickleness of the French and the political
inefficiency of the Americans and foretold the certainty of a break-up
of the United States, just as today they sneer at Young China and
foretell the political disintegration of the Chinese. And we have to
bear in mind that the forces of reorganization and renewal in China
struggle against peculiar difficulties and interferences quite outside
the happier experiences of France and America. In particular, they
struggle against an intolerable and paralyzing amount of foreign
interference.
The brilliant series of adventures and accidents by which a London
trading company added the Empire of Great Mogul as a picturesque but
incongruously big jewel to the British Crown set an extraordinarily bad
precedent in Asiatic affairs. It obsessed European political thought
with the impossible dream of carving up all Asia into similar domains.
The Mogul’s empire was itself an empire of conquest in a land saturated
by ideas of caste, and this gave all these European adventurers the
attitude of high caste men benevolently consuming inferior races.
In that spirit, Europe—with Japan coming in presently as a hopeful
student of European methods—had been trying to cook, carve up and fight
for the portions of China for nearly a century, treating these wonderful
people as an inferior race. The very worst that can be said about Japan
with regard to China is that she has been too vigorously European.
Consider how it would have been with the United States in the years of
discord that led up to the Civil War if these difficulties had been
complicated by three such embarrassments as these: First, that most
foreigners, except now the Germans and Austrians, are outside the reach
of the native courts, that their disputes with Chinese go before special
foreign courts, that they are specially favored in regard to property
and shipping; secondly, that the Chinese Government is restricted from
raising revenue by any tariff above a flat rate of 5 per cent., and that
they are also strictly restricted to 2½ per cent. in their interior dues
upon foreign (but not Chinese) trade, so that they are in fact unable to
raise enough revenue to maintain an efficient Government; and thirdly,
that nearly all the Chinese railways—and as every American knows,
transport is the very life of modern state—are in the grip of this
foreign country or that.
These are the open and manifest inconveniences of the situation, but
behind these more open aspects there is a vast tangle of intervention
between Chinamen and Chinese affairs—schemes for further exploitation,
financial entanglements, vast concession plans and projects for “spheres
of influence” for this aggressive foreign nation or that. And this
foreign influence is not the influence of one foreign power pursuing a
single and consistent policy but a number of competing powers, all
pursuing different ends and pulling things this way and that. How could
any country reconstruct itself while it was entangled in such a net of
interference? No people on earth could do such a thing.
The plain fact is that if China is to reconstruct herself that net has
to be cut away. It is not enough to warn Japan out of China or to say
“open door” for China. The open door is good for the ventilation of that
great apartment, but what is also needed is a clearing out of the
encumbrance inside. These encumbrances are not primarily Japanese.
The five great powers sit at a green table in the form of a horseshoe in
the conference and the four lesser powers are at a straight table like
the armature of a horseshoe magnet. At the left hand corner, next the
Japanese, are the three Chinese representatives. I gather they will be
allowed to say “Shantung” at the conference in moderation but not Thibet
nor Tonquin nor the East China—or indeed any—railway. I doubt if either
Mr. Balfour or M. Briand will nerve himself to say these forbidden
words. But an irresponsible journalist may write them.
If there is to be a real end to war and disarmament there has to be
release of China to free Chinese control, and that means a self-denying
ordinance from ALL the great powers. It will be an easy one for America
and Italy to accept, but it will be a difficult sacrifice indeed for
those two hoary leaders in the break-up of China, Great Britain and
France. Neither country has a bad heart, but long ago in the East they
acquired some very bad habits. This is a time when bad habits lead very
quickly to disaster.
The real test of the quality of the conference will appear when some
issue arises which involves an assertion or denial of the principle of
“Unhand and keep your hands off China.” If the Chinese are worth while,
the conference has to establish that principle. It cannot be gracefully
advanced by America because America has so little to relinquish. It CAN
be established at the initiative of either Britain or France.
It seems plain to me that official America is waiting for some move in
this direction from either or both of these powers. If that principle of
a free China is established at the Washington Conference the way will
have been opened in the not very remote future to a healthy and vigorous
United States of China, a great modern, pacific and progressive power.
And when I write “China” I mean what any sensible man means when he
writes “China”—I mean all those parts of Asia in which the Chinese
people and the Chinese culture prevail. I include at least South
Manchuria, which is as surely Chinese as Texas is American, and which
can no more be GIVEN to any other power without the consent of China
than my overcoat can be given by one passerby to another.
The plain alternative to a released and renascent China is the cutting
up of China among the aggressive powers to the tune of that popular
American air “The Open Door,” the demoralization and disintegration of
the Chinese, international elbowing, competition, quarrels among the
powers who have “shared” China, and, at last, the next great war—which
it will be just as easy for America to keep out of as the great war of
1914–1918.
IX
THE FUTURE OF JAPAN
Washington, Nov. 18.
If we adopt as our guiding principle that China is “worth while,” if we
make up our minds—and it seems to me that the American public at least
is making up its mind—that China is to bring itself up to date and to
reorganize itself as a great union of states under purely Chinese
control, and that it is to be protected by mutual agreement among the
powers from outside interference during the age of reorganization, then
it is clear that all dreams of empire in China or any fragments of China
on the part of any other power must cease.
This building up of a united, peaceful China by the conscious,
self-denying action of the chief powers of the world is evidently, under
present conditions, the only sane policy before the powers assembled at
Washington, but it is, unhappily, quite diametrically opposed to all
traditions of competitive nationality. And I find a most extraordinary
conflict going on in men’s minds here in Washington between the manifest
sanities of the world situation and those habits of thought and action
in which we have all been bred. Competitive nationalism and the long
established competitive traditions of European diplomacy have gone far
toward wrecking the world; and they may yet go far toward wrecking the
Washington Conference. We have all got these traditions strong in us,
every one of us. These traditions, these ideas of international
intercourse as a sort of game to beat the other fellow, have as tough a
vitality as the appetite of the wasp, which will go on eating greedily
after its abdomen has been cut off. Indeed, some of the representatives
of the powers at Washington seem still to be clinging to the ambition of
finally devouring China, or large parts of China—a feast which they will
not have the remotest prospect of digesting.
If that sort of thing goes on, a continuation of war preparation, a
renewal of war and the consummation of the social smash now in progress
is inevitable. Yet, on the face of that plain, inevitable consequence,
my diplomatic friends in Washington go on talking about such insane
projects as that of ceding Manchuria to Japan right down the Great Wall;
of giving Japan practical possession of the mines of China; of giving
“compensation” in the matter of Chinese railways to France; of getting
this “advantage” or that for Great Britain, and so forth and so on. I
remain permanently astounded before the Foreign Office officials. They
have such excellent, brilliant minds, but, alas! so highly
specialized—so highly specialized—that at times one doubts whether they
have, in the general sense of the word, any minds at all.
In the face of the universal hopefulness for satisfactory results from
the conference I find myself full of doubts. The naval disarmament
proposal of Secretary Hughes was obviously meant only as the opening
proposition, the quite splendid opening proposition, of the conference.
The second meeting, I felt, would find Mr. Balfour and Admiral Kato and
M. Briand in eloquent sympathy, saying: “Certainly. All this and more
also we can do on the understanding that a stable, explicit, exhaustive,
permanent Pacific agreement can be framed by this conference that will
remove all causes of war whatever.” But the second meeting was
disappointing. One nation after another agreed, as Mr. Balfour, that
“old parliamentary hand,” put it, “in principle. But”——And now we are
all playing four-handed chess with reservations about dockyards, naval
stations, cruisers, large submarines, and the like. We are all trying to
put the effective disarmament onto the other fellow. Meanwhile the nine
powers are sitting in secret session on the Pacific question, and it is
clear from the rumors that nine-handed chess is in progress there.
Yet the fact, plain enough to any one who is not lost in the game of
diplomacy, is that this conference is an occasion for generosity and
renunciation. There is no way out of the Pacific imbroglio except to
disentangle China and form a self-denying ordinance of all the powers
concerned to leave her alone while she reconstructs. I submit that even
Japan, most intent of all the chess players, will do best to fall in
line with such a plan.
Would a world covenant to protect China from aggression and to concede
her the progressive abolition of extra-territorial privileges and the
same unlimited rights over her own railways and soil and revenue that
are enjoyed by the Americans and Japanese over theirs be any serious
harm to Japan? Would it not release Japan from her imitative career as a
pseudo-Britain or a pseudo-Germany and enable her to get on with her own
proper business, which is to be, to the fullest, completest and richest
extent, Japan?
For what, after all, is it that Japan wants? She wants safety, she
declares—just as France wants safety. She wants safety to be Japan, just
as France wants safety to be France and England wants safety to be
England. And she makes these declarations with considerable
justification. For 300 years she believed she had that safety, and we
must admit she was the least dangerous state in the whole world. For 300
years Japan waged no foreign wars; she was a peaceful, self-contained
hermit. It was American enterprise that dragged her out of her seclusion
and fear of Europe that drove her to the practices of modern
imperialism. They are not natural Japanese practices. She fought China
and grabbed Corea, because otherwise Russia would have held it like a
pistol at her throat; she fought Russia, because otherwise Russia would
have held Manchuria and Port Arthur against her; she fought in the Great
War to oust Germany from Shantung. She is now pursuing an entirely
“European” policy in China, intriguing to get a free hand in Manchuria
and Eastern Siberia; scheming for concessions, privileges and the
creation of obedient puppet governments in a dismembered China; planning
to divert the natural resources of China to her own use, primarily
because she fears that otherwise these things will be done by rival
powers and she will be cut off from trade, from raw materials and all
prosperity until at last, when she is sufficiently starved and
enfeebled, she will be attacked and Indiaized. These are reasonable,
honorable fears. They oblige her to keep armed and aggressive; hers is
an “offensive defensive.” There is no other way of allaying her
reasonable, just fears except by a permanent binding association of
world powers to put an end forever to the headlong scramble for Asia
that began a century and a half ago in India between the French and
English, to recognize frankly and to put it upon record that that phase
of history has closed, and to provide some effective means of
restoration now and the prevention of fresh aggressions in the future.
No doubt there is a military caste in Japan loving war and not even
dreading modern war. We have to reckon with that. When we ask Japan to
release China, we ask for something very much against Japanese habits of
thought. Her dominant military note is due both to ancient traditions
and recent experience. Japan had most of the fun and little of the
bitterness of the Great War and her people may conceivably have a
lighter attitude toward aggressive war than any European nation. But if
the alternatives presented to her were on the one hand disarmament and a
self-denying ordinance of the powers in relation to China, and on the
other war against the other chief powers of the world, I doubt if the
patriotism of even the most war-loving Japanese would not outbalance his
war lust. And I cannot imagine any other permanent settlement of the
Pacific situation except a self-denying ordinance to which Japan,
America and the European powers can ever possibly agree.
Now, Japan, disarmed and pledged and self-restrained by treaties and
associations against aggression on the mainland of Asia, would
nevertheless reap enormous benefits from the liberation of China. Given
just and reasonable treaties, she can do very well without armaments.
Her geographical position would make her naturally and properly the
first merchant and the first customer of a renascent China. She would
have the first bid for all the coal and ore and foodstuffs she needed.
American goods and European goods would have to come past her over
thousands of miles of sea. Chinese goods that didn’t come to her would
go elsewhere up a steep hill of freight charges. It is a preposterous
imagination that China would refuse to sell to her nearest and best
customer. Moreover, Japan’s artistic and literary culture, at once so
distinctive and so sympathetic with that of China, would receive
enormous stimulation, as it has done in the past, by a Chinese revival.
Japan would be able to keep in the van of nations not by that headlong
imitation and adoption of European devices into which circumstances have
forced her hitherto, but by a natural and orderly development of her own
idiosyncracies in the face of the enhanced power that modern resources
supply. An association of Japan with other nations to insure
uninterrupted development to China would insure that to Japan also. It
would be a mutual assurance of peace and security.
But there is one set of facts, and one only, that militates against this
idea of a pacific and progressive Japan, a splendid leader in
civilization amidst a brotherhood of nations, and that is this, that
Japan is already overpopulated, she has to import not only food but
industrial raw material, and that her population increases now by the
tremendous figure of half a million a year. That is the reality that
gives substance to the aggressive imperialism of Japan. That is why she
casts about for such regions for expansion as Eastern Siberia—a region
not represented at the conference, and so beyond its purview, and that
is why she covets some preferential control in Chinese metals and
minerals and food. Were it not for this steady invasion of the world by
hungry lives, the principle of Japan for the Japanese, China for the
Chinese, England for the English, Eastern Siberia for its own people,
would give us the simplest, most satisfactory principle for
international peace. But Japan teems.
Has any country a right to slop its population over and beyond its
boundaries or to claim trade and food because of its heedless
self-congestion? Diplomacy is curiously mealy mouthed about many things;
I have made a British official here blush at the words of birth control,
but it is a fact that this aggressive fecundity of peoples is something
that can be changed and restrained within a country, and that this sort
of modesty and innocence that leads to a morbid development of
population and to great wars calls for intelligent discouragement in
international relations.
Japan has modernized itself in many respects, but its social
organization, its family system, is a very ancient and primitive one,
involving an extreme domestication of women and a maximum of babies.
While the sanitation and hygiene of Japan were still mediæval, a
sufficient proportion of these babies died soon and prevented any
overpressure of population, but now that Japan has modernized itself in
most respects it needs to modernize itself in this respect also.
I submit that the troubles arising from excessive fecundity within a
country justify not an aggressive imperialism on the part of that
country, but a sufficient amount of birth control within its proper
boundaries.
X
“SECURITY”—THE NEW AND BEAUTIFUL CATCHWORD
Washington, November 20.
The new and really quite beautiful catchword that dominates the
Washington Conference is “security.” The word was produced originally, I
believe, in France. France wants nothing in the world now but security;
she has abandoned all dreams of conquest or glory, all aggressive
economic intentions; she is the white lamb of international affairs,
washed and redeemed by the Great War. Only—she must be secure.
Great Britain, Japan are in complete unison with France on this subject.
Great Britain asks for nothing but a predominant fleet and naval
arsenals in perfect going order. Mr. Balfour’s eloquent speech at the
second session of the conference made the necessity of this for security
incontrovertible. Japan wants East Siberia, the special control of raw
material in Manchuria, a grip upon China, because she is driven by the
same passionate craving for peace and rest. We have had this explained
to us very clearly here in Washington by representative Japanese.
All these powers will accept every proposal Secretary Hughes makes, or
is prepared to make, eloquently and sincerely—“in principle.” They then
proceed to state their minimum requirements for that feeling of security
which is the goal of all peoples at the present time. When these
requirements have been stated it becomes plain that these states are not
to be so much disarmed as stripped for action, with highly efficient
instead of unwieldy and overwhelmingly expensive equipment. They do not
so much propose to give up war as to bring it back by a gentlemanly
agreement within the restricted possibilities of their austere
bankruptcy.
The French conception of security is particularly attractive. France
stipulates, I gather, for a dominant army upon the Continent of Europe,
for a Germany retained permanently by agreement among the powers at the
extremest pitch of wretchedness and feebleness, for an outcast Russia,
or a series of alliances by which such countries as Poland will be
militarized in the French interest rather than industrialized in their
own. And France, in further pursuit of the idea of perfect peace (for
France), is training great masses of barbaric Senegalese for war, with
the view of using them to police white populations and sustain their
millennium in Europe. They can have no other use now.
If they return to Africa, these trained soldiers will accumulate as a
new and interesting element in African life until some black Napoleon
arises to demand “security” for Africa.
At present France displays an astonishing confidence in the British, but
no doubt, if her amazing peasants and her wonderful soil presently lead
to partial recuperation, she will realize the need of bringing her now
neglected fleet up to “security” standards also. And it is axiomatic
among the experts that no power with a coast line is really secure
unless it has a fleet at least the double of any other fleet that can
possibly operate upon that coast.
These statements are not the facetious inventions of an irresponsible
writer; they are fair samples of the sort of thing that the various
deputations have brought with them to Washington. These are the things
we talk of and are gradually talking out of sight. And if the Washington
Conference served no other purpose at all in the world, it would have
been quite worth while in order to get together all these totally
incomparable conceptions of security and by that approximation to
demonstrate their utter absurdity. Along the lines of either unregulated
or regulated armament there can be no security for any race or people.
The only security for a modern state now is _a binding and mutually
satisfactory_ alliance with the power or powers that might otherwise
attack. The only real security for France against a German revenge is a
generous and complete understanding between the French and German
Republics so that they will have a mutual interest in each other’s
prosperity. Germany is naturally a rather bigger country than France,
and nothing on earth can alter that. Other powers or all the powers may
come into such a treaty as guarantors, but the essential thing for peace
between France and Germany is peace made good and clear between them, a
cessation of mutual injuries and hostile preparations.
The only effectual security for the communications of the British Empire
is the recognition by all mankind that this great system of
English-speaking states round and about the world is a good thing for
all mankind and a resolute effort of these states to keep to that level.
There is no other real security.
This is not “lofty idealism”; it is common sense; and the idea of
“security” by armament and by the enfeeblement of possible rivals is not
a “practical recognition of present limitations,” but a feeble surrender
to entirely vicious tendencies of the human mind.
I believe that for a little while yet Washington will continue its
researches into the meaning of armed “security,” and that then it will
turn its attention to the alternative idea, with which the nimble French
mind has also been playing, and that is security by treaty. The French
have been disposed in the past to welcome an Anglo-American-French
treaty to guarantee France against attack. The idea in that form is
dead, but the possibility of a far more comprehensive agreement, a
loose-fitting but effectual association of all the nations of the world
to keep the peace and arrange their differences by conference, is bound
to recur again as the impossibility of disarmament without settlement
becomes increasingly apparent.