desire to reap, there they first sow. They invariably strive to deal
with a situation while there is still time to modify it, and they take
pains to render the means adequate to the end. Unlike the peoples of
western Europe and the United States, the Japanese show a profound
respect for the principles of authority and inequality, and reserve the
higher functions in the community for men of the greatest ability and
attainments. It is a fact, however, that individual liberty has made
perceptible progress in the population, and is still growing, owing to
the increase of economic well-being and the spread of general and
technical education. But although socialism is likewise spreading fast,
I feel inclined to think that in Japan a high grade of instruction and
of social development on latter-day lines will be found compatible with
that extraordinary cohesiveness to which the race owes the position
which it occupies among the communities of the world. The soul of the
individual Japanese may be said to float in an atmosphere of
collectivity, which, while leaving his intellect intact, sways his
sentiments and modifies his character by rendering him impressible to
motives of an order which has the weal of the race for its object.
Japan has borrowed what seemed to her leaders to be the best of
everything in foreign countries. They analyzed the military, political,
and industrial successes of their friends and enemies, satisfactorily
explained and duly fructified them. They use the school as the seed-plot
of the state, and inculcate conceptions there which the entire community
endeavors later on to embody in acts and institutions. And what the
elementary school has begun, the intermediate, the technical, and the
high schools develop and perfect, aided by the press, which is
encouraged by the state.
Japan's ideal cannot be offhandedly condemned as immoral, pernicious, or
illegitimate. Its partizans pertinently invoke every principle which
their Allies applied to their own aims and strivings. And men of deeper
insight than those who preside over the fortunes of the Entente to-day
recognize that Europeans of high principles and discerning minds, who
perceive the central issues, would, were they in the position of the
Japanese statesmen, likewise bend their energies to the achievement of
the same aims.
The Japanese argue their case somewhat as follows:
"We are determined to help China to put herself in line with ourselves,
and to keep her from falling into anarchy. And no one can honestly deny
our qualifications. We and they have very much in common, and we
understand them as no Anglo-Saxon or other foreign people can. On the
one hand our own past experience resembles that of the Middle Kingdom,
and on the other our method of adapting ourselves to the new
international conditions challenged and received the ungrudging
admiration of a world disposed to be critical. The Peking treaties of
May, 1915, between China and Japan, and the pristine drafts of them
which were modified before signature, enable the outsider to form a
fairly accurate opinion of Japan's economic and political program, which
amounts to the application of a Far Eastern Monroe Doctrine.
"What we seek to obtain in the Far East is what the Western Powers have
secured throughout the remainder of the globe: the right to contribute
to the moral and intellectual progress of our backward neighbors, and to
profit by our exertions. China needs the help which we are admittedly
able to bestow. To our mission no cogent objection has ever been
offered. No Cabinet in Tokio has ever looked upon the Middle Realm as a
possible colony for the Japanese. The notion is preposterous, seeing
that China is already over-populated. What Japan sorely needs are
sources whence to draw coal and iron for industrial enterprise. She also
needs cotton and leather."
In truth, the ever-ready command of these raw materials at their
sources, which must be neither remote nor subject to potential enemies,
is indispensable to the success of Japan's development. But for the
moment the English-speaking nations have a veto upon them, in virtue of
possession, and the embargo put by the United States government upon the
export of steel during the war caused a profound emotion in Nippon. For
the shipbuilding works there had increased in number from nine before
the war to twelve in 1917, and to twenty-eight at the beginning of 1918,
with one hundred slips capable of producing six hundred thousand tons of
net register. The effect of that embargo was to shut down between 70 and
80 per cent. of the shipbuilding works of the country, and to menace
with extinction an industry which was bringing in immense profits.
It was with these antecedents and aims that Japan appeared before the
Conference in Paris and asked, not for something which she lacked
before, but merely for the confirmation of what she already possessed by
treaty. It must be admitted that she had damaged her cause by the manner
in which that treaty had been obtained. To say that she had intimidated
the Chinese, instead of coaxing them or bargaining with them, would be a
truism. The fall of Tsingtao gave her a favorable opportunity, and she
used and misused it unjustifiably. The demands in themselves were open
to discussion and, if one weighs all the circumstances, would not
deserve a classification different from some of those--the protection of
minorities or the transit proviso, for example--imposed by the greater
on the lesser nations at the Conference. But the mode in which they were
pressed irritated the susceptible Chinese and belied the professions
made by the Mikado's Ministers. The secrecy, too, with which the Tokio
Cabinet endeavored to surround them warranted the worst construction.
Yuan Shi Kai[246] regarded the procedure as a deadly insult to himself
and his country. And the circumstance that the Japanese government
failed either to foresee or to avoid this amazing psychological blunder
lent color to the objections of those who questioned Japan's
qualifications for the mission she had set herself. The wound inflicted
on China by that exhibition of insolence will not soon heal. How it
reacted may be inferred from the strenuous and well-calculated
opposition of the Chinese delegation at the Conference.
Nor was that all. In the summer of 1916 a free fight occurred between
Chinese and Japanese soldiers in Cheng-cha-tun, the rights and wrongs of
which were, as is usual in such cases, obscure. But the Okuma Cabinet,
assuming that the Chinese were to blame, pounced upon the incident and
made it the base of fresh demands to China,[247] two of which were
manifestly excessive. That China would be better off than she is or is
otherwise likely to become under Japanese guidance is in the highest
degree probable. But in order that that guidance should be effective it
must be accepted, and this can only be the consequence of such a policy
of cordiality, patience, and magnanimity as was outlined by my friend,
the late Viscount Motono.[248]
At the Conference the policy of the Japanese delegates was clear-cut and
coherent. It may be summarized as follows: the Japanese delegation
decided to give its entire support to the Allies in all matters
concerning the future relations of Germany and Russia, western Europe,
the Balkans, the African colonies, as well as financial indemnities and
reparations. The fate of the Samoan Archipelago must be determined in
accord with Britain and the United States. New Guinea should be allotted
to Australia. As the Marshall, Caroline, and Ladrone Islands, although
of no intrinsic value, would constitute a danger in Germany's hands,
they should be taken over by Japan. Tsingtao and the port of Kiaochow
should belong to Japan, as well as the Tainan railway. Japan would
co-operate with the Allies in maintaining order in Siberia, but no Power
should arrogate to itself a preponderant voice in the matter of
obtaining concessions or other interests there. Lastly, the principle of
the open door was to be upheld in China, Japan being admittedly the
Power which is the most interested in the establishment and maintenance
of peace in the Far East.
At the Conference, when the Kiaochow dispute came up for discussion, the
Japanese attitude, according to their Anglo-Saxon and French colleagues,
was calm and dignified, their language courteous, their arguments were
put with studied moderation, and their resolve to have their treaty
rights recognized was inflexible. Their case was simple enough, and
under the old ordering unanswerable. The only question was whether it
would be invalidated by the new dispensation. But as the United States
had obtained recognition for its Monroe Doctrine, Britain for the
supremacy of the sea, and France for the occupation of the Saar Valley
and the suspension of the right of self-determination in the case of
Austria, it was obvious that Japan had abundant and cogent arguments for
her demands, which were that the Chinese territory once held by Germany,
and since wrested from that Power by Japan, be formally retroceded to
Japan, whose claim to it rested upon the right of conquest and also
upon the faith of treaties which she had concluded with China. At the
same time she expressly and spontaneously disclaimed the intention of
keeping that territory for herself. Baron Makino said at the Peace
Table:
"The acquisition of territory belonging to one nation which it is the
intention of the country acquiring it to exploit to its sole advantage
is not conducive to amity or good-will." Japan, although by the fortune
of war Germany's heir to Kiaochow, did not purpose retaining it for the
remaining term of the lease; she had, in fact, already promised to
restore it to China. She maintained, however, that the conditions of
retrocession should form the subject of a general settlement between
Tokio and Peking.
The Chinese delegation, which worked vigorously and indefatigably and
won over a considerable number of backers, argued that Kiaochow had
ceased to belong to Germany on the day when China declared war on that
state, inasmuch as all their treaties, including the lease of Kiaochow,
were abrogated by that declaration, and the ownership of every rood of
Chinese territory held by Germany reverted in law to China, and should
therefore be handed over to her, and not to Japan. To this plea Baron
Makino returned the answer that with the surrender of Tsingtao to Japan
in 1914[249] the whole imperial German protectorates of Shantung had
passed to that Power, China being still a neutral. Consequently the
entry of China into the war in 1917 could not affect the status of the
province which already belonged to Nippon by right of conquest. As a
matter of alleged fact, this capture of the protectorates by the
Japanese had been specially desired by the British government, in order
to prevent Germany from ceding it to China. If that move meant
anything, therefore, it meant that neither China nor Germany had or
could have any hold on the territory once it was captured by Japan.
Further, this conquest was effected at the cost of vast sums of money
and two thousand Japanese lives.
Nor was that all. In the year 1915[250] China signed an agreement with
Japan, undertaking "to recognize all matters that may be agreed upon
between the Japanese government and the German government respecting the
disposition of all the rights, interests, and concessions which, in
virtue of treaties or otherwise, Germany possesses _vis-à-vis_ China, in
relation to the province of Shantung." This treaty, the Chinese
delegates answered, was extorted by force. Japan, having vainly sought
to obtain it by negotiations that lasted nearly four months, finally
presented an ultimatum,[251] giving China forty-eight hours in which to
accept it. She had no alternative. But at least she made it known to the
world that she was being coerced. It was on the day on which that
document was signed that the Japanese representative in Peking sent a
spontaneous declaration to the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs,
promising to return the leased territory to China on condition that all
Kiaochow be opened as a commercial port, that a Japanese settlement be
established, and also an international settlement, if the Powers desired
it, and that an arrangement be made beforehand between the Chinese and
Japanese governments with regard to "the disposal of German public
establishments and populations, and with regard to other conditions and
procedures."
The Japanese further invoked another and later agreement, which was,
they alleged, signed by the Chinese without demur.[252] This accord,
coming after the entry of China into the war, was tantamount to the
renunciation of any rights which China might have believed she possessed
as a corollary of her belligerency. It also disposed, the Japanese
argued, of her contention that the territory in question is
indispensable and vital to her--a contention which Japan met with the
promise to deliver it up--and which was invalidated by China's refusal
to fight for it in the year 1914. This latter argument was controverted
by the Chinese assertion that they were ready and willing to declare war
against Germany at the outset, but that their co-operation was refused
by the Entente, and subsequently by Japan. This allegation is credible,
if we remember the eagerness exhibited by the British government that
Japan should lose no time in co-operating with her allies, the
representations made by the British Ambassador to Baron Kato on the
subject,[253] and the alleged motive to prevent the retrocession of
Shantung to China by the German government.
The arguments of China and Japan were summarily put in the following
questions by a delegate of each country: "Yes or no, does Kiaochow,
whose population is exclusively Chinese, form an integral part of the
Chinese state? Yes or no, was Kiaochow brutally occupied by the Kaiser
in the teeth of right and justice and to the detriment of the peace of
the Far East, and it may be of the world? Yes or no, did Japan enter the
war against the aggressive imperialism of the German Empire, and for the
purpose of arranging a lasting peace in the Far East? Yes or no, was
Kiaochow captured by the English and Japanese troops in 1914 with the
sole object of destroying a dangerous naval base? Yes or no, was China's
co-operation against Germany, which was advocated and offered by
President Yuan Shi Kai in August, 1914, refused at the instigation of
Japan?"[254]
The Japanese catechism ran thus: "Yes or no, was Kiaochow a German
possession in the year 1914? Yes or no, was the world, including the
United States, a consenting party to the occupation of that province by
the Germans? Why did China, who to-day insists that that port is
indispensable to her, cede it to Germany? Why in 1914 did she make no
effort to recover it, but leave this task to the Japanese army? Further,
who can maintain that juridically the last war abolished _ipso facto_
all the cessions of territory previously effected? Turkey formerly ceded
Cyprus to Great Britain. Will it be argued that this cession is
abrogated and that Cyprus must return to Turkey directly and
unconditionally? The Conference announced repeatedly that it took its
stand on justice and the welfare of the peoples. It is in the name of
the welfare of the peoples, as well as in the name of justice, that we
assert our right to take over Kiaochow. The harvest to him whose hands
soweth the seed."[255]
If we add to all these conflicting data the circumstance that Great
Britain, France, and Russia had undertaken[256] to support Japan's
demands at the Conference, and that Italy had promised to raise no
objection, we shall have a tolerable notion of the various factors of
the Chino-Japanese dispute, and of its bearings on the Peace Treaty and
on the principles of the Covenant. It was one of the many illustrations
of the incompatibility of the Treaty and the Covenant, the respective
scopes of which were radically and irreconcilably different. The
Supreme Council had to adjudicate upon the matter from the point of view
either of the Treaty or of the Covenant; as part of a vulgar bargain of
the old, unregenerate days, or as an example of the self-renunciation of
the new ethical system. The majority of the Council was pledged to the
former way of contemplating it, and, having already promulgated a number
of decrees running counter to the Covenant doctrine in favor of their
own peoples, could not logically nor politically make an exception to
the detriment of Japan.
What actually happened at the Peace Table is still a secret, and
President Wilson, who knows its nature, holds that it is in the best
interests of humanity that it should so remain! The little that has as
yet been disclosed comes mainly from State-Secretary Lansing's answers
to the questions put by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
America's second delegate, in answer to the questions with which he was
there plied, affirmed that "President Wilson alone approved the Shantung
decision, that the other members of the American delegation made no
protest against it, and that President Wilson alone knows whether Japan
has guaranteed to return Shantung to China."[257] Another eminent
American, who claims to have been present when President Wilson's act
was officially explained to the Chinese delegates, states that the
President, disclosing to them his motives, pleaded that political
exigencies, the menace that Japan would abandon the Conference, and the
rumor that England herself might withdraw, had constrained him to accept
the Shantung settlement in order to save the League.[258] Rumors appear
to have played an undue part in the Conference, influencing the judgment
or the decisions of the Supreme Council. The reader will remember that
it was a rumor to the effect that the Italian government had already
published a decree annexing Fiume that is alleged to have precipitated
the quarrel between Mr. Wilson and the first Italian delegation. It is
worth noting that the alleged menace that Japan would quit the
Conference if her demands were rejected was not regarded by Secretary
Lansing as serious. "Could Japan's signature to the League have been
obtained without the Shantung decision?" he was asked. "I think so," he
answered.
The decision caused tremendous excitement among the Chinese and their
numerous friends. At first they professed skepticism and maintained that
there must be some misunderstanding, and finally they protested and
refused to sign the Treaty. One of the American journals published in
Paris wrote: "Shantung was at least a moral explosion. It blew down the
front of the temple, and now everybody can see that behind the front
there was a very busy market. The morals were the morals of a horse
trade. If the muezzin were loud and constant in his calls to prayer, it
probably was to drown the sound of the dickering in the market. There is
no longer any obligation upon this nation to accept the Covenant as a
moral document. It is not."[259]
All that may be perfectly true, but it sounds odd that the discovery
should not have been made until Japan's claim was admitted formally to
take over Shantung, after she had solemnly promised to restore it to
China. The Covenant was certainly transgressed long before this, and
much more flagrantly than by President Wilson's indorsement of Japan's
demand for the formal retrocession of Shantung. But by those infractions
nobody seemed scandalized. _Quod licet Jovi non licet bovi._ Debts of
gratitude had to be paid at the expense of the Covenant, and people
closed their eyes or their lips. It was not until the Japanese asked for
something which all her European allies considered to be her right that
an outcry was raised and moral principles were invoked.
The Japanese press was nowise jubilant over the finding of the Supreme
Council. The journals of all parties argued that their country was
receiving no more than had already been guaranteed to it by China, and
ratified by the Allies before the Peace Conference met, and to have
obtained what was already hers by rights of conquest and of treaties was
anything but a triumph. What Japan desired was to have herself
recognized practically, not merely in theory, as the nation which is the
most nearly interested in China, and therefore deserving of a special
status there. In other words, she aimed at the proclamation of something
in the nature of a Far Eastern doctrine analogous to that of Monroe. As
priority of interest had been conceded to her by the Ishii-Lansing
Agreement with the United States, it was in this sense that her press
was fain to construe the clause respecting non-interference with
"regional understandings."
That policy is open. The principles underlying it, always tenable, were
never more so than since the Peace Conference set the Great Powers to
direct the lesser states. Moreover, Japan, it is argued, knows by
experience that China has always been a temptation to the Western
peoples. They sent expeditions to fight her and divided her territory
into zones of influence, although China was never guilty of an
aggressive attitude toward them, as she was toward Japan. They were
actuated by land greed and all that that implies, and if China were
abandoned to her own resources to-morrow she would surely fall a prey to
her Western protectors. In this connection they point to an incident
which took place during the Conference, when Signor Tittoni demanded
that Italy should receive the Austrian concession in Tientsin, which
adjoins the Italian concession. But Viscount Chinda protested and the
demand was ruled out. To sum up, the broad maxim underlying Japan's
policy as defined by her own representatives is that in the resettlement
of the world the principle adopted, whether the old or the new, shall be
applied fairly and impartially at least to all the Great Powers.
Every world conflict has marked the close of one epoch and the opening
of another. Into the melting-pot on the fire kindled by the war many
momentous problems have been flung, any one of which would have sufficed
to bring about a new political, economic, and social constellation.
Japan's advance along the road of progress is one of these far-ranging
innovations. She became a Great Power in the wars against China and
Russia, and is qualifying for the part of a World Power to-day. And her
statesmen affirm that in order to achieve her purpose she will recoil
from no sacrifice except those of honor and of truth.
FOOTNOTES:
[244] _Novoye Vremya_, June 13-26, 1915.
[245] Cf. _The Problem of Asia_ (Capt. A.T. Mahan), pp. 150-151.
[246] The late President of the Chinese Republic.
[247] These demands were (1) an apology from the Chinese authorities;
(2) an indemnity for the killed and wounded; (3) the policing of certain
districts of Manchuria by the Japanese; and (4) the employment of
Japanese officers to train Chinese troops in Manchuria.
[248] Minister of Foreign Affairs. He repudiated his predecessor's
policy.
[249] November 8th.
[250] May 25, 1915.
[251] On May 6, 1915.
[252] On September 24, 1918.
[253] On August 7, 1914.
[254] Cf. _Le Matin_, April 25, 1919.
[255] _Le Matin_, April 23, 1919.
[256] "His Majesty's Government accede with pleasure to the requests of
the Japanese Government for assurances that they will support Japan's
claims in regard to the disposal of Germany's rights in Shantung, and
possessions in islands north of the Equator, on the occasion of a Peace
Conference, it being understood that the Japanese Government will, in
the event of a peace settlement, treat in the same spirit Great
Britain's claims to German islands south of the Equator." (Signed)
Conyngham Greene, British Ambassador, Tokio, February 16, 1917. France
gave a similar assurance in writing on March 1, 1917, and the Russian
government had made a like declaration on February 20, 1917.