The Gift of Beatrix Farrand 
 
 to the General Library 
 
 University of California, Berkeley 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 REEF POINT GARDENS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 
 
 
%^fXjiyrvU^ 
 
THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
 ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd, 
 
 TORONTO 
 
THE 
 
 NEW JAPANESE 
 
 PERIL 
 
 BY 
 
 SIDNEY OSBORNE 
 
 Author of**Th» Problem of Japan" and "Th* Isolation of Japan'A 
 
 ^im 1 nrfe 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1921 
 
 All rigtUs reserved 
 
Add t© Lib. 
 
) o o I 
 
 -' i ■ y * 
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 The following pages are intended to bring the 
 discussion of the Japanese question, begun by the 
 writer in The Problem of Japan (1918) and con- 
 tinued in The Isolation of Japan (191 9), down to 
 date. 
 
 While it is, perhaps, difficult for those who have 
 made a study of Far Eastern questions to pre- 
 serve a non-partisan and impartial attitude, par- 
 ticularly where, as in the present discussion, the 
 future supremacy of the white races is shown to 
 be endangered, the author has endeavoured to re- 
 tain as objective a point of view as is consistent 
 with his natural feelings as a member of the 
 Western family of nations against whom the new 
 Japanese peril may come to be directed. 
 
 The reader is warned that in presenting his 
 views, as herein set forth, the author makes no 
 claim to consistency in his treatment of various 
 aspects of the subjects discussed. Such a thing 
 as consistency would, in this relation, be impos- 
 sible, for the reason that the writer endeavours to 
 picture future developments from at least more 
 than one standpoint. Particularly in his pres- 
 entation of the problems and tendencies that are 
 
 9i0 
 
vi THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 involved in the proposed renewal of the Anglo- 
 Japanese Treaty of Alliance, -the author has 
 attempted to discuss the probable consequences 
 in relation to each turn of events and in conjunc- 
 tion with each new set of circumstances. For 
 example, the question of whether Great Britain 
 favours a renewal of the Treaty depends on world 
 conditions which are changing, and what her 
 ultimate decision in the matter will be depends on 
 the world situation at the very moment she is 
 called upon to make her choice. Similarly, 
 Japan's attitude towards Britain depends upon 
 factors which are constantly subject to change. 
 
 Accordingly, it has been the writer's purpose 
 to pursue no dogmatic view of the probable course 
 of events, but rather to present varying phases with 
 their probable consequences, and, most important 
 of all, to awaken new trains of thought in the 
 reader's mind on this most important of subjects. 
 
 In order that there should be no menace to the 
 peace of the world arising out of Japan's policy 
 in the Far East, it would be necessary for her to 
 reverse her policy and go in the opposite direction. 
 Does anyone believe she will do it? If she will 
 not, and continues to advance in the direction she 
 is moving, then the Far Eastern question bids 
 fair to grow into a menace that will include the 
 whole world within its orbit. 
 
 Reliance on treaties there can be none, nor in 
 the principle of peaceful development. The fight 
 
FOREWORD vii 
 
 of the peoples for freedom, democracy and the 
 rights of nations has not yet been won. Those 
 rights will still have to be defended in the Pacific. 
 
 Much encouragement has been derived by the 
 writer in his present task out of the fact that many 
 of the views expressed by him, in the former 
 publications above referred to, have been justified 
 by subsequent events. Indeed, the swiftness with 
 which epoch-making transactions have followed 
 upon one another has made the art of forecast 
 an unusually diflScult one. It is unfortunate that 
 it is not possessed to a greater degree by the 
 statesmen who now pretend to govern us. What 
 is needed is some of the prescience of a Disraeli, 
 who in 1879 v/rote the Marquis of Salisbury a 
 letter in which he gave utterance to the prediction, 
 startling for that time, that England, under cer- 
 tain conditions, would some day be fighting by 
 the side of Russia and France against the Central 
 Powers. That was a long look ahead, and re- 
 markable by reason of the fact that British policy 
 had been particularly anti-Russian during Dis- 
 raeli's premiership and so remained down to the 
 Entente of 1907. 
 
 In this, the greatest crisis of affairs in history, 
 Western civilization might yet be saved by a 
 statesman with the genius and imagination of 
 a Disraeli or a Lincoln. Some magic touch is 
 needed to electrify the world — to convey to it an 
 interpretation of the mysterious messages spoken 
 
viS THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 in an unknown tongue with which the entire at- 
 mosphere of the East is laden, and to make vivid, 
 as a flash of lightning, the meaning of a distant 
 and gathering sound that approaches with the 
 steadiness and imiformity of a caravan moving 
 in the solitary wastes of the desert — a sound of the 
 measured tramp of feet and of the rumbUng thun- 
 der of heavy gims. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGS 
 
 Foreword • . . . v 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. Japan Develops Her Far Eastern Programme i 
 II. Developments Down to the Cessation of 
 
 Hostilities lO 
 
 III. Three Factors of Danger for Japan ... 17 
 
 IV. Policies of Japan and England Compared . 26 
 V. Some Possible Future Combinations. ... 35 
 
 VI. Japan's Modern World Diplomacy . • . . 45 
 
 VII. The Questions of Race Equality and Shantung 54 
 
 VIII. The Shantung Question 64 
 
 IX. The Shantung Question and Other Corrupt- 
 ing Evils 73 
 
 X. Japanese Expansion 83 
 
 XI. A Chino- Japanese Union 93 
 
 XII. Britain's Change of Policy in Asia .... 105 
 
 XIII. The Anglo- Japanese Alliance .' 117 
 
 XIV. The Anglo- Japanese Alliance 128 
 
 XV. Anglo- Japanese Alliance — the Japanese Peril 141 
 
 XVI. Anglo- Japanese Alliance — the Japanese Peril 153 
 
 XVII. China and the Western Powers 164 
 
 XVIII. America Faces the New World Situation . 175 
 
The New Japanese Peril 
 
 CHAPTER ONE 
 
 JAPAN DEVELOPS HER FAR EASTERN PROGRAMME 
 
 Nothing could have been more opportune for 
 Japan than the outbreak of the great European 
 War. After having successfully fought two wars 
 within a decade, whereby she had managed to 
 assert in the one her superiority over another 
 branch of the Yellow Race and in the other her 
 ability to stand up against and finally vanquish, 
 in one of the most sanguinary wars in history, a 
 very prominent member of the European Concert 
 of the white nations, Japan found herself a decade 
 later still struggling painfully to overcome her 
 most formidable handicap as a nation, namely, 
 her financial situation as a debtor nation, with 
 difficulty in making both ends meet and forced to 
 ask new loans of Western creditors. 
 
 The fundamental problem for Japan had been 
 to increase her imports above her exports. For 
 in raw materials, having little coal and less iron, 
 
8 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 the two elements upon which all modem industry 
 chiefly rests, Japan's progress and expansion de- 
 pended for a very large part upon her ability to 
 control sufficiently large sources of these supplies. 
 
 Not having them at home, they must be sought 
 upon the mainland. Rival nations must be pre- 
 vented from anticipating Japan's wishes and thus 
 staying her development. 
 
 The first step, therefore, was to secure a right 
 to intervene in China, a right which some of the 
 Western nations, with much less excuse, had 
 already assumed for themselves, in defiance in 
 some cases of China's assertion of her inalienable 
 rights of sovereignty. 
 
 The second step was taken in the war with 
 Russia, which was fought primarily to free Japan 
 from the too close proximity of a formidable rival 
 who might seize for herself the very things Japan 
 so greatly coveted, and of which she had so much 
 need. 
 
 Of a sudden, in August 1914, came the great 
 boon for the Island Empire, still struggling to con- 
 solidate her position on the mainland, in Korea 
 and Manchuria, and still intriguing to extend her 
 privileges and claims over other domains of the 
 Chinese, in the same manner as she had made 
 Korea and South Manchuria subservient to her 
 wishes. The European War seemed destined, in 
 large measure, not only to solve Japan's pressing 
 financial problems, but likewise to make easy, 
 
JAPAN'S FAR EASTERN PROGRAMME 3 
 
 while her Western rivals were engaged in butcher- 
 ing one another, Japan's intervention policies on 
 the mainland. 
 
 The writer has already in two publications from 
 his pen (The Problem of Japan and The Isolation 
 of Japan) described the process by which Japan, 
 during the course of the war, succeeded in attain- 
 ing to a very large measure of her projected de- 
 signs, namely, the hegemony of the Yellow Race 
 and a controlling voice in the future destinies of 
 the Far East. And yet the sudden ending of the 
 war in November 191 8, with the totally unexpected 
 and imwished-for capitulation of the Central 
 Powers, put Japan in a position that was not 
 entirely free from embarrassment. 
 
 Japan's statesmen had reckoned that the war 
 would end either in a draw or, at the very least, 
 in an indecisive victory for the Western Powers 
 which would leave Germany still master of her 
 fate. In such an event it was felt that Japan's 
 r61e at the ensuing Peace Conference would be 
 almost that of an umpire, and that her prestige 
 and influence would, in this fact, reach such a 
 height that all resistance to her demands to con- 
 trol the future fate of China and the Far East 
 would be lightly swept aside. 
 
 The lightning-like succession of events, how- 
 ever, which brought about the complete collapse 
 of the Central Powers now threatened to upset 
 entirely Japan's well-devised plans and even to 
 
4 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 put her position as a Great Power to the proof, 
 for England and America were now to be the 
 dictators of the Peace, and between them possessed 
 the argument of irresistible force and power with 
 which to give weight to their wishes. Moreover 
 each of these nations (too loyal to the European 
 contest to engage themselves elsewhere) was 
 smarting under the consciousness that they had 
 upon more than one occasion been compelled to 
 yield to the arrogant claims and demands of Japan 
 in the Far East and to accept at her hands a policy 
 which was in flagrant derogation of their own 
 interests. 
 
 It would have been better for Japan had she 
 remembered that Britain never forgets nor for- 
 gives a slight or trespass against her Imperial 
 prestige. When the time comes to settle accounts, 
 Japan will find that England has not forgotten 
 how the Land of the Rising Sun took advantage 
 of her engagements elsewhere to undermine her 
 national and economic interests in China. Nor 
 will England hesitate to remind Japan that she, 
 Britain's ally, had permitted a bitter press cam- 
 paign to be conducted against the British partner 
 of the Anglo- Japanese Alliance, at one of the most 
 critical moments of the entire war, when the AUies 
 were being violently attacked in the West and the 
 Russians were falling back in the East (Verdun — 
 first half of 1916). The check everywhere to the 
 British arms — at Gallipoli, in Mesopotamia, and 
 
JAPAN'S FAR EASTERN PROGRAMME 5 
 
 in the naval battle at Jutland — came In for a 
 severe scoring at the hands of the wily Nipponese, 
 whereas the great achievements of the German 
 arms were correspondingly exalted and the latter's 
 spirit held to be above all praise. Indeed, a part 
 of the Japanese press even went so far as to suggest 
 that the time had at last come for Japan boldly 
 to denounce the Anglo- Japanese Alliance, or at 
 least to demand its revision. That these recrim- 
 inations are not to be attributed to the emana- 
 tions of merely irresponsible organs of public 
 opinion, uncontrolled by the public authorities, is 
 plain, for it is a fact that the newspapers in Japan, 
 as in no other country, are entirely subservient 
 to the Government, particularly when questions 
 of foreign policy are mooted, and in this in- 
 stance the press of the seat of Government, 
 Tokio, with hardly an exception, joined in the 
 hue and cry. 
 
 For many months this agitation continued, and 
 only ceased when the danger of a German break- 
 through at Verdim had been overcome and Eng- 
 land once more felt herself strong enough to lodge 
 a protest, in vigorous language, with Baron Ishii, 
 the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs. That 
 this was a serious attempt to bring about the 
 abrogation of the Alliance when it had more than 
 half of its duration yet to run and in war-time, 
 in direct violation of the explicit terms of the 
 Treaty, there can be no doubt. And what made 
 
6 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 the thing especially galling to the British Imperial- 
 ist was the fact that this Japanese agitation was a 
 demonstration to the world that in the opinion 
 of the Japanese the English were not doing par- 
 ticularly well in the war, and that therefore Japan 
 could do better for herself in China if no agree- 
 ment existed. 
 
 In reality, all of this agitation was put up as 
 a screen to cover a bad case of troubled conscience. 
 For, at the very time this press campaign against 
 Japan^s ally was going on, Japanese statesmen 
 were negotiating a secret treaty with Russia, 
 which was intended to, and does in effect, nullify 
 the Anglo- Japanese Agreement. It will be re- 
 membered that the Anglo- Japanese Treaty of 
 Alliance was first entered into in 1902, and re- 
 newed with modifications in 1905 and 191 1, the 
 last time for a period of ten years. The renewal 
 in 1 91 1 was for England no longer a matter of the 
 far-reaching importance which the earlier agree- 
 ments had possessed, for the reason that England 
 had already, in 1907, come to an understanding 
 with Russia over nearly all existing matters of 
 difference, and from thenceforth directed her 
 diplomacy towards checking the advance of Ger- 
 many. Russia and France were no longer her 
 antagonists in Asia and in Africa. Britain, that 
 up to 1904 had been working hand-in-glove with 
 Germany against France in Morocco and with 
 Germany against Russia in Persia, now abandoned 
 
JAPAN'S FAR JASTERN PROGRAMME 7 
 
 her former associate, and in exchange for a free 
 hand in Egypt, granted by France, and a sphere of 
 influence in Persia, granted by Russia, composed 
 all differences with Russia and France, and entered 
 upon an entirely new diplomatic course which 
 culminated in the outbreak of the great European 
 War. The prior crisis in affairs in 1911, ending 
 in a Conference of the Powers at Algeciras, and 
 the two Balkan Wars of 191 2 and 1913 were but 
 preludes to the enactment of the much greater 
 drama upon which the curtain was to rise in 
 August 1 914. 
 
 Now, then, the point we wish to make Is that 
 the Anglo- Japanese Alliance was directed, so far 
 as both England and Japan were concerned, 
 against the aggressions of Russia in Asia. Eng- 
 land feared for India and Japan feared for China 
 and for her position of strength generally in the 
 Far East. But after the Russo-Japanese War 
 the Japanese position towards Russia rapidly 
 changed, and they composed many of their dif- 
 ferences and arranged a working partnership of the 
 two nations in the Far East by the secret treaties 
 of 1907, 1910, 1912. They had been driven into 
 each other's arms primarily by the attitude of the 
 United States towards the policy of the '*Open 
 Door** in China and particularly in Manchuria, 
 where the former enemies, Russia and Japan, 
 had mapped out ''spheres of influence" for them- 
 selves along the lines of the South Manchurian 
 
8 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 Railway to the harbours of Port Arthur and 
 Dahiy. In other words, Japan and Russia felt 
 themselves compelled to display a united front 
 against the insistent demands of the United 
 States for the application of the policy of the 
 '*Open Door*' and equal opportunities for trade 
 in China and Manchuria. 
 
 In spite of Japan's growing enthusiasm for 
 Russia, however, the Anglo- Japanese AlKance was 
 still a vital factor in world affairs at the time of 
 the outbreak of the Great War, and so remained, 
 even in the eyes of Japanese statesmen, down to 
 the summer of 191 6, when at last Japan began to 
 feel herself strong enough to cut the painter that 
 tied her to England and tie up to her new ally, 
 Russia. The Anglo- Japanese Alliance, which had 
 been entered into for the purpose of putting a check 
 on Russian aggression in Asia, was now to be re- 
 placed by the Russo-Japanese Alliance, which in 
 effect declared China to be the concern of these 
 two Powers, and of these two Powers alone. It 
 was Japan's first great step in the direction of en- 
 forcing her new programme, so providentially 
 favoured by the European War, of ''Asia for the 
 Asiatics." For Russia, like Japan, is a truly 
 Asiatic Power, and is so regarded by all Asiatics. 
 Japan's second and equally important step in the 
 same direction was made when she succeeded, in 
 1 91 7, in winning over the United States to the 
 recognition of her ''special interests" in China, 
 
JAPAN'S FAR EASTERN PROGRAMME 9 
 
 upon the occasion of the Baron Ishii mission to 
 America. 
 
 With the right of the Asiatics to demand from 
 Europeans and Americans that they accept such 
 a programme (namely, **Asia for the Asiatics**) 
 we have no quarrel. It is solely a question of how 
 the programme is to be carried out. If carried 
 out in the same spirit and with the same high 
 selflessness with which the United States applies 
 the Monroe Doctrine to the Americas, then there 
 is a great deal to be said for the doctrine of **Asia 
 for the Asiatics'*; but if the doctrine is carried 
 out in the manner and spirit displayed by Japan 
 towards all the world in China, Manchuria and 
 Korea, and towards China in the matter of 
 Japanese aggressions upon Chinese territorial 
 integrity and China's sovereign rights as an 
 independent nation, then the doctrine is an unjust 
 and pernicious doctrine. 
 
CHAPTER TWO 
 
 DEVELOPMENTS DOWN TO THE CESSATION OP 
 HOSTILITIES 
 
 It must be clear to every thinking American that 
 the United States cannot, without stultifying 
 itself and throwing overboard one of the most 
 important planks in its foreign policy, permit 
 Japan to apply the doctrine of "Asia for the 
 Asiatics" in disregard and defiance of the principle 
 of the *'Open Door,'* first enunciated by John Hay 
 as Secretary of State in 1899, and later accepted 
 by the other Great Powers, including Japan, in 
 various treaties entered into between those Powers 
 and China and in sundry agreements entered into 
 with one another. But it is greatly to be feared 
 that this is precisely the course that Japan pro- 
 poses to take in case the doctrine comes to be 
 generally recognized, or rather, to express the 
 matter more accurately, Japan will refuse to stop 
 acting in disregard and defiance of the principle of 
 the ''Open Door" in the Far East. For in South 
 Manchuria the '*Open Door" has been a closed 
 
 door for many years, due to the systematic exclu- 
 
 10 
 
THE CESSATION OF HOSTILITIES 11 
 
 sion of all Western trade competition in this im- 
 portant Japanese sphere of influence. 
 
 Nor could the United States afford to stand at 
 one side and permit Japan to assail and to violate 
 the sovereignty of China, as she has done in the 
 matter of the ** twenty-one demands" presented 
 to China on January i8, 1915, at a time when the 
 other Great Powers had their hands tied by the 
 European War and were imable to interfere. 
 
 Under these demands the land of the Mikado 
 not only attempted to secure from the Chinese 
 important politico-economic advantages in Shan- 
 tung, South Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mon- 
 golia, but it likewise set over against China such 
 demands as, had they been granted, would have 
 reduced China to the position of a vassal State, 
 and would necessarily have put an end to any and 
 every influence possessed by the Western Powers 
 in the Far East. 
 
 Fortunately, diplomatic pressure, exerted in the 
 nick of time by England and the United States, 
 compelled the Government at Tokio to renounce, 
 at least temporarily, some of its most far-reaching 
 demands. The Japanese Government, neverthe- 
 less, could be well satisfied by the results attained, 
 for it secured, after long negotiations, culminating 
 with the ultimatum and threatened use of force 
 of May 7, 1915, such advantages as placed it in 
 a position practically to dictate the future develop- 
 ment of China and her dependency upon Japan 
 
12 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 in the more important essentials of her national 
 life. 
 
 ;'' In the subsequent agreement that was signed 
 between China and Japan on the 2Sth of May, 
 Japan succeeded to the rights of Germany in 
 Shantung and was allowed to have a free hand in 
 South Manchuria. By these manoeuvres Japan 
 had managed to work out an encircling policy 
 that included the capital, Peking, the province 
 of Chili and all the sea approaches thereto, within 
 its grasp, and an unassailable base from which to 
 extend Japanese influence over further large 
 tracts of China, including the command of the 
 most important railways and waterways. 
 
 Following upon the imposition of the greater 
 part of the *' twenty-one demands'' upon China, 
 the Government at Tokio let no grass grow under 
 its feet in its efforts further to consolidate its 
 position. As already pointed out, Japan came to 
 an understanding with Russia in 1916 as regards 
 their future relations in China, and in 191 7 Japan 
 succeeded in bringing England and France into 
 line with Russia, by means of secret treaties, 
 which guaranteed to Japan the support of those 
 countries with respect to her claims as successor 
 to Germany in Shantung and the German islands 
 north of the Equator. 
 
 Naturally, the participation of the United 
 States in the World War, coming after her declara- 
 tion of war against Germany in April 191 7, pro- 
 
THE CESSATION OF HOSTILITIES 13 
 
 vided Japan with an opportunity of still further 
 extending her sway over the future destinies of 
 China, for on the 2nd of November of that year 
 Baron Ishii was able to convince the American 
 Government that it was no longer in a position 
 to refuse to recognize the paramount interests of 
 Japan in the Far East, and accordingly, as 
 already referred to in our first chapter, the 
 famous Ishii-Lansing Agreement was signed, in 
 which America undertakes to recognize Japan's 
 '* special interests'' in China. By this act the 
 United States formally, albeit in the camouflaged 
 language of diplomacy, abrogated the hitherto 
 (next to the Monroe Doctrine) most dearly prized 
 plank of her foreign policy, for, in spite of all 
 attempts subsequently to weaken the force of the 
 concession, it surely must be conceded that the 
 acknowledgment of special rights in one nation 
 is totally inconsistent with the principle of the 
 "Open Door'' and equal opportunities for all 
 nations. Most to be criticized about the transac- 
 tion is the fact that it placed the United States, 
 for the first time in its history, open to the charge 
 of violating without provocation the sovereignty 
 of China. For China had not been consulted in 
 the matter at all, and it was China's sovereign 
 rights as an independent nation that were the 
 subject-matter of the Ishii-Lansing Agreement. 
 
 But the close of the war has changed many 
 things, and it is not alone the Japanese who are 
 
14 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 agitating themselves over the question: Will the 
 United States continue to honour its signature to 
 a document that departs so widely from the 
 hitherto recognized principles of the American 
 Government? Or are we to have furnished to us 
 another example of the truism which has at one 
 time or another been recognized by all govern- 
 ments, namely, that conditions may arise that 
 make all agreements between governments mere 
 "scraps of paper'*? 
 
 In 1 914, and within three months of the out- 
 break of hostilities, Japan had succeeded in ex- 
 pelling the Germans from Shantung and had 
 established herself in the province so successfully 
 that by the beginning of 1915 she was ready to 
 move further to extend her control over China. 
 In 1 91 5 she had, by the '* twenty-one demands," 
 attained to a quasi-protectorate over China. In 
 1 916 she had, by secret treaty, secured the ad- 
 herence of Russia to her Chinese programme. In 
 February-March 191 7 she had, by secret treaties, 
 bound England, France and Italy to the same end, 
 and in November of the same year she had suc- 
 ceeded in committing the United States (as in- 
 dicated above) in support of her designs. 
 
 And yet, with this record of stupendous achieve- 
 ment, almost without a parallel in history, the 
 ambitious and clever statesmen of the Mikado 
 did not rest satisfied. The war was not yet over, 
 and there were still more fruits to be plucked. 
 
THE CESSATION OF HOSTILITIES 15 
 
 Accordingly, in 1918, using the situation of the 
 Czechs in Siberia as a pretext, Japan succeeded 
 in enlisting the aid of England, America, France 
 and Italy in an expedition to the mainland for 
 the purpose, as it was alleged, of rescuing the 
 Czechs from the Bolsheviki and the Germans, 
 although the Bolsheviki were at that time entirely 
 unorganized and, if anything, needed protection 
 from the Czechs, and the nearest German troops 
 were five thousand miles away. Of course, Japan 
 had charge of the expedition and furnished the 
 bulk of the troops. The others only gave colour 
 to the undertaking. Because of Japan's para- 
 mount interests in the Far East and her geograph- 
 ical proximity, it could not have been otherwise. 
 
 To begin with, Japan dispatched 100,000 men 
 to Siberia, which was just ten timefe as many as 
 she had proposed to send when negotiating with 
 the other Powers. But under the pretext that the 
 Trans-Siberian Railway needed guarding and that 
 her merchants and immigrants in Siberia required 
 protection, Japan justified the sending of so large 
 an army of Japanese troops. To be sure, it re- 
 quires little political insight to realize that what 
 Japan was really after was Vladivostok and 
 Russia's Maritime Province, together with the 
 expansion of Japanese influence as far west as 
 the Baikal inland sea in South-eastern Siberia. It 
 is, therefore, almost impossible to conceive what 
 could have been the weighty material or moral 
 
16 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 considerations that induced the statesmen of the 
 Western nations, and particularly President Wil- 
 son, to enter upon the folly of this intervention. 
 
 With the settling of the Japanese in Eastern 
 Siberia, the last stroke was given to the con- 
 struction of the imposing edifice of stone upon 
 stone, since the beginning of August 1914, for the 
 purpose of attaining a Japanese hegemony in the 
 Far East. There now remained to give per- 
 manency to the structure. It must be made un- 
 assailable. And to this end, after hostilities came 
 to a swift close in November 1918, the Japanese 
 directed their best efforts, realizing, however, that 
 the unexpected and to them unwelcome collapse 
 of the Central Powers had created a new and 
 dangerous international situation, in which Japan 
 ran great risk of finding herself utterly isolated, 
 as against the solidarity and overwhelming physi- 
 cal superiority of the Western victors in the 
 World War. 
 
 We shall leave the consideration of these new 
 factors in the situation to the following chapter. 
 
I 
 
 CHAPTER THREE 
 
 THREE FACTORS OP DANGER FOR JAPAN 
 
 For Japan, one of the dangers in the situation 
 that arose after the cessation of hostilities was 
 the question of what recognition the Powers, and 
 particularly the United States, were going to ac- 
 cord China in return for the latter's participation 
 in the war upon the invitation and advice of the 
 Government at Washington. 
 
 Second in importance for the Island Empire, 
 as a source of possible obstruction to its plans, 
 was the idealistic programme of President Wilson, 
 embodied in his Fourteen Points and in his efforts 
 to establish a League of Nations. 
 
 A third menace for Japan lay in the possibility 
 of an Anglo-Saxon alliance, comprising all the 
 English-speaking nations, in which event England 
 and America would be expected to adopt a com- 
 mon programme with respect to their interests in 
 the Far East. 
 
 As regards the first factor in this new situation 
 with which the Government at Tokio saw itself 
 confronted, namely, the attitude of the Powers 
 
 17 
 
18 THE NEW; JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 towards China at the ensuing Peace Conference, 
 Japan had already taken measures to protect 
 herself when, as above pointed out, she secured 
 the promise of England, France and Italy (Rus- 
 sia's consent had also been obtained, but prior to 
 the Revolution) to s^upport Japan at the Peace 
 Conference in her designs to control Shantung 
 and the German islands north of the Equator. 
 The United States, alone of the Great Powers 
 at war with Germany, had not given its assent 
 to the Japanese programme, and it was just 
 the United States that had taken the leading 
 part in overcoming the opposition of Japan to 
 China's entrance into the war on the side of the 
 Allies. 
 
 Twice in 1 915 that astute statesman, Yuan Shi 
 Kai, President of the Chinese Republic, had 
 sounded the Allies with respect to the possibiKty 
 of China declaring war on Germany. Both times 
 she was advised by Great Britain that her partici- 
 pation, however desirable from many standpoints, 
 might result in serious complications elsewhere. 
 Clearly enough, what was meant was that in the 
 event of Japan not having her way in China, her 
 defection from the Allied group was feared, and 
 such a disaster was certainly not to be compensated 
 by the adherence of China. 
 
 China had no quarrel with Germany. On the 
 contrary, Germany, because of her almost fault- 
 less attitude towards China in the matter of 
 
THREE FACTORS OF DANGER 19 
 
 respecting Chinese rights and susceptibilities and 
 the purely commercial character of her occupancy 
 of Shantung (see the writings of Stanley Hombeck 
 and T- P. Millard), was better liked as a nation 
 than any of the other Great Powers, with the 
 possible exception of the United States. 
 
 Accordingly, it was with little enthusiasm that 
 China made the offers above referred to. Her real 
 enemy was Japan, and the problem was how to 
 rescue a large and practically defenceless empire 
 from the clutches of a ruthless and ambitious 
 neighbour who was armed to the teeth. China 
 saw her only hope in joining that one of the warring 
 groups who would be both willing and able to 
 afford her the necessary protection and be just 
 to her in the settlement of her problems at the 
 Peace Conference. 
 
 Japan, on the other hand, striving as she was to 
 keep China weak and defenceless, an easy prey 
 to her imperialistic designs, imderstood China's 
 purpose only too well, and therefore embraced 
 every means to frustrate it; and there is evidence 
 that in 1916 Japan went so far in her opposition 
 as seriously to contemplate a break with her allies 
 and adherence to the cause of the Central Powers. 
 And when the United States finally entered the 
 war, after first breaking off diplomatic relations 
 with Germany in February 191 7, Japan hastened 
 to secure the guarantees she felt she needed from 
 her allies and without which her position in 
 
20 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 China would be utterly shaken and insecure. She 
 acted promptly, for she saw clearly what effect 
 the entrance of the United States into the war 
 would have upon the Chinese nation. For the 
 Chinese regard America as entirely without selfish 
 imperialistic aims in China, and therefore as a 
 champion whose friendly sympathies could be 
 relied on to do justice to China when the time 
 came for the settlement of Chinese problems. 
 
 Accordingly, the Japanese Minister for Foreign 
 Affairs, when asked for the third time to give his 
 consent to the entrance of China into the war, 
 replied by pulling out a drawer in his desk, in 
 which lay a document which turned out, upon 
 examination, to be the draft of an agreement in 
 which England, France and Italy undertook to 
 support the Japanese claims at the Peace Con- 
 ference. The bland Japanese diplomat presented 
 the same to the British Ambassador with the 
 remark that he would be most happy to be of 
 service, provided he got his agreement. And he 
 got it. Failing to secure American adhesion to 
 this document, Japanese resourcefulness sought 
 other means to attain the same result, and ac- 
 cordingly the Baron Ishii mission was conceived, 
 to proceed to America and win over *'the Yan- 
 kees.** America yielded to pressure because she 
 was enlisted whole-heartedly to go in and bring the 
 European War to a close, and she could not af- 
 ford to have an enemy on her right flank. Hence 
 
THREE FACTORS OP DANGER 21 
 
 the Ishii-Lansing Agreement, with its recognition 
 of Japan's ''special interests'* in China. 
 
 The situation at the close of the war, however, 
 was this: Whatever the Ishii-Lansing Agreement 
 might mean — and there is a great difference of 
 opinion about that — it was not to be expected 
 that America would go the length of supporting 
 the Japanese programme with respect to Shantung. 
 Japan might have ** special interests" in China, 
 but that surely did not mean the right to swallow 
 up whole provinces. And yet, for reasons which 
 seem vague and imsatisfactory to the average 
 intelligent follower of events, President Wilson 
 was induced to support the secret treaties signed 
 by England, France and Italy, which gave Japan 
 control of Shantung. Secret treaties were sup- 
 posed to be anathema to the President. And, 
 indeed, the Treaty of London, which also under- 
 took to dispose of provinces without the consent 
 of the peoples or Governments concerned, has 
 never received the sanction of the President, and 
 he has put his refusal on the ground that it is a 
 secret treaty entered into by his associates in the 
 war who had failed to advise — ^much less consult — 
 him in the matter. But if the Treaty of London 
 is bad for that cause, the treaty disposing of 
 Shanttmg is still worse, for the reason that the 
 former was signed while America was stUl a 
 neutral (April 26, 1915), whereas the latter was 
 signed after America had decided to enter the 
 
82 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 war, namely, after she had broken off relations 
 with Germany. 
 
 We now come to the consideration of the 
 Fourteen Points and the League of Nations, which 
 seemed to be a menace to Japanese interests. 
 Assuming that these ideals became realized, it 
 meant an end of secret diplomacy, the nullification 
 of all secret agreements, universal disarmament, 
 government by the consent of the governed, repre- 
 sentative government everywhere answerable to 
 the people, an end of autocracies and oligarchies, 
 and the introduction generally of a reign of justice 
 and good will throughout the world. With such 
 a programme even in prospect, Japan trembled for 
 her not easily earned triumphs in Korea, in 
 Manchuria, in Shantung and other provinces of 
 China. Its realization meant the end of Japan's 
 dream of hegemony in the Far East. It meant 
 that the rest of the world would be leagued against 
 her to maintain the independence and integrity 
 of China and of Russia, whose Eastern Asiatic 
 provinces Japan coveted. 
 
 Japan went to the Peace Conference and sup- 
 ported the proposition of a League of Nations 
 with her tongue in her cheek, and then only after 
 her territoriaJ claims in China and elsewhere had 
 been fully recognized. She would in no event have 
 supported a real League of Nations, but she felt 
 that she could afford to support the particular 
 brand that was being offered at the Peace Con- 
 
THREE FACTORS OF DANGER 23 
 
 ference, because she saw that from the beginning 
 to the very end of that Conference, and from the 
 first to the last paragraph of the Covenant of the 
 League of Nations adopted by the Conference, all 
 the principles of a real League that would have 
 been dangerous to Japan were thrown overboard. 
 Thus, at the very outset, the Conference restored 
 and even glorified the supposedly discredited prin- 
 ciple of secret diplomacy. On the question of 
 disarmament it uttered not a word that could 
 cause disquietude to the smallest State that had 
 imperialistic designs. Even the Prince of Mon- 
 aco, with his *'army" of fourteen constables, 
 might safely disregard all that the Conference had 
 to say on that subject. The principle of self- 
 determination, had it possessed the proverbial 
 nine lives of a cat, would have had all of them 
 extinguished by the Conference. And what was 
 there left of the democratic idea in the League 
 upon whose Supreme Council sat, not representa- 
 tives of the peoples, but representatives of Gov- 
 ernments only, and whose decisions were subject 
 to the veto of one single voice? Not to enunciate 
 in detail all the other principles for which the 
 Fourteen Points and the League were supposed 
 to stand sponsor, it is enough to say that Japan 
 sat grimly and silently by and saw every one of 
 them violated and disregarded. Under such cir- 
 cumstances it is not astonishing that the Japanese 
 diplomats returned home at the close of the Con- 
 
24 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 ference with a smile upon their faces that re- 
 sembled that of the famous tiger who took the 
 lady from Niger out for a ride. 
 
 The third factor of danger above referred to 
 which Japan had to be on her guard against was 
 the much-mooted Anglo-Saxon hegemony of the 
 world — ^America and England joining hands across 
 the sea. There was much to be said for the 
 realization of such an alliance. The two coimtries 
 had common interests to protect in the Far East, 
 America and some of the British Dominions had 
 similar race problems to solve in connection with 
 the opposition of their peoples to the admission 
 of the yellow races as immigrants, both nations 
 had Far Eastern possessions the security of which 
 was menaced by the Japanese proclamation of a 
 Monroe Doctrine for Asia, and lastly, Japan was 
 fast reaching the position of industrial inde- 
 pendence which would make her not only a 
 formidable competitor in the world's markets, 
 but a particularly dangerous adversary in the 
 struggle for the markets of China. 
 
 But the idea of an Anglo-Saxon alliance suffered 
 shipwreck on the rocks of Ireland. No Anglo- 
 Saxon alliance can ever be consimimated so long 
 as the Irish problem persists in its long lease of life 
 and remains an unsolved political puzzle for the 
 British statesmen. There may be other factors 
 that prevent such a consummation; but they are 
 negligible by the side of the Irish one. The 
 
THREE FACTORS OF DANGER 25 
 
 British themselves are beginning to realize that 
 this is so, for we find frequent references to it in 
 those opposite extremes of British journalism, the 
 London Times and the Daily News. Perhaps, 
 with a growning menace of a Japanese or Yellow 
 peril, if that should ever come, or with an actual 
 menace to her interests in India before her eyes, 
 Britain will consent to solve the Irish difficulty 
 and include in the alliance Germany and even 
 Russia. Indeed, we shall refer to this possibility 
 in a subsequent chapter. For the present, Japan 
 feels herself secure from the Anglo-Saxon menace. 
 
CHAPTER POUR 
 
 POLICIES OP JAPAN AND ENGLAND COMPARED 
 
 In the shaping of her foreign policy consequent 
 upon the decisions to be taken at the Peace Con- 
 ference, Japan had one final factor to consider in 
 addition to those of which mention has already 
 been made. And in the consideration of this 
 final factor it will not be without advantage to 
 examine the startling parallel that exists between 
 the foreign policy of the Island Empire of Japan 
 and the foreign policy of the Island Empire of the 
 United Kingdom. Nor is it at all strange when 
 we examine into the reasons for it that the foreign 
 policies of these two nations, so widely divergent 
 in race, culture, colour, religion and political his- 
 tory, run along similar lines. 
 
 As has so often before been pointed out by the 
 present writer and by others, the geographical 
 position of Japan towards the mainland of Asia 
 is precisely the same as England's situation with 
 respect to the mainland of Europe. Both nations 
 have derived a great part of their power and 
 strength from the fact of their insularity. In the 
 
 26 
 
POLICIES COMPARED 27 
 
 early days of her history England had several 
 times suffered invasion. Firstly by the Romans 
 and then successively by the Angles, Saxons, 
 Danes and finally by the Normans or Northmen. 
 The Romans obtained no permanent footing in 
 Britain and finally withdrew. The Angles and 
 the Saxons, on the other hand, established them- 
 selves and reigned for centuries, in conflict with 
 the native Britons and the invading Danes. But 
 civil war weakening the solidarity of Anglo-Saxon 
 England, a third and decisive Danish conquest of a 
 house divided against itself was accomplished by 
 William the Conqueror. And when finally, after 
 two centuries of internal strife, England emerged 
 under Edward the First (the first sovereign since 
 the Norman Conquest who bore an English name) 
 as a united nation, English history begins to take 
 on a fixed character as regards resistance to foreign 
 invasion and by degrees the advantages of in- 
 sularity are impressed upon the British nation. 
 England becomes a great Maritime Power, de- 
 pendent almost entirely upon her fleet for protec- 
 tion against invasion, and develops towards the 
 continent of Europe a policy of creating a balance 
 of power, setting off one strong nation or combina- 
 tion of nations against another strong nation or 
 combination of nations and making the best and 
 cleverest use of the prevalent continental jealousies 
 to weaken a growing rival. Indeed, since the 
 reign of Queen Elizabeth four formidable rivals 
 
28 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 to British world supremacy have successively 
 arisen — Spain, Holland, Prance, Germany — and 
 all of them, by the masterfulness of British diplo- 
 macy, have been reduced to impotence. The 
 writer speaks in no spirit of condemnation. The 
 achievement is too great to be worthy of anything 
 save admiration. 
 
 Japan, like England, although in a lesser degree, 
 has suffered from invasions. There is, however, 
 this distinctive difference between the two cases, 
 namely, that Japan has always succeeded in re- 
 pelling the would-be foreign conqueror. In 
 A.D. 1019 the Sushen or Toi — ancestors of the 
 Manchu — ^who in a.d. 549 had raided the island 
 of Sado, off the west coast of the main island of 
 Honshiu, had conquered the islands of Tsushima 
 and Iki in the Korean straits, and effected a land- 
 ing on the northern shores of Kiushiu. They had 
 been driven off, and Iki and Tsushima had been 
 reoccupied. In the following century the Mongol, 
 Gengis Khan (1162-1227), had created a gigantic 
 empire between the Dnieper and the Pacific 
 Ocean, and his successors extended his conquests. 
 One of them, the celebrated Kublai Khan, a 
 grandson of Gengis, in 1263 subjugated Korea, 
 which became his vassal kingdom. In 1264 he 
 fixed the capital of his empire at Peking and 
 aspired to become the master of the whole of the 
 rest of China. In 1265 Kublai ordered his vassal, 
 the Korean King of Koma, to transport Kublai's 
 
POLICIES COMPARED 29 
 
 envoys to Japan, where they were, in effect, to 
 demand the submission of the Japanese. No 
 answer having been received from the Japanese, 
 Kublai made preparations for the invasion and 
 conquest of Japan. The invasion, begun in 
 November 1274, was conducted upon a large 
 scale and may be likened to the attempted con- 
 quest of the Greeks by the Persians under Darius. 
 The Japanese put up the same desperate resistance 
 against forces superior in numbers and in equip- 
 ment as had the ancient Greeks at Marathon, and 
 with equal success. Like the Persians at Mara- 
 thon, the Mongols and Koreans were forced to take 
 to their ships and to beat an ignominious retreat, 
 thus ending Kublai*s first invasion of the Mikado's 
 realms. 
 
 Undiscouraged by his first failure, Kublai now 
 made preparations upon a much larger scale, and 
 in 1 28 1, collecting a large fleet of ocean-going 
 ships, embarked no fewer than 100,000 Mongols 
 and Chinese upon them at a port on the Chinese 
 mainland opposite Formosa. The fleet bearing 
 this host was directed to effect a junction in the 
 Korean straits with another fleet of 1,000 vessels, 
 carrying 50,000 Mongol and 20,000 Korean 
 soldiers. 
 
 The details of the struggle, as momentous in 
 world history as that of the Greeks with the army 
 and navy of Xerxes, are unfortunately missing. 
 For fifty-three days, on land and sea, the fighting 
 
80 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 went on almost without Intermission. Like the 
 ancient Greeks, the Japanese displayed the most 
 desperate valour, and although pitted against a 
 foe so superior in fighting strength and equipment, 
 did not confine themselves to the defensive. 
 Grappling with, they boarded the enemy's ships, 
 and their two-handed swords wrought terrible 
 execution among the invaders. Like England in 
 1588, in the struggle with the Spanish Armada, 
 Japan was saved by the elements. A tempest 
 arose, shattering the Mongol fleet. What re- 
 mained of Kublai's army re-embarked and the 
 second and last invasion of Japan was over. 
 
 For centuries Japan was now enabled to pursue 
 her way immolested by other Powers, with one 
 or two minor interruptions to her security. In 
 141 9 friendly relations with China ended when a 
 Mongolian-Korean fleet attacked Tsushima and 
 was beaten off by the Japanese. In 1529 there 
 was a fresh quarrel, and in 1531 a Chinese squad- 
 ron again appeared off Tsushima and was again 
 defeated and put to flight. The rest of the 
 sixteenth century was taken up for the most part 
 in internal strifes, having for their object the 
 unification of Japan and the crushing of the feudal 
 barons and militant Buddhist monks of central 
 and eastern Honshiu. In 1592 Japan's great 
 military leader, Hideyoshi, having put the finishing 
 touches on the consolidation of the Island Empire, 
 now turned his thoughts to the mainland and 
 
\ POLICIES COMPARED 31 
 
 undertook the conquest of Korea and China. 
 Had he not died in 1598, it is probable that his 
 endeavours would have met with more or less 
 success in view of the initial advantages he had 
 already won in his campaigns against the Chino- 
 Korean armies. His death, however, brought 
 the war to an end: an armistice was concluded 
 in Korea and the Mikado's forces were soon 
 afterwards withdrawn. Within a few decades 
 thereafter took place the decisive step (1636), in- 
 augurated by the Shogun lyemitsu, closing Japan 
 entirely to foreigners with the exception of an 
 occasional Dutch trading ship that was permitted 
 to enter the port of Nagasaki. After 1 7 90 only one 
 Dutch ship a year was permitted so to trade, and 
 it is not until the Restoration, definitely accom- 
 plished in 1868, that Japan once again formally 
 resumed relations with foreign Powers. 
 
 In the subsequent years, as Japan, adopting 
 Western methods, arose to Imperial greatness, her 
 foreign policy became fixed along lines that were 
 imposed upon her by her history and by her 
 geographical location. Like England after the 
 Norman Conquest, Japan had recognized the ad- 
 vantages of her insularity in successfully resisting 
 foreign invasion. Like England, Japan now 
 recognized that her future security must, in the 
 first instance, rest upon a fleet basis. And again 
 like England, Japan perceived the menace to her 
 existence that might result by reason of the 
 
32 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 establishment of a strong Power opposite to her 
 upon the mainland, and adopted similar measures 
 to overcome it. 
 
 Korea and the Russian Maritime Province 
 form the western boundary of the Sea of Japan. 
 They are separated from the Japanese archi- 
 pelago by a distance across the Sea of Japan, 
 at its narrowest point, no greater than that which 
 separates Antwerp or Rotterdam from the City 
 of London. This stretch of coastland occupies a 
 position of the same strategical importance with 
 reference to Japan that the mouths of the Scheldt 
 and the Rhine do to England. Korea was a 
 vassal State of China, but it was evident to Japan 
 that unless she did something about the matter 
 herself, Korea would inevitably fall an easy prey 
 to Russia, in which event she would have at her 
 very doors, and within easy striking distance of 
 her coasts, one of the most powerful and mili- 
 taristic nations in the world. In February 1890 
 the Tsar Alexander III had issued a rescript 
 authorizing the construction of a railway across 
 Siberia. It was to be completed in ten years. 
 Commenced at both ends, the eastern section had 
 been opened in September 1893. Unless Japan 
 speedily became the suzerain of Korea, she might 
 see the peninsula snatched from her grasp by 
 Russia. Japan accordingly first made war on 
 China (in 1894-5) to rid Korea of Chinese in- 
 fluence and to substitute her own, and ten years 
 
POLICIES COMPARED S3 
 
 later (in 1904-5) on Russia, to prevent Russia 
 from extending her influence and sovereignty over 
 Korea. Japan succeeded in both of these wars, 
 and in 19 10 annexed Korea out and out. There 
 remains yet the Maritime Province, with the 
 great fortified port of Vladivostok. In Russia's 
 present internal and external difficulties Japan 
 sees an opportunity for the fulfilment of the rest 
 of her aspirations in this region, namely, the con- 
 quest of the Maritime Province and the extension 
 of Japanese influence over the entire country in 
 Siberia east of Lake Baikal. 
 
 Thus far the leading lines of British and of 
 Japanese foreign policy are identical, and have 
 been shaped, as I have pointed out, by the same 
 general principles — sea-power as the basis of in- 
 sular security and a continental policy that in- 
 volves the subjection, by war or diplomacy, some- 
 times by means of both together, of a too ambitious 
 rival. 
 
 Relying upon the continued application of this 
 policy by England after the close of the war, 
 Japanese diplomats reckon as a factor in her 
 future foreign policy that the European Con- 
 tinent may be split into various groups and fac- 
 tions in which, on the one hand, a French group, 
 inflamed thereto by England, will persist in a 
 policy of revenge and exhaust themselves in the 
 effort to reduce Germany to utter impotence. 
 And, on the other hand, the various other con- 
 
84 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 tending groups will split up or weaken themselves 
 in the conflict beyond the point of recovery. 
 
 To fish in such troubled waters as these would 
 be easy work for the Mikado's statesmen, for 
 Japan has her own ends to gain in the Far East. 
 With a European Continent exhausted and broken 
 up into various warring camps and the United 
 States withdrawing herself in splendid isolation, 
 Japan would be courted as never before. No 
 Power or combination of Powers would want to 
 offend her. Moreover, the possibility, always 
 present to the understanding of European diplo- 
 mats, of an alliance of Japan with a rehabilitated 
 Russia and a resuscitated Germany, makes this 
 final factor of Japan's foreign policy of almost 
 transcendental importance to her future expansion 
 as a nation. 
 
 Indeed, so great are the possibilities of new 
 combinations among the European and Asiatic 
 States which the recent war and the Peace 
 Treaties have called into being, that it may not 
 be without value to discuss in my next chapter 
 some of the new alignments of the Powers that 
 are reasonably to be expected in the coming days, 
 if we leave out of consideration the possibility of 
 America, England, Germany and Russia joining 
 with one another to preserve the future peace of 
 the world. 
 
CHAPTER FIVE 
 
 SOME POSSIBLE FUTURE COMBINATIONS 
 
 The principal result of the World War thus far 
 has been to secure for England the practically 
 undisputed hegemony of the world. The United 
 States might have had it had President Wilson 
 been able to stick to his original programme and 
 the Fourteen Points. But British diplomacy and 
 statesmanship, made wise by the handling of 
 just such problems for centuries past, tmderstood 
 how to organize effective opposition to President 
 Wilson's proposals, and when the Peace Con- 
 ference met the American leader had not long to 
 wait before he discovered that his plans were being 
 undermined from every direction. It was not a 
 difficult task for Britain's trained diplomats to 
 play upon French credulity and French fears and 
 to hold Italy in leading strings because of the 
 latter's financial and economic dependence upon 
 England and her hopes for securing British sup- 
 port to her aspirations in the settlement of her 
 Peace problems. Accordingly, in the face of the 
 combined attack of England, France, Italy and 
 
 35 
 
86 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 Japan, President Wilson felt himself compelled 
 to sacrifice one after the other of his Fourteen 
 Points in order to rescue, as he believed, a last 
 remnant of his great programme, namely, the 
 League of Nations, by whose help he still hoped to 
 eventually carry out his plans. But even here 
 President Wilson met with failure. The mandate 
 idea was taken over by England and cleverly 
 adapted to suit her own projects, and the Monroe 
 Doctrine was likewise treated to a dose of British 
 medicine, with the result that it emerged from the 
 ordeal in a much weakened state of health and 
 emasculated of much of its vigour. Moreover, 
 the bankruptcy of President Wilson's policy in 
 Paris had brought down upon him the opposition 
 of the American Senate at home, which, when the 
 treaty was presented to it, refused to honour 
 President Wilson's signature thereto, placing its 
 opposition on the high patriotic ground that the 
 treaty was a danger to America and a menace to 
 American interests throughout the world. And 
 accordingly, with the rejection of the treaty by 
 the American Senate, American foreign policy has 
 once more withdrawn itself into its former chan- 
 nels, leaving European and general world politics 
 alone and confining itself to its narrower com- 
 mercial and political interests in the Central and 
 South American States and in the Far East. 
 
 With America, the one Great Power that might 
 have checkmated her, eliminated from the race 
 
POSSIBLE FUTURE COMBINATIONS 37 
 
 for world dominion, England pursued a course 
 that led straight to her goal. French aspirations 
 involving the annexation of the left bank of the 
 Rhine were opposed because this would have 
 made France politically the dominant factor on 
 the Continent, and would, sooner or later, have 
 forced Germany to place herself under French 
 leadership, if she wished to survive, with the re- 
 sult that eventually a continental block might 
 arise, with France at its head, to dispute with 
 England the question of world hegemony. To 
 prevent this, England will see to it that Germany 
 is not too greatly weakened in comparison with 
 France and that the feeling of antagonism between 
 the two nations is kept alive. 
 
 In the case of Italy, British politics required 
 that Italy should have to dance to the British 
 fiddle. An economically and financially inde- 
 pendent Italy meant, for such a vital race as the 
 Italian, that in a few short decades Italy would 
 have attained to the hegemony over the Mediter- 
 ranean, including much of the African littoral. 
 Already in North Africa, as in Tunis, there are 
 signs that the Italians, by reason of their superior 
 racial vitality and a deeper seated colonizing in- 
 stinct, are crowding out the French. 
 
 Italy had hoped that a successful ending of the 
 war would place her in a position to revive the 
 glories of the Venetian Republic of former days, 
 and that imdisputed possession of the Adriatic 
 
88 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 and its principal ports on the Dalmatian shore 
 would render her position in the Mediterranean 
 impregnable and give to her a practical mastery 
 of the Levant. But the Peace Conference, led 
 by England, willed it otherwise, and Italy will 
 lose the Dalmatian coast, with the islands, except 
 Lavinia and Lissa, and she will have opposed to 
 her in possession of that coast the hostile Serbo- 
 Slav State, which, by retaining places of such high 
 strategical importance as Sebenico and the strongly 
 fortified Cattaro, is in a position to completely 
 nullify the value of the Adriatic to Italy as a factor 
 in her imperialistic plans of expansion. 
 
 It is not alone that Italy has been deprived of 
 these points of advantage that makes the Italian 
 cup of disappointment nm over, but it is the fact 
 that there has been created by the Supreme Coun- 
 cil, at the behest of England, a powerful Greek 
 State, a sort of Eastern financial agent for Eng- 
 land, with the great ports of Piraeus, Salonika and 
 Smyrna, through which important currents of 
 trade between Asia, Africa and Europe will flow, 
 rather than through the Italian ports in the 
 Adriatic. British support of Greece in the ex- 
 pansion of the latter's territory at the expense of 
 Bulgaria and Turkey makes it clear that Greece 
 may continue to rely on British support in the 
 future, all the more in view of the fact that it is the 
 racially allied Bulgars, Magyars and Turks who 
 are the most severely treated in the dispensation 
 
POSSIBLE FUTURE COMBINATIONS 39 
 
 of the Peace terms which England has permitted 
 the Supreme Council to hand out. It is true that 
 Italy has received as a sop an economic mandate 
 over a part of the Anatolian coast, but she has^ 
 had to resign herself to the loss of Smyrna and the 
 Dodekanese Islands, and in the concession to her 
 of the coal mines of Heraklea, the French. are 
 permitted to retain a 25 per cent, interest. 
 
 The Serbo-Slav State, Italy's most formidable 
 future rival, has no outlet upon the -^Egaean Sea.^ 
 Its future, commercially, rests apparently upon 
 the Adriatic. With the necessary ports secured 
 to Serbia upon the Adriatic, a thing she agitated 
 for constantly before the war, the Serbo-Slav 
 State will in the future constitutute a natural ally 
 for Greece, and to this alliance will, naturally, also 
 come Rumania, for it will be the task of these 
 three States to hold in check Hungary and 
 Bulgaria, at whose expense this triple alliance 
 has so greatly profited by way of annexation 
 of territory. 
 
 Italy, on the other hand, looks to Germany and 
 to Russia. Absolutely dependent on England 
 for her means of subsistence — coal — and shut off, 
 if need be, from Russia's Black Sea ports, whence 
 Italy could draw food, raw materials and coal, 
 by reason of Britain's control of the Dardanelles, 
 Italy sees herself entirely isolated overseas in any 
 future conflict in which she has not England be- 
 hind her. Accordingly, it is only common sense 
 
40 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 „^-^. ■ 
 
 and logic for Italy to want to restore land com- 
 munications with the great natural sources of sup- 
 ply for her imports and the two great markets for 
 her exports — Russia and Germany. 
 
 One has only to think of the fact that the 
 greatest Sea Power in the world has the absolute 
 control of every highway that permits of passage 
 in or out of the Mediterranean in order to under- 
 stand how literally true it is that Britain holds 
 in her grasp the continents of Europe, Asia and 
 Africa. Gibraltar, Suez, the Dardanelles — these 
 are the pillars upon which Britain has built up her 
 present world hegemony. With each one of these 
 continents split up into innumerable cross-currents 
 of interests, England can now impose her will upon 
 them all, and it is not going too far to say that 
 henceforth, and so long as this hegemony con- 
 tinues, no nation in the world may attempt any- 
 thing that strokes against the will or the interests 
 of England. 
 
 It is nevertheless true that there are elements 
 of weakness in Britain's present position which 
 are giving her statesmen a great deal of food for 
 anxious thought. For example, a hostile alliance 
 between Germany, Russia and Japan, between 
 Germany, Russia and China, or even between 
 Germany and Russia alone must be avoided even 
 at the price of making some important concessions. 
 
 A certain clever German said at the beginning 
 of the war, when he heard of England's entrance 
 
POSSIBLE FUTURE COMBINATIONS 41 
 
 on the side of Germany's enemies, "O weh, mein 
 Vaterland! England macht nie eine falsche 
 Rechnung*' (''Alas, my Fatherland! England 
 never makes a mistake in her calculations'*). 
 There are many who believe that England has 
 now, for the first time in her history, made such 
 a mistake in occupying the Dardanelles and Con- 
 stantinople.' ^^ They point out that for centuries 
 Russia has fought for these prizes and that in the 
 recent war they would have been assured to her 
 had she not been obliged to fall away from her 
 allies owing to her military defeats and the con- 
 sequences of her Revolution. But in opposing 
 Russia at the Straits and in Constantinople, Eng- 
 land is not pursuing a new line of policy. It is 
 merely Disraeli's statesmanship all over again. 
 Said Lord Cromer, *'Had it not been for the 
 Crimean War, and the policy subsequently 
 adopted by Lord Beaconsfield's Government, the 
 independence of the Balkan States would never 
 have been achieved, and the Russians would now 
 be in possession of Constantinople." 
 
 Prior to the conquest of Constantinople by the 
 Turks in 1453, there were three great outlets for 
 the trade of Asia into Europe. They were Con- 
 stantinople, Alexandria and the Syrian coast. 
 Turkey was a non-commercial Power, and from 
 the moment of her ascendancy, between the years 
 1453 ^^^ 1516, Turkey blocked one after the other 
 of the great trade routes between East and West 
 
42 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 which had hitherto been maintained chiefly in 
 the interests of the Western nations of Europe. 
 Accordingly, the Ottoman conquest of the Near 
 East was one of the decisive events in world his- 
 tory. After that conquest the Western world 
 found itself compelled to choose between forgoing 
 its profits in trade with the East, or, unless it 
 made war on the Turk to recover possession of the 
 trade-routes and trading centres, to discover a new 
 route to the East with the continuity of which the 
 Ottomans could not interfere. Europe preferred 
 the latter alternative, and hence the great mari- 
 time activity displayed at Cadiz, at Bristol and at 
 Lisbon during the latter half of the fifteenth 
 century. Eventually England, by her mastery 
 of these new sea-routes to the East, became the 
 world's greatest trader and grasped the lion's 
 share in the overseas trade with the Orient. Thus 
 the situation remained down to the beginning of 
 the present century. 
 
 At about that time Russia began extending her 
 railroads into the region of the Middle East and 
 a commencement was made in the construction 
 of the Bagdad Railway, which was to have brought 
 direct overland connection between the Persian 
 Gulf and the German ports in the North Sea. 
 Such projects as these threatened, therefore, a 
 loss to England, by diversion to the overland routes 
 of a great part of her carrying trade with the East. 
 Then came the World War, and its more than sue- 
 
POSSIBLE FUTURE COMBINATIONS 43 
 
 cessful conclusion for England placed her in the 
 favourable position of controlling, for the first 
 time since the Turkish conquest, not only the 
 principal sea-routes to the East, but the principal 
 land-routes as well. 
 
 The occupancy of Egypt, with the great ports 
 of Alexandria, Port Said and the Canal, the con- 
 trol now exercised over Constantinople and the 
 Straits, and the possession of the mandate in 
 Palestine, carrying with it, as it does, full sway 
 over the transportation lines in Syria, place 
 England in a most enviable position with respect 
 to the trade of the Near and Middle East, for she 
 is now enabled to levy tribute on pretty nearly 
 all of it. 
 
 Looking back at the question of Syria, one sees 
 how completely isolated economically that country 
 will be in French hands, unless the French call 
 upon and make use of British co-operation. Just 
 as, in ancient times, goods from the East found 
 their way to the head of the Persian Gulf, thence 
 by way of Basra, Bagdad and Damascus to the 
 Syrian seaboard, so in the future trade will to a 
 large extent follow the same route, and England 
 holds in her grasp both the first and the last stages 
 of this trunk line. The French in Syria, sand- 
 wiched in between two British spheres of in- 
 fluence, must yield the palm to the latter. 
 
 The future position of France is in some doubt. 
 France may remain an ally of England, but, if 
 
44 THE^ NEW. JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 so, it becomes a rather one-sided arrangement, 
 for the reason that England will take no chances 
 of losing her newly won position through taking 
 sides in any French quarrel in which her own 
 vital interests are not affected. For France, the 
 friendship of such States as Poland and Czecho- 
 Slavia is but a poor substitute for the loss of her 
 great Russian ally. The fate of all of these 
 newly created States is still absolutely uncertain. 
 For a chauvinistic people like the Poles, the trials 
 of peace will be more difficult to overcome than 
 the trials of war. Accordingly, with respect to 
 the new States, it is impossible to forecast any- 
 thing with reasonable certainty, except that 
 things, in the end, will probably turn out quite 
 differently from what most of us at present expect. 
 
CHAPTER SIX 
 
 japan's modern world diplomacy 
 
 The American Government must never forget 
 one thing, namely, that if a condition can be 
 brought about whereby it were to lose the aid and 
 moral support of Europe, and, at the same time, 
 if Japan were to succeed in freeing herself from 
 outside interference or menace — in other words, 
 if Japan can succeed in isolating the United States 
 politically — she will then be in a position to throw 
 down the gauntlet to America and to let a decision 
 at arms determine the question of the hegemony 
 of the Far East and the Pacific. 
 
 Japan has already partly consolidated her po- 
 sition in the Far East by establishing her military 
 superiority over China and Russia, and the 
 object of the twenty-one demands imposed on the 
 former in 19 15 and -of the secret treaty exacted 
 from the latter in 1916, was to further the plans 
 of the Japanese Imperialists directed primarily 
 against the United States. 
 
 America's profound interest in the fate of 
 China, consistently recognized by all American 
 
 45 
 
46 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 statesmen of the past and moulded into a principle 
 under the name of the Hay Doctrine, had first 
 to be undermined in order that Japan's para- 
 mountcy in China might stand forth as an estab- 
 lished fact. Without strife, if possible; with 
 strife, if need be. For, otherwise, how could 
 Japan, an industrially backward State as com- 
 pared with some of the great Western nations, 
 hope to compete and to make headway in the 
 markets of China, as against the products of her 
 industrially and commercially superior Western 
 rivals, except by having preferential facilities in 
 those markets? For, without such facilities, she 
 perceived her own home industries doomed to 
 suffer such a handicap as would rob them of any 
 prospect of f utvue expansion and legitimate health- 
 ful growth. 
 
 Moreover, Japan's new arrangement with Rus- 
 sia, above referred to, had likewise for its object 
 to secure the submission of the only other Great 
 Power, save the United States, who might be 
 expected ever to challenge the Japanese claim to 
 the hegemony of the Far East. With China and 
 Russia disposed of, the Mikado's diplomats 
 figured that they had in the future to wait for 
 the right opportunity only, when, for one reason 
 or another, the United States would stand alone 
 in world politics and be left without friends or 
 allies to aid her in the supreme contest that will 
 then be unloosed for the prizes that lie about the 
 
JAPAN'S WORLD DIPLOMACY 47 
 
 shores of the Pacific waiting for a world conqueror 
 to pick them up. 
 
 At the very least the Russo-Japanese rapproche- 
 ment was to assure Japan against an attack upon 
 her right flank in Manchuria, in case of a war 
 with America. And now that Russia, since 191 7, 
 has been eliminated, for the time being, from the 
 international diplomatic chess-board, and her 
 promises of 191 6 are no longer of value, Japan 
 seeks to attain the same ends by seizing Russia's 
 Maritime Province and by establishing her in- 
 fluence in Siberia as far west as Lake Baikal, 
 under the pretence of setting up a buffer State 
 in that region to protect Japan from Bolshevist 
 influences. The ruse is, of course, only too pal- 
 pable a one, and will hardly succeed in deceiving 
 the most credulous. The real purpose is just 
 what it was in 19 16, when Russia was still a 
 Great Power to be reckoned with. An under- 
 standing with Russia, which at that time could be 
 reached by means of the pen, must now, by 
 reason of intervening circumstances, be attained 
 by means of the sword, and the Nipponese will 
 no doubt succeed in proving, in this case, that the 
 hand that employed the one instrument can, with 
 equal facility, wield the other. 
 
 To jockey her allies into such a position that 
 they would all have to assent to her having a free 
 hand in China was the primary object of Japan's 
 diplomacy, for which she laboured unceasingly 
 
48 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 throughout the war, and had the United States 
 Senate ratified the Treaty of Versailles, thereby 
 placing the seal of American sanction upon the 
 spoliation of China in Shantung, Japan's object 
 would have been attained in its entirety, 
 
 Russia's precarious position during the war, 
 after the success of the great German offensive 
 in 19 1 5, had forced her to agree to all of Japan's 
 demands. Likewise, Japan's other allies, Eng- 
 land, France and Italy, were obliged to sign away 
 their freedom of action in the determination of 
 matters affecting Japan's paramount position in 
 the Far East, by reason of the fact that there was 
 an ever-present possibility throughout the war 
 that they might need Japan's further help to de- 
 feat Germany, and the fear existed, moreover, 
 that to offend Japan's susceptibilities might even 
 mean the transfer of her support from the side 
 of the Allies to the side of Germany. 
 
 Having successfully navigated her ship of state 
 through the troublous seas of war and diplomacy 
 to the point we have indicated, Japan now per- 
 ceived but one remaining obstacle in her path- 
 way, and all her efforts thenceforth were to be 
 directed towards the removal of this last hin- 
 drance to the attainment of her supreme desire. 
 
 Accordingly, upon the entrance of the United 
 States into the war the Japanese, partly by veiled 
 threats and partly by painting the internal situa- 
 tion in China as necessitating the strong inter- 
 
JAPAN'S WORLD DIPLOMACY 49 
 
 vening hand of Japan, undertook to gain the ad- 
 herence of the United States to her policies in 
 China. And, indeed, they laboured with some 
 success. America, on the eve of putting all her 
 strength into the European contest, felt impelled 
 to jettison some of her cargo in the Far East, 
 but she did so very reluctantly and left open for 
 herself as many avenues of retreat from the new 
 course she was entering upon as it was possible 
 to^do. 
 
 Baron Ishii, chief of the Japanese Mission, who 
 conducted the negotiations with Secretary Lan- 
 sing, did not perhaps secure all he meant to do, 
 when he left Washington with an agreement in his 
 pocket which gave the formal recognition of the 
 United States to Japan's ''special interests'* in 
 China. But what Japan herein lacked in the 
 form of explicit declaration she more than made 
 up by the methods with which the new agree- 
 ment was exploited in the Far East. 
 
 China, that had been, one might easily say, 
 from time immemorial so staunch a friend of 
 America, felt herself abandoned and betrayed. 
 She deeply resented this action of the United 
 States, so gravely affecting her sovereign rights 
 and so wotmding to her pride and dignity as an 
 independent nation. Two nations, one of them 
 her age-long friend, had got together in secret 
 and had arranged to dispose of her rights without 
 so much as *'by your leave." 
 
60 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 Indeed, had the internal troubles of China at 
 this time been less poignant, there conceivably 
 might have arisen a situation whereby the action 
 of the United States would have driven China 
 completely into the arms of Germany, whose 
 ultimate success in the war many leading Chinese 
 regarded as practically the only safeguard against 
 the aggressive aims of Japan, which were then 
 taking on an ever-increasing attitude of menace 
 that was threatening China with the complete 
 destruction of her sovereignty and the entire loss 
 of her independence. 
 
 The United States, particularly through the in- 
 fluence of her very able and energetic Minister at 
 Peking, Mr. Paul S. Reinsch, was able in great part 
 to counteract the effect of this baleful Japanese 
 propaganda, exploiting to the utmost a Japanese 
 interpretation of the far-reaching effect of the 
 Ishii-Lansing Agreement, with the result that 
 China was eventually induced to enter the war 
 on the side of the Allies. 
 
 When the Peace Conference met, Japan was 
 well aware that she would have to reckon with 
 no opposition to her plans on the part of England, 
 France and Italy. But she had still to reckon 
 with the probable opposition of the United States, 
 and the problem was how to win over the latter 
 country to the full recognition of her paramount 
 position in China, already, as it was believed, 
 quite firmly secured to her by reason of the con- 
 
JAPAN'S WORLD DIPLOMACY 51 
 
 sent, embodied in the secret treaties, which had 
 been wrung from Russia, England, France and 
 Italy in 191 7. 
 
 In spite of the fact that she held these tramp 
 cards, Japan recognized that America was a factor 
 that could not be left out of the calculation, if the 
 question was to be considered settled for all time. 
 
 Accordingly, Japan set to work, and soon per- 
 ceived that she might hope to attain her ends if 
 the seeds of dissension could be sown among the 
 members of the Conference, whereby, in the midst 
 of contending factions, the weight of her own 
 great influence could always be thrown in favour 
 of those who stood to support her claims. 
 
 The decision of the members of the Conference, 
 at its opening session, to hold their meetings be- 
 hind closed doors was perhaps the greatest triumph 
 that could have been wished for by those members 
 of the Peace Conference who, like Japan, had 
 secret agreements in their portfolios, and who 
 hoped to secure great advantages for themselves 
 by reason of a lack of unity among the conferees, 
 which secret diplomacy would engender and 
 which the centrifugal forces thus set in motion 
 would perpetuate. 
 
 From the moment that the first point in Wil- 
 son's programme — open diplomacy — ^was aban- 
 doned by its author, Japan's representatives knew 
 that her aims were attainable and that the last 
 hindrance to recognition of her supremacy in the 
 
52 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 Far East must dissolve, like the proverbial noon- 
 day mist before the sun, under the influence of 
 the poisonous gases of revenge, jealousy and am- 
 bition which the close atmosphere of the secret 
 Conference Chamber would generate. 
 
 The bearing of the Japanese conferees through- 
 out the various sessions of the Conference was a 
 master-work of Eastern finesse. For, beneath the 
 attitude of calm and indifference which Baron 
 Makino and his colleagues invariably displayed, 
 there burned the fires of intense excitement as 
 they followed the various acts in the develop- 
 ment of the great world drama that were to 
 mean so much to the future weal or woe of their 
 Fatherland. 
 
 When the Conference opened, the representa- 
 tives of the Land of the Rising Sim saw a Japanese 
 sky black with the threatening clouds that had 
 come up out of the West. The Japanese states- 
 men had come to Paris in no confident mood. 
 But once the Conference had committed itself to 
 the holding of secret sessions and the first breach 
 in the Wilson programme had been made, like 
 magic the menacing portents that had been 
 gathering in the heavens that surround the Island 
 Empire disappeared, perhaps never to return. 
 At any rate, such was the aspect of affairs as they 
 appeared to the Japanese representatives at the 
 beginning of the Conference, and subsequent 
 events, down to the close of the Conference and 
 
JAPAN'S WORLD DIPLOMACY 53 
 
 the return of President Wilson to America, only 
 confirmed them in their first impressions. 
 
 They had held back, and had waited for the 
 right moment to play their trump cards. The 
 rubber was won at Paris, but the game was lost at 
 Washington, when the Senate of the United States 
 refused to endorse the promissory notes issued at 
 Versailles. 
 
 I 
 
CHAPTER SEVEN 
 
 THE QUESTIONS OF RACE EQUALITY AND SHANTUNG 
 
 On February 13, 191 9, the text of the first draft 
 of the Covenant of the League of Nations was laid 
 before the members of the Peace Conference for 
 discussion and for the consideration of any pro- 
 posed amendments thereto. 
 
 With the approval, it is said, of Mr. Lloyd 
 George and of President Wilson, Baron Makino, 
 head of the Japanese delegation, had introduced 
 an-amendment to this draft whereunder the League 
 of Nations covenanted to put a stop to the dis- 
 criminatory treatment which in certain parts of 
 the world was still being unjustly meted out to 
 nations and to the individual nationals of certain 
 nations, on the sole basis of a difference in race. 
 Thus, in spite of the fact that the United States, 
 like all the other Great Powers, has entered into 
 treaty relations with Japan in which the Japanese 
 are granted the privileges of the most favoured 
 nation, the United States permits discrimination 
 to be shown in certain States of the West against 
 the acquirement of citizenship on the part of 
 
RACE EQUALITY AND SHANTUNG 55 
 
 Japanese nationals and against their ownership 
 of real property in those States. Similar con- 
 ditions exist in Australasia ^ and in British 
 Columbia. 
 
 Against the aforementioned amendment, intro- 
 duced by Baron Makino, Mr. Charles Hughes, the 
 Premier of Australia, raised a loud and vigorous 
 protesting voice. Among other powerful argu- 
 ments with which he attempted to justify his op- 
 position, he insinuated that the Japanese, of all 
 peoples, were the last who had the right to com- 
 plain of discriminatory treatment, in view of the 
 manner in which they interpreted the doctrine of 
 the equality of races in their attitude towards the 
 Koreans and the Chinese. The Koreans had been 
 treated as an inferior, subject people and their 
 nation had been robbed of its independence. The 
 Chinese were about to suffer the same fate as the 
 Koreans, unless the Western nations intervened. 
 Accordingly, argued Mr. Hughes, the Japanese 
 proposal was purely an exercise in hypocrisy, and 
 represented an attempt on their part to promote, 
 by indirect methods, their real object, which was to 
 secure the hegemony in Asia and the Pacific. If 
 the British Dominions and the United States were 
 to permit unrestricted immigration to those 
 countries in compliance with the Japanese de- 
 mand, they would simply be playing the Japanese 
 game and promote Japan's hidden designs. 
 
 In consequence of the feelings aroused in both 
 
56 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 the British and the American delegations by rea- 
 son of Mr. Hughes's vigorous onslaught, the 
 Mikado's representatives decided not to push the 
 amendment any further at that time and to let 
 the whole proposition rest until the return from 
 America of President Wilson, in March, at which 
 time the discussion of the Covenant and of any 
 amendments thereto would be renewed. 
 
 During President Wilson's absence in America 
 a powerful opposition to this race amendment 
 clause began to manifest itself, not only in Aus- 
 tralia, but likewise in New Zealand and in Canada. 
 And in the United States the fear was fostered 
 that consideration of the race amendment clause 
 would result in dragging the vexatious immigra- 
 tion question into the debate. 
 
 Lord Robert Cecil declared that, however much 
 sympathy one might have with the idea, it was 
 impossible to include the principle of the equality 
 of races in the Covenant of the League of Nations 
 without interfering in the internal affairs of the 
 States affected thereby. Accordingly, Japan was 
 informed that England must decline to support 
 the amendment. 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon countries being united in their 
 opposition to the amendment, the Japanese 
 delegation now directed their efforts towards an 
 alteration in its form, so as to make the same a 
 part of the preamble of the Covenant, without 
 inclusion in the terms of the body of the instru- 
 
E4CE EQUALITY AND SHANTUNG .57 
 
 I 
 
 ment. Moreover, a change was made m' the 
 phraseology of the text of the amendment in its 
 new form. Careful avoidance was made of em- 
 ploying the word ''race" in the draft now pre- 
 sented, and the principle of race equality was 
 cleverly preserved by the use of the following 
 terms: **by the maintenance of the principle of 
 the equality of nations and of the just treatment 
 of their nationals.'* 
 
 At the meeting of the League of Nations Com- 
 mittee of the Peace Conference held on April ii, 
 1919, the amendment in the altered form above 
 set forth was introduced by Baron Makino. In 
 the course of a well-argued speech supporting the 
 amendment, he called particular attention to the 
 fact that it was the desire of the people and of 
 the Government of Japan, most positively ex- 
 pressed in word and deed, that the principle he 
 was now contending for be given due recognition 
 in the Covenant of the League of Nations. Both 
 Baron Makino and his able colleague, Viscoimt 
 Chinda, addressed the Committee, and their 
 eloquent efforts to set forth the justice of their 
 claim in the fairest possible light made a profound 
 impression upon their audience. It may be easily 
 imagined that the impression produced upon M. 
 Clemenceau, who was representing France upon 
 the Committee, was a particularly deep one, in 
 view of the fact that in France and her colonial 
 possessions the immigration problem, as we know 
 
58 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 it, does not exist and there is no race question 
 for them at all. 
 
 The amendment came to a vote. Eleven 
 States supported it, six States rejected it. Never- 
 theless, in spite of the fact that the amendment 
 had been carried by so large a majority, President 
 Wilson, as Chairman of the Committee, declared 
 the defeat of the amendment on the ground that 
 acceptance required a unanimous approval. In 
 other words, the negative vote of a single member 
 of the Committee could defeat the amendment. 
 This decision, although a purely arbitrary one of 
 President Wilson, as was shown afterwards by 
 the adoption of other amendments without a 
 unanimity of voices, was acquiesced in by Japan 
 when it was seen that none of the States repre- 
 sented on the Committee ventured to enter a 
 protest. 
 
 The Japanese had met with a check, but even 
 so their cause was not dead yet, and the situation 
 for them was anything but a desperate one at 
 this stage of the negotiations. In the regular 
 course of events and in accordance with the rules 
 of the Conference, the League of Nations Com- 
 mittee would have to report to the Plenary Ses- 
 sion of the Peace Conference, as a committee of 
 the whole, and only by them could it be definitively 
 determined what the exact terms of the new draft 
 of the Covenant were to be. The Japanese were 
 in a position to plead, not alone the justice of 
 
RACE EQUALITY AND SHANTUNG 59 
 
 their claims but also the further very important 
 fact that an overwhelming majority of the Com- 
 mittee to whom the claim had been referred had 
 voted in favour of its adoption, and even their 
 opponents had been constrained to vote as they 
 did not from conviction, but impelled thereto by 
 expediency — the exigencies of home politics re- 
 quired it. 
 
 In any case, the Japanese diplomats had secured 
 a strategical advantage of the first importance, 
 whereby, if they saw fit to pursue the matter to 
 its utmost limits, they would have behind them 
 the moral forces of the world, and it was thereby 
 made possible for them to wreck the organization 
 of the League of Nations if such an amendment 
 as they were presenting, resting as it did upon 
 incontrovertible moral grounds, should be rejected. 
 
 In other words, the attitude of certain of the 
 Great Powers towards the Japanese race amend- 
 ment to the Covenant of the League of Nations 
 provided the Mikado's statesmen with a good 
 trading proposition, so that when the measures of 
 really vital import to the Island Empire came 
 up for consideration before the Conference, Baron 
 Makino and his colleagues could press for their 
 acceptance with less likelihood of meeting a 
 rebuff. For when, soon thereafter, the question of 
 Shantung came up for consideration, the Japanese 
 were in a position to say to the Conference that 
 if it was immoral and unjust for Japan to demand 
 
60 THE. NEW JAPANESE PEEK 
 
 Shantung, it was 'equally immoral and' unjust for 
 the Conference to require that Japan give up 
 her claim to the recognition of race equality. 
 
 On April 19th and the days following, an op- 
 portunity was given both to the Japanese and to 
 the Chinese delegates to place their case before 
 the Council of Four. The Chinese delegation 
 demanded the imconditional return of the Shan- 
 ttmg territory, occupied by Japan, to China. 
 Baron Makino, however, was only willing to 
 promise restoration on certain conditions, such as 
 were embodied in various secret agreements which 
 China had been compelled to sign in 1915 and in 
 1 91 8. The Chinese objection to this proposition 
 was, of course, that having signed the aforesaid 
 agreements under coercion they never had any 
 validity and were null and void. 
 
 President Wilson supported the Chinese con- 
 tention and pronoimced very strongly in favour 
 of a complete and imconditional withdrawal of 
 the Japanese from Shantung. The Japanese dele- 
 gation combated the Chinese contention and in- 
 sisted that the agreements in question "were en- 
 tirely outside the jurisdiction of the Peace Con- 
 ference and were, therefore, not a subject that it 
 was permissible to discuss. The Council of Four 
 thereupon suggested to both sides that the solu- 
 tion of the question be postponed until a pre- 
 liminary Peace had been signed and that the 
 question should then be laid before the League of 
 
RACE EQUALITY AND SHANTUNG 61 
 
 Nations "fdr decision. To this proposal the 
 Chinese delegation gave their immediate consent. 
 Not so the Japanese. Baron Makino demanded 
 that a decision be reached before the arrival of the 
 German plenipotentiaries at Versailles. 
 
 In the meantime the Peace Conference assem- 
 bled in Plenary Session on April 28th for the pur- 
 pose of adopting the definitive terms of the 
 Covenant of the League of Nations. It was 
 anticipated that at this session the Japanese dele- 
 gation would once again bring forward the race 
 amendment and that the occasion might give rise 
 to some lively exchanges between the Japanese 
 proponents, on the one side, and the Anglo-Saxon 
 opponents, on the other. 
 
 There was an atmosphere of tense excitement 
 in the assembly when Baron Makino took the 
 floor and began to speak. His speech was a short 
 but masterful exposition of the Japanese point 
 of view, but it soon became apparent that the 
 head of the Japanese delegation was speaking in 
 no challenging mood, but, on the contrary, was 
 prepared to make concessions. He set forth that 
 the principle of the equality of nations was em- 
 bodied in the very nature and structure of the 
 League of Nations. There could never, he argued, 
 be constituted a real Society of Nations unless 
 the members composing it should mutually guar- 
 antee to apply the principle of equal and just 
 treatment towards all the members, without dis- 
 
62 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 crimination as to race or nationality. It was not 
 his purpose, he said, to urge the acceptance of the 
 Japanese proposal at the present stage, but he 
 considered it his duty to give public utterance to 
 the feeling of bitter disappointment that animated 
 the Japanese people and Government by reason of 
 the rejection of the amendment by the League of 
 Nations Committee, to whom the matter had been 
 presented. And although, he added in conclu- 
 sion, the Imperial Government was prepared to 
 express its acquiescence in the ruUng at the present 
 time, it reserved the right to present the matter 
 again at the proper time to the Council of the 
 League of Nations. 
 
 Makino*s clever speech did not fail of its in- 
 tended effect. The moderation and unselfishness 
 of the Japanese were thus plainly demonstrated. 
 It would have been invidious to even suggest that 
 the Imperial Government, in reality, cared less 
 than two straws for the adoption of the principle 
 of race equality at the present juncture. 
 
 That would have been to rob them of one of 
 the sharpest weapons in their diplomatic armoury. 
 
 Up to now the Japanese had only been fencing. 
 At this point began the real battle for the settle- 
 ment of the Shantung question. The matter had 
 to be fought out in the Council of Four, reduced 
 to Three now, by reason of Orlando's withdrawal 
 in the Fiume controversy. Only President Wilson 
 opposed the Japanese demands. Clemenceau and 
 
RACE EQUALITY AND SHANTUNG 63 
 
 Lloyd George, embarrassed by their consciousness 
 of the secret treaties, suggested postponement and 
 delay. Against President Wilson's obstinacy the 
 Japanese perceived only one means of success. 
 It was to be a desperate venture, but the Japanese 
 evidently knew their man. The Supreme Council 
 was presented with an ultimatum. President 
 Wilson must withdraw his opposition or the 
 Japanese delegation would depart for home. In 
 the latter alternative it was intimated that a 
 separate Peace would be made with Germany and 
 an economic and financial consortium closed with 
 her to exploit Russia. 
 
 This bombshell was exploded at the very moment 
 that the German delegation reached Versailles for 
 the purpose of hearing and receiving the Peace 
 terms. Clemenceau and Lloyd George, thor- 
 oughly alarmed at the prospect with which they 
 were confronted, now in turn threatened the 
 President with the loss of his League of Nations, 
 a project to which the President had wholly given 
 himself and for the sake of which, as they knew, 
 he could be compelled to make sacrifices. Face 
 to face with such a bitter alternative, the Presi- 
 dent succumbed, and China was offered up a 
 victim on the altar of Western selfishness. 
 
CHAPTER EIGHT 
 
 THE SHANTUNG QUESTION 
 
 It is a fortunate thing for America that President 
 Wilson's capitulation to Japanese Imperialism 
 and his abandonment of his principles in the face 
 of the adroit manoeuvres of his astute colleagues 
 at Paris were set at naught by the subsequent 
 action of the United States Senate. Indeed, it is 
 difficult to understand how President Wilson could 
 ever have believed that the American people would 
 accept the oditim of such an iniquitous transaction. 
 The Shantung decision of the Peace Conference 
 involved not alone one iniquity towards China — 
 it was, in fact, a combination of iniquities. It 
 concerned the recognition and approval of a whole 
 series of infamous acts committed by Japan in 
 her relations with China since the outbreak of the 
 war. When Japan, in May 191 5, forced China 
 to accept the twenty-one demands, the question 
 of the future disposition of Shantung was an 
 integral part thereof. By the twenty-one de- 
 mands China was compelled to grant Japan the 
 rights which she sought in the province of Shan- 
 tung. China had yielded to jorce majeure and 
 
 64 
 
THE SHANTUNG QUESTION 65 
 
 umder protest. Foreign sympathy for China in 
 the face of this high-handed act of aggression was 
 exhibited everywhere, and it was generally be- 
 lieved that when the Great Powers, Japan's allies, 
 were released from the tension of the war, they 
 would join with America in some action that 
 would restore China in her rights. 
 
 The twenty-one demands involved much more 
 than the Shantung concession to Japan. They 
 included also very far-reaching financial, economic 
 and political concessions to Japan, amoimting, in 
 fact, to a virtual protectorate. 
 
 Accordingly, when the Peace Conference not 
 only failed to put on record its unqualified dis- 
 approval of the twenty-one demands, but actually 
 placed the stamp of its approval on one of the 
 most important of them, the Chinese nation had 
 great reason to feel that they were being delivered 
 over, tied hand and foot, to the tender mercies 
 of their arch-enemy, t Moreover, the betrayal was 
 made more flagrant by reason of the fact that 
 it was consummated in the face of the practically 
 unanimous opposition of public opinion through- 
 out the world. This was the first iniquity. 
 
 The second iniquity was that the Shanttmg con- 
 cession was embodied in the Peace Treaty, into 
 which had been incorporated the Covenant of the 
 League of Nations, under which the signatory 
 Powers, **in order to promote international co- 
 operation and to achieve international peace and 
 
66 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 security ... by the prescription of open, just 
 and honourable relations between nations, by the 
 firm establishment of the understandings of inter- 
 national law as the actual rule of conduct among 
 Governments, and by the maintenance of justice 
 and a scrupulous respect for all treaty obligations 
 in the dealings of organized peoples with one 
 another, agree to this Covenant of the League of 
 Nations.'' 
 
 That there are many unjust and immoral con- 
 ditions contained in the treaty is now pretty 
 generally admitted. Such conditions, in so far as 
 they were imposed upon the enemy States, are 
 at least understandable in view of the state of the 
 public mind in the victorious countries at the end 
 of the war. What is not understandable, how- 
 ever, is that a friend and an ally, and one that 
 had made important sacrifices for the cause of the 
 Allies, should be treated, at the end of the war, 
 as an enemy and even worse than an enemy. 
 For the action of the Peace Conference involved 
 not alone the loss to China of one of her richest 
 and most important provinces, but it affected the 
 independence and territorial integrity of the 
 Chinese nation in a manner that vitally touches 
 sovereignty. Indeed, fairly regarded, the Shan- 
 tung decision of the Peace Conference was merely 
 the first step in the ultimate partition of China 
 and the destruction of Chinese independence. 
 
 To embody such an act of spoliation, involving 
 
THE SHANTUNG QUESTION 67 
 
 a breach of every one of the noble professions 
 which we have quoted from the preamble of 
 the Covenant of the League of Nations, in the 
 very instrument in which those professions are 
 declared to be the guide for the future conduct 
 of the world, could not have failed to spell disaster, 
 not alone for the treaty, but for the League of 
 Nations — the one hope of mankind for a better 
 world order. 
 
 The third iniquity we have to consider very 
 closely touches the honour of the United States. 
 It was at the instance of the United States that 
 the Peking Government, in March 191 7, after 
 very carefully considering the bearing and con- 
 sequences of their act, broke off diplomatic rela- 
 tions with Germany. If not explicitly expressed, 
 although the contrary is maintained by some well- 
 informed persons, it was at least tacitly tmder- 
 stood that China's participation in the war on the 
 side of the Allies would necessarily carry with it 
 certain advantages for China at the ensuing Peace 
 Conference, not the least among which was to be 
 the release of China from the pressure and ag- 
 gression of Japan. Indeed, China's negotiators 
 made it quite plain to the Powers that she had no 
 impelling reasons for joining in a war against 
 Germany, a nation towards whom the Chinese 
 had the kindliest feelings, except the one fact that 
 thereby China hoped to provide herself with the 
 means and the opportunity to resist the encroach- 
 
68 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 ments of Japan. And how did the European 
 nations meet this frankness of China's statesmen? 
 They met it by entering into a secret treaty with 
 Japan in February- March 191 7 (at the very 
 time that the Peking Government broke off 
 diplomatic relations with Germany), conceding 
 to Japan, among other things, her claims upon 
 Shantung. And as a further evidence of good 
 faith they kept the fact a secret from China and 
 the United States until February 1919, when the 
 matter was being thrashed out at the Peace Con- 
 ference. The European Allies, knowing that they 
 would have to abandon and betray China at the 
 Peace Conference, permitted the United States to 
 pledge her honour to China, and then had the face 
 to attempt a justification by appealing to the 
 sacredness of the secret treaties. In other words, 
 the Allies gave Japan an invalid promissory note 
 in 1 91 7, and, having disclosed the fact two years 
 later, succeeded in securing its payment by pro- 
 curing the responsible endorsement of Uncle Sam 
 thereon. Nothing in international relations has 
 ever been more infamous. 
 
 We have mentioned three iniquities that char- 
 acterize the action of the Supreme Cotmcil of the 
 Peace Conference with reference to Shantimg. 
 Out of these iniquities flowed consequences of a 
 very far-reaching character and of which the end 
 cannot as yet be seen. 
 
 Firstly^ the situation aroused intense feeling 
 
THE SHANTUNG QUESTION 69 
 
 tnroughout China, and the national sentiment 
 was expressed by the action of the Chinese Peace 
 delegates, who refused to sign the Peace Treaty. 
 No amount of persuasion on the part of their 
 former Allies could move them, and in answer 
 to the cynical assurance offered them by the 
 Supreme Council that China could safely rely on 
 the League of Nations to set everything at rights 
 sometime in the future, the Chinese delegates 
 merely answered that there was little to be hoped 
 for from a League of Nations when the very in- 
 strument which created it authorized or permitted 
 the violation and nullification of every vital prin- 
 ciple for which the League of Nations was sup- 
 posed to stand. 
 
 In their abstention from the treaty and their 
 refusal to accept any compromises on the ques- 
 tion of Shantung, the Chinese delegation saw their 
 best remedy against the paralyzing effect of the 
 Supreme Coimcil's decision. If that decision were 
 carried into effect, it meant a great deal more to 
 China than the mere loss of a province. It meant 
 that international sanction had been given to the 
 acts of a nation that was seeking to rob her of 
 her independence. It meant the revival of the 
 twenty-one demands in their full force. 
 
 In the stand they took, the Chinese delegation 
 had behind them the practically unanimous senti- 
 ment of their coimtrymen, who had come to the 
 silent resolve that, cost what it might, they would 
 
70 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 repudiate the agreement forced upon them in 
 1 91 5. The Chinese people, whose capacity for 
 passive resistance is incalculable, are determined 
 to make a stand as regards this question, and it 
 will be strange indeed if they do not succeed in 
 carrying their point, even against the combined 
 machinations of their enemies. 
 
 We have, secondly, to consider that the manner 
 in which the Supreme Council played with the 
 principles of the League of Nations in the very 
 instrument that created it brought it to pass that 
 the League was born in an atmosphere of sus- 
 picion and distrust. Those principles had been 
 discussed throughout the world, and they had 
 come to be held in sacred regard by the majority 
 of peoples and by the intellectuals of all lands. 
 But these very circles were the first to detect the 
 hoUowness of the professions which belied them- 
 selves in the very instrument that gave them 
 birth. The new-born child was received nowhere 
 with open arms. Its would-be foster parents 
 treated it like a stepchild. The action of China's 
 delegation had therefore not missed its effect. 
 Moreover, the failure of the Peace Conference to 
 repair the defect or to find new remedies for a 
 wrong thus constituted has only aggravated the 
 suspicion and distrust with which the instrument 
 is received in the widest circles throughout the 
 world. And, indeed, it is not too much to say 
 that, until the Peace Treaty is entirely revised 
 
THE SHANTUNG QUESTION 71 
 
 i 
 
 and the injustice and immorality eliminated 
 therefrom, there can be no hope of the successful 
 organization of a real League of Nations. 
 
 Thirdly, there is the fact that greatly as the 
 Allied nations desired the participation of the 
 United States in the carrying out of the Peace 
 terms, they themselves made it impossible for her. 
 For the methods they had been guilty of in their 
 action towards China, leaving all other considera- 
 tions aside, awakened a profound distrust in the 
 American people. They could not overlook the 
 fact that England, hitherto the universally recog- 
 nized champion of fair play, and from the begin- 
 ning of the war the self -constituted protector of 
 the small and the weak nations, had made a 
 mockery of these principles and of the principle 
 of self-determination by making a portion of the 
 territory of her future ally the subject-matter of 
 a bargain with China's oppressor, Japan. Nor 
 could the American people disregard the fact that 
 England showed anything but good faith when 
 she withheld knowledge of the secret treaties from 
 America, who was at least equally interested in the 
 fate of China, down to the very last moment 
 (February 1919). 
 
 The American people have never had the cynical 
 disregard for the ways of statesmen which up to 
 very recently was so prevalent in Europe. And, 
 accordingly, revelations such as these came as a 
 great shock to them and had much to do with the 
 
n THE NEW JAPANESE EEEIL 
 
 determination ot theii- representatives fa Congress 
 to withdraw the country entirely from any pos- 
 sibility of further European entanglements. 
 
 I have thus attempted to sketch, however im- 
 perfectly, the almost annihilating effect the Shan- 
 timg business has had upon the attempted World 
 Peace of to-day. That this amazing result was 
 not foreseen by those who were its responsible 
 authors simply shows how deaf, dumb and blind 
 our statesmen are with respect to the forces 
 which, in the last analysis, really control the 
 world. They went on their way serenely at Paris 
 in total disregard of the moral sentiments of man- 
 jkind, with the results we all know — a Peace 
 Treaty that is respected nowhere because it has 
 not deserved respect, a world disorganized and 
 still at war, innumerable new causes of strife 
 disseminated throughout the globe. 
 
 Before the Peace Conference met. President 
 Wilson is reported to have said that the *'acid 
 test" of the ensuing Peace Treaty would be the 
 treatment meted out to Russia. Had the Russian 
 question come up for final determination by the 
 Peace delegates and for inclusion in the Peace 
 Treaty, it is possible that President Wilson would 
 not have missed fire in his prophecy. As it stands, 
 however, the **acid test" of the Peace Treaty 
 turns out to be the treatment meted out to China 
 r--a quite unthinkable result before the Peace 
 Conference met. 
 
CHAPTER NINE 
 
 THE SHANTUNG QUESTION AND OTHER CORRUPTING 
 EVILS 
 
 I HAVE hitherto referred only in a general way 
 to the rights, privileges and concessions obtained 
 by the Japanese at the expense of China in the 
 province of Shantung. These are now to be con- 
 sidered more in detail. 
 
 Under the revised Japanese demands presented 
 to China on April 26, 191 5, and which the latter 
 was compelled to accept in the following month 
 under a threat of the use of force, Japan was 
 granted **all rights, interests and concessions 
 which. Germany, by virtue of treaties or other- 
 wise, possesses in relation to the province of 
 Shantung.** Furthermore, the Chinese Govern- 
 ment consented that *'as regards the railway to 
 be built by China herself from Chefoo or Lungkow 
 to connect with the Kaao-chow-Tsinanfu Railway, 
 if Germany is willing to abandon the privilege 
 of financing the Chefoo- Weihsen line, China will 
 approach Japanese capitalists to negotiate a loan.*' 
 
 With the lapse of time, these far-reaching priv- 
 73 
 
74 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 ileges appearing to the Japanese not comprehen- 
 sive enough to satisfy their grasping purpose, 
 China was induced, partly by threats, partly by 
 the corruption of officials, to sign a new secret 
 agreement on September 24, 1918, under which 
 the Chinese Republic was required to employ 
 Japanese loans and Japanese technical assistance 
 for the construction of railroads in the province of 
 Shantung. There already existed in the province 
 a railroad, built by the Germans during their 
 occupation, running from the port of Tsingtao via 
 Kiao-chow on the east to the extreme westerly 
 borders of the province at its capital, Tsinan. 
 From Tsinan two great railway lines branch off — 
 one of them to the north via Tientsin to Peking, 
 the other running south to Shanghai and thence 
 to Hangchow and Ningpo. 
 
 It was now proposed, in the secret treaty just re- 
 ferred to, to permit Japan to extend the Tsingtao- 
 Tsinan Railroad to a point nearly due west from 
 Tsinan, namely, the town of Shunteh, in the 
 province of Chili. Furthermore, the Japanese 
 were to be permitted to construct a railroad con- 
 necting with the Tsingtao-Tsinan line and running 
 in a southerly direction to Soochow, in the 
 province of Kiangsu. In addition to the railroads 
 already named as marked out for construction by 
 Japan, she became the successor, confirmed by the 
 Peace Treaty, to the German rights to the con- 
 struction of the line from Chefoo to Weihsen, in 
 
OTHER CORRUPTING EVILS 75 
 
 the province of Shantung, running from the centre 
 of the province to its extreme north-eastern border 
 on the Yellow Sea. One glance at the map is 
 sufficient to show that with the construction of 
 these railways, together with the control over the 
 Tsingtao-Tsinan line, the entire province of 
 Shantung, from north to south and from east to 
 west, comes within the grasp of Japan. More- 
 over, the control over these lines will place her in 
 the position to retain the mastery over the two 
 main lines of railroad, already mentioned, running 
 north and south from the junction point at 
 Tsinan, and likewise of the railway now in course 
 of construction and running from the coast- 
 town Haichow, in the province of Kiangsu, to 
 Soochow and Hangchow. In other words, the 
 entire railway system of China will be, to a very 
 great extent, at the mercy of Japanese railway 
 control, exercised from the strategically central 
 position occupied by Japanese controlled rail- 
 ways in Shantung province, from which vantage- 
 ground, if the Japanese so will it, North China 
 may be cut off from South China and East China 
 from West China. Furthermore, the Mikado's 
 subjects are given the right, under this agreement, 
 to station troops in Tsinan and Tsingtao and to 
 provide Japanese instructors to the detachments 
 of police to whom is assigned the duty of guarding 
 the railway-line from Tsingtao to Tsinan. 
 Having these considerations in mind, one is 
 
76 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 able to understand the exceedingly small value 
 contained in the Japanese promise to restore the 
 Kiao-chow region to China, and the more so in 
 view of the fact that the restoration is to be made 
 dependent upon the grant to Japan of a concession 
 at Tsingtao which, under the exclusive jurisdiction 
 of Japan, will practically carry with it control 
 of the port. 
 
 In this connection it is well to remind the reader 
 that Japan's present claims in the province of 
 Shanttmg are not simply an outflow of her con- 
 quest of Kiao-chow from the Germans. On the 
 contrary, Japan's course of procedure from the 
 very beginning of her campaign to drive out the 
 Germans was steeped in illegality, involving 
 flagrant breaches of neutrality and the contraven- 
 tion of the rules of international law. The facts 
 are these. In 1898 Germany acquired a lease of 
 Kiao-chow with its port of Tsingtao from China. 
 Soon after the outbreak of war in 1914 Japan sent 
 an ultimatimi to Germany demanding, among 
 other things, the surrender of Kiao-chow to Japan 
 **with a view to the eventual restoration of the 
 same to China." An Allied force of Japanese and 
 British troops attacked and took Kiao-chow on 
 November 16, 1914. The British troops, follow- 
 ing international law, landed inside the German 
 leased territory. The Japanese troops, on the 
 other hand, disregarding the law, landed at 
 Lungkow, 150 n^iiles outside the German leased 
 
I 
 
 OTHER CORRUPTING EVILS 77 
 
 territory. They seized the whole peninsula, with 
 the entire railway — 290 miles in length — running 
 between Kiao-chow and Tsinan, and occupied all 
 the stations, in spite of China's protest. 
 
 Instead of complying with China's request to 
 withdraw her troops from the interior of Shantung 
 after the fall of Kiao-chow, Japan presented to the 
 President of China, Yuan Shi Kai, the famous 
 twenty-one demands, in which she demanded the 
 power to control China's police and finance, to 
 officer the Chinese Army, to open China's mines 
 and to monopolize the supply and manufacture 
 of fire-arms. There were also other far-reaching 
 demands to which we need not refer. 
 
 Under pressure of an ultimatum and a threat 
 to employ force, China reluctantly gave her con- 
 sent, and made it known to the world that she 
 did so only that the peace of the Far East might 
 be maintained at a time when all China's friends 
 were engaged in a desperate struggle with the 
 Central Powers. Moreover, China's rulers felt 
 that the final settlement must rest with the Peace 
 Conference. 
 
 In the meantime, Japan intimated to China 
 that the only condition which would satisfy her 
 in withdrawing was the concession of a number 
 of railway and mining rights. In order to prevent 
 serious trouble and to relieve the people from the 
 pressure of Japan's oppressive measures, the 
 Tuan Cabinet acceded to the wishes of Japan 
 
78 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 and made a number of secret preliminary agree- 
 ments, granting to Japan the privileges she de- 
 manded. But the Tuan Cabinet which made 
 these secret agreements was discredited the mo- 
 ment the news leaked out and was forced to 
 resign fifteen days after the preliminary agree- 
 ments were signed. 
 
 China now asks that Kiao-chow, with the rail- 
 ways and mines, should be directly returned to 
 her, and she promises to open the same to the 
 co-operation of all friendly Powers. Her reasons 
 for doing so are as follows: 
 
 (i) Notwithstanding the fact that the transfer 
 of the leased territory to Germany in 1898 was 
 not a voluntary act, nevertheless the sovereignty 
 of China over the leased territory continued to 
 be recognized. 
 
 (2) The inhabitants of Shantung are purely 
 Chinese and the universal wish is to remain under 
 China's sovereignty. 
 
 (3) Shantung is the cradle of Chinese civiliza- 
 tion and the home of Confucius and of Meng-tse. 
 
 (4) Shantung is very densely populated, con- 
 taining a population of 38,000,000 over an area of 
 56,000 square miles, and has, therefore, no space 
 to offer to foreigners, whose only object in coming 
 there is to exploit the native for their own benefit. 
 
 (s) Shantung has within her borders all the pre- 
 requisites (mining, ports, railroads) for the eco- 
 nomic leadership in North China. 
 
OTHER CORRUPTING EVILS 79 
 
 (6) Strategically, Kiao-chow controls the en- 
 trance to the Gulf of Chili and to North China. 
 
 (7) The restoration of the leased territory is a 
 condition precedent to the maintenance of peace 
 in the Far East, and the continuance of foreign 
 occupation must sooner or later lead to conflict. 
 
 (8) Kiao-chow is the best natural harbour in 
 North China, and within the zone of the Kiao- 
 chow-Tsinan Railroad are situated two immense 
 coalfields and an iron mine containing 40,000,000 
 tons of high-grade ore. On the projected southern 
 extension of the railway are three very big coal- 
 fields, with a total reserve of over a billion tons, 
 which are the only bituminous coalfields within 
 economic distance of the Yangtse iron mines. 
 Its westward extension would reach the province 
 of Shansi, which contains some of the largest 
 coalfields in the world. Japan already holds 
 Dalny as her leased territory. If she holds on 
 to Kiao-chow she will be in a position to control 
 the whole of North China, including Manchuria 
 and Inner Mongolia, with the latter already in 
 her hands. She would be able to close the door 
 of North China to any other Power, and the 
 independence of China would be greatly impaired, 
 if not utterly destroyed. 
 
 Indeed, we perceive in Japan's Shantimg pro- 
 gramme only one step among many that have 
 been taken in the direction of bringing about 
 the complete subjection of the Chinese to Japanese 
 
80 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 influence. For example, the continuance of in- 
 ternal strife in China is to be attributed to the 
 fact that the Japanese have made civil war a 
 lucrative profession there. The Military Gov- 
 ernors (Tuchuns) hold independent commands 
 over hordes of uniformed coolies, and no honest 
 effort is made to settle their differences, for the 
 reason that these warriors stand to profit from a 
 continuance of the internal conflict. And Japan 
 furnishes the money. 
 
 Thus the Chinese nation is being corrupted in 
 high places. And as if that were not enough, we 
 find that just as well organized an attempt is 
 being made to corrupt and demoralize the masses 
 by promoting and facilitating the introduction 
 into China of opium and other narcotics. The 
 profits to the Japanese from the opium traffic in 
 1913 were $8,400,000, and they have increased 
 enormously during the war. 
 
 China's long struggle against the opium traffic 
 and habit is familiar to the world. When the 
 Great War began, the traffic was on its last legs 
 apparently. The Chinese Government and the 
 Chinese people were in a way to accomplish 
 what had seemed to be impossible, and com- 
 pletely to stamp out the cultivation, trade in, 
 and use of the drug in the whole of China. All 
 the principal Powers, including Japan, were 
 nominally co-operating with China in this effort, 
 and had made agreements accordingly. Then 
 
OTHER CORRUPTING EVILS 81 
 
 the war came, disturbed and unsettled the ad- 
 ministration of China, and let down all bars to 
 Japanese ''penetration." How Japanese, with 
 the connivance and often with the actual help of 
 the Japanese Government, took advantage of 
 these circumstances to introduce and fasten 
 another drug habit on the Chinese constitutes as 
 black an action as has been charged to any 
 nation in recent times. That some other nations 
 have likewise a share in the blame is apparent 
 from the following, which I quote from the Man- 
 chester Guardian of May 27, 1920: 
 
 **The attack which is now being made in 
 America upon England for maintaining what is 
 called 'Britain's opium monopoly' has led the 
 India Office to publish a complete statement show- 
 ing the quantity and value of opium grown in 
 and exported from the Indian Empire from 
 1913-14 to 1918-19. 
 
 "It is not very pleasant to read, upon the 
 authority of Mr. Montagu, that the cultivation 
 of the poppy has grown from 144,561 acres in 
 1914 to 204,186 acres in 1916-17 (the latest 
 figures available). The export values have in- 
 creased enormously, but this appears to be due 
 more to the prices obtained for opium than to 
 an increased volume of export. At the same time 
 the Government admits that during 19 18-19 the 
 ^:port had increased from 8,710 chests in 19 16 to 
 10,467 in 1919. 
 
82 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 *'The statement goes to confirm one of the 
 principal contentions of our American critics — 
 namely, that although Great Britain does not 
 ship direct to China, Anglo-French friendship 
 permits us to pass the drug through French 
 territory. I observe that out of the total export 
 of 10,467 chests from India, 5,190 chests were in 
 19 19 sent to Indo-China and Siam, whilst over 
 2,400 chests were shipped to the island of Java. 
 These cannot have been medical supplies. In 
 one other respect the return gives colour at least 
 to another American contention — that we are 
 enabled by our friendship with Japan to pass the 
 drug through Japanese ports. Chests of opium 
 shipped to Japanese ports from India have nearly 
 trebled — namely, from 799 chests in 19 14 to 1,936 
 in 1919." 
 
CHAPTER TEN 
 
 JAPANESE EXPANSION 
 
 So long as Russia remained a Great Power and 
 able to resist the aggressive encroachments of 
 Japan in Asia, the Japanese confined their opera- 
 tions in China's northern domains to the exten- 
 sion of their influence over Southern Manchuria 
 and Eastern Inner Mongolia. In these two 
 regions, far-reaching claims had been forced upon 
 China in 1915, when Japan presented the twenty- 
 one demands for Chinese constimption. These 
 demands included (i) the extension of the term 
 of the lease not only of Port Arthur and Dalny, 
 but also of the South Manchurian and Antung- 
 Mukden Railway; (2) the granting of special 
 privileges to Japanese as regards the ownership 
 of land, and with respect to trade, manufacttire 
 and farming in South Manchuria; (3) the right 
 of Japanese subjects to have civil and criminal 
 cases in which they are defendants tried by the 
 Japanese Consul; (4) the grant of certain special 
 mining privileges; (5) the grant to Japanese 
 capital of a preference in case China requires loans 
 
 83 
 
84 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 for building railways in South Manchuria and 
 Eastern Inner Mongolia; (6) the grant to Japan 
 of a preference, in political, financial, military 
 or police matters in case China requires foreign 
 instructors or advisers in South Manchuria. 
 
 Under the secret agreement of September 24, 
 19 1 8, China is required to build four railroads in 
 Manchiuia and Mongolia and to employ Japanese 
 capital in their construction. This new Japanese 
 demand, together with those referred to in the 
 foregoing paragraph, represents the fixed Japanese 
 policy towards China that by indirect means seeks 
 to destroy every vestige of Chinese sovereignty 
 in the provinces named, and under the cloak of a 
 pretended ''friendly co-operation'* in economic 
 and financial matters, in reality provides the 
 Japanese with the right to exploit China to the 
 utmost limit of her capacity to endure. By these 
 means South Manchuria, Eastern Inner Mongolia 
 and Shantung had completely fallen under the 
 yoke of Japan. And thus matters stood when, 
 in the course of the year 19 18, it became apparent 
 that the Russian State was in process of disorgani- 
 zation and could no longer hope to oppose itself 
 with vigour, as formerly, to the expansion politics 
 of its Japanese neighbour in the Far East. And 
 accordingly, at this juncture, the Nipponese 
 stepped over into North Manchuria and into 
 Outer Mongolia, hitherto the particular spheres 
 of influence that belonged to Russia. Under the 
 
JAPANESE EXPANSION 86 
 
 pretext that the BolsIie\^st peril was a menace to 
 Japanese interests in Korea and adjoining regions, 
 Japan sent troops of occupation to the aforemen- 
 tioned former Russian spheres of influence, and 
 in a very short time extended her economic and 
 financial interests over them. Nor was this the 
 crowning limit to her imperialistic designs. There 
 remained for consummation the spread of Japanese 
 influence in the great region of the Amur River, 
 the seizure of Vladivostok and the entire Maritime 
 Province of Russia, and the penetration of all 
 Russian Siberia east of Lake Baikal. All of these 
 fell into the capacious maw of Japan prior to the 
 coming of summer in 1920. And to this end 
 nothing could have served Japan's purposes bet- 
 ter than the complete fiasco in which ended the 
 expedition of the five Great Powers in Siberia, a 
 project that had been cleverly promoted by Japan, 
 knowing that it was doomed to failure from the 
 very outset, but realizing that no better lesson 
 could be given the Powers than this one that they 
 must leave it to Japan alone to put a check on 
 Bolshevist influences in the Far East. The five 
 Powers came, saw and were conquered. When the 
 last American soldier had been put aboard ship 
 bound for home, the Japanese, who alone re- 
 mained behind, were given the order to advance, 
 and almost in a twinkling, what the five Great 
 Powers had been unable to accompUsh in com- 
 bination, J^pan accomplished single-handed, and 
 
86 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 to-day her influence is paramount in North 
 Manchuria, in Outer Mongolia, in the Amur 
 region, in the Maritime Province, and in all Siberia 
 east of Lake Baikal. 
 
 But it was not alone in the acquirement of 
 influence over vast new stretches of the earth's 
 surface that Japan showed her greatness during 
 the war and after. It was likewise in a commercial 
 and financial sense that Japan made good use of 
 her time. The enormous profits that flowed into 
 Japanese coffers as the result of the temporary 
 cessation of European competition, due to the 
 war, resulted in a remarkable expansion of 
 Japanese trade, industry and shipping. New 
 markets were acquired in Australia, the Dutch 
 East Indies, British India, China, South America 
 and South Africa. Immense forttmes were made 
 in the sale of ammunition and other war supplies 
 to the Allies. A large part of Japan's foreign 
 debt, which prior to 1914 had been growing to 
 huge proportions, was paid off, and still Japan 
 had money left over in plentiful amount to 
 invest in French, British and Russian loans. The 
 figure reached by these loans stood at 1,151 
 million yen in September 1918. The Japanese 
 gold reserve had mounted by December 1918 to 
 a sum total of 1,093 niiUion yen. For the first 
 time since she emerged as a modem State Japan 
 became a creditor instead of a debtor nation. 
 She has brought under her influence vast new 
 
JAPANESE EXPANSION 87 
 
 regions comparable in area with all of Europe, 
 and she has made such strides in industry, com- 
 merce and finance as to make her to-day a dan- 
 gerous rival even of England and America. And 
 all this has been done within the living memory 
 of many of her statesmen. Truly a formidable 
 giant. 
 
 Apologists for Japan in her aggressive and im- 
 perialistic designs are in the habit of citing, as a 
 reason and excuse for Japan's expansion, the fact 
 that it is a most serious problem for Japan to face, 
 namely, to provide food for a population which 
 already exceeds the limit which the country's soil 
 can support, and which is debarred by Exclusion 
 Acts from seeking relief in the less populated 
 regions of America and Australia. With a birth- 
 rate of 32 per thousand and a death-rate of 21.5 
 per thousand, the population increases every year 
 by about 750,000. In the last ten years the popu- 
 lation of Japan, excluding Korea and Formosa, 
 has increased from 50 to 57 millions, an average 
 of 380 to the square mile. The land under culti- 
 vation and the rice production have increased by 
 only s per cent., whereas the number of inhabi- 
 tants has grown by 12 per cent. So long as the 
 present birth-rate is maintained, the nation must 
 depend more and more upon imported food sup- 
 pHes, as it is claimed that the limit of tillable 
 soil and productivity has been reached. So long 
 as Japan can purchase the surplus food she needs 
 
88 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 by means of a favourable balance of trade the 
 pt*oblem may be faced. But with each yearly 
 increase in the population there must come a 
 corresponding increase of imported food, which in 
 turn necessitates an increased sale of Japanese 
 manufactured goods in foreign markets. Facing 
 the matter, therefore, under normal conditions, 
 it is necessary for Japan either to increase her 
 supply of food by means of industrial expansion 
 or to expand territorially into the less populated 
 regions of the Asiatic Continent. In other words, 
 Japan is overcrowded and must overflow along 
 the line of least resistance — that is to say, into 
 Asia. Having stated the case for Japan, we have 
 now to consider the reasonableness of the explana- 
 tion thus set forth. 
 
 Up to the outbreak of the Great War, Japan 
 had acquired as a result of her Chinese War in 
 1894-5 and of her Russian War in 1904-5, vast 
 increases of territory comprising the island of 
 Formosa, Korea, half of the island of Saghalin, 
 and a practical mastery of South Manchuria, 
 which opened that vast region to Japanese enter- 
 prise and Japanese colonization to the same ex- 
 tent as is the case in territory entirely under 
 Japanese sovereignty. And how did Japanese 
 attempts at colonization turn out in these cases? 
 Very poorly indeed, for the records show that 
 less than 100,000 Japanese left Japan to settle 
 permanently in these countries. Accordingly, 
 
JAPANESE EXPANSION 89 
 
 having learned from this experience, the Japanese 
 will be the first to admit that they are not a 
 colonizing race and never will be. Take Shantung. 
 What excuse is there for Japanese territorial ex- 
 pansion in Shantung, which is already far more 
 overcrowded than the Japanese Island Empire? 
 And if Japanese efforts to colonize regions that 
 lie close to their very doors have utterly failed, 
 how little excuse is there for the assertion that 
 they must take over still wider areas in order 
 to satisfy the needs of the Island Empire's grow- 
 ing population. Markets they must have. Raw 
 materials they must have. With all this we agree 
 fully. But are these not to be had without 
 extending Japanese sovereignty over wide tracts 
 of land to which they have no just title? The 
 answer is, of course, in the affirmative. Economic 
 pressure is neither an explanation nor a justifica- 
 tion of Japan's imperialistic designs. We must 
 seek for the reasons elsewhere. And they are to 
 be found, as the writer has pointed out in his 
 former publications, in the continued exercise of 
 irresponsible authority by the Military Party at 
 Tokio, at the head of which is the veteran states- 
 man and Genro, Yamagata. Authoritative Cab- 
 inet government does not exist in Japan. The 
 Foreign Office is subservient to the War Office. 
 The Ministers of War and of the Navy must be 
 chosen from those respective services, and have 
 the power to upset any Cabinet, by the simple act 
 
90 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 of resigning, in case the civilian members thereof 
 prove intractable to their will. Behind the War 
 and Navy Ministries, behind the Cabinet, behind 
 Parliament and behind the Mikado himself stand 
 the Genro or Elder Statesmen, with Yamagata 
 at their head. These are the men, answerable to 
 no authority, who have the deciding voice in the 
 conduct of Japan's policies, internal and external. 
 Many members of the Liberal Party in Japan 
 continue to claim that the influence of the Genro 
 is declining. Do any of Japan's recent actions 
 give support to this claim? One would have to 
 be very optimistic indeed to believe such a thing. 
 The writer believes, on the contrary, that Japan, 
 led by the stem directing hand of her MiHtary 
 Party, stands only upon the threshold of her 
 designs, which embrace all of Asia. How this is 
 to be accomplished will be understood when we 
 examine the r61e that China is to play in this 
 future drama. 
 
 Japan's purpose has been to demonstrate to 
 the Chinese that they have absolutely nothing to 
 hope for from the Western nations. The Western 
 nations have exploited China; they have stolen 
 from her some of her richest territorial posses- 
 sions; they forced the opium traffic upon her; they 
 have managed her finances to a great extent for 
 their own imjust enrichment; they have despoiled 
 China of her riches, carried off as loot many of 
 her art and scientific treasures; they called her 
 
JAPANESE EXPANSION 91 
 
 into the war as an ally, accepted most extraordi- 
 nary sacrifices made in their behalf, and then 
 abandoned her at the Peace Conference to the 
 rapacious tyranny of her great Eastern enemy. 
 Such is]^but a rough and utterly incomplete outline 
 of what China has suffered at the hands of the 
 Western nations. 
 
 Japan's purpose was, as stated, to prove to the 
 Chinese people that, far from getting better treat- 
 ment from the Western democratic nations, they 
 would actually get worse treatment from them 
 than by dealing directly with Japan alone. She 
 will try to convince the Chinese that in future 
 the technical and financial resources of Japan 
 will be employed to organize and build up the 
 Chinese Empire, rather than for its exploitation. 
 The doctrine of **Asia for the Asiatics'' will then 
 come into its own, and the two nations, working 
 in double harness for their own mutual interests, 
 will show the Western nations the door. If a 
 race war should ensue, Japan is prepared to give 
 battle both on sea and land, and China's hordes 
 will be armed and disciplined to make common 
 cause against the common foe. The Military 
 Party in Japan have resolved to attempt these 
 things, for it is for them the only road to follow 
 if they are to preserve to the Emperor his Im- 
 perial prerogatives and to themselves the retention 
 of power and place, which, if any other political 
 course is followed, will gradually slip out of 
 
92 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 their hands and into the hands of the common 
 people. 
 
 With multitudes of agents, sympathizers, propa- 
 gandists, priests, missionaries, pedlars, etc., pour- 
 ing into all parts of the country for the one pur- 
 pose of converting China and pushing on an in- 
 cessant campaign in favour of a Chino- Japanese 
 Alliance, Japan and the large pro- Japanese party 
 that already exists in China will be able to bring 
 China to the conclusion that it will pay her best 
 to join hands with Japan in order that together 
 they may become the joint masters of the East. 
 
CHAPTER ELEVEN 
 
 A CHINO-JAPANESE UNION 
 
 There can be no question of greater interest 
 and importance to the Western nations than the 
 question of Japan's future world-policy. There 
 are some, possessing authority to speak, from 
 whom we have recently grown accustomed to hear 
 that Japan is at the cross-roads. They profess 
 to believe that very soon we are to see an end of 
 Imperialism and the policy of expansion in the 
 Island Empire, which now has gone on its tm- 
 checked way for nearly three decades. They are 
 confident that the invisible and irresponsible 
 powers behind the Throne, which actually control 
 Japan's foreign poKcy, will be replaced by au- 
 thoritative Cabinet government. 
 
 If there were any truth or wisdom in this 
 pronouncement, the Western world could afford 
 to forget that there ever was such a thing as a 
 Japanese peril and turn to the noble task of 
 creating a new world-order, from which sus- 
 picions, alarms, wars and rumours of wars are 
 to be entirely eliminated. 
 
 There are many considerations, however, which 
 
 9S 
 
94 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 compel the thoughtful observer to think otherwise 
 about Japan's choice at the cross-roads. Indeed, 
 if we could even for a few brief moments place 
 ourselves in the position of the Japanese nation, 
 we might even perceive some reasons for thinking 
 that Japan must either go on in the old way or 
 go under. 
 
 For centuries It has been Japan's good fortune 
 that the people of China were not a w^arlike 
 nation. Not since the days of Gengis Khan and 
 Kublai Khan has Japan had anything to fear 
 from the military prowess of the Chinese. 
 
 To-day the case is different. China, like all 
 other Eastern nations, has begun to stir herself. 
 The sleeping giant is awakening from his long 
 slumber and, like Rip Van Winkle, he finds, on 
 awaking, that the world has grown to be some- 
 thing entirely different from what it was when 
 he retired from it. In the heyday of her might, 
 China possessed a great art, a great literature, 
 flourishing scientific attainments and a remarkable 
 philosophy of life, propounded into a religion by 
 such noble thinkers as Confucius and Meng-tse. 
 For centuries the Japanese have been pupils at 
 the Chinese shrine, and the best that they have 
 in art, literature and religion they obtained from 
 Chinese sources. Only one thing they failed to 
 learn from their teachers, and that is how to 
 keep the peace. But, to be just to the Japanese, 
 that is not their fault so much as it is the fault 
 
A CHINO-JAPANESE UNION 95 
 
 of the Western nations who forced Japan to 
 open her ports under the mouths of their cannon. 
 Persuaded by the belching fire of the guns that 
 they must either be converted by Western ideas 
 or be conquered by Western arms, the Japanese 
 chose the former alternative. And now it is 
 China's turn to make a similar choice, for the 
 guns have been thundering continuously at her 
 doors for decades past. 
 
 China is still vulnerable. The decaying Empire 
 has not yet convalesced from its sleeping-sickness. 
 The Chinese nation is beginning to reform itself, 
 and after a republican revolution is passing 
 through a phase of consolidation and the cen- 
 tralizing of its Government. Presently, it may 
 be too strong for conquest. That is what Japan 
 fears, and that fact is the guide-post of her im- 
 perialistic policies. And Japan prefers to merge 
 rather than be submerged — to make common 
 cause with the Chinese against their Western 
 rivals who have willed it that it should be so. 
 It is not a Yellow peril. It is a Japanese peril. 
 Under Japanese leadership the East will be 
 armed and equipped to stand over against the 
 West. If China did not, in its awakening, 
 constitute a real future menace for Japan, the 
 Nipponese could now afford to rest on their 
 laurels and enjoy the rich harvests they have 
 already reaped. For it is not thinkable, except 
 in the face of a real danger, that a nation that 
 
96 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 is over-populated, too rapidly industrialized and 
 taxed beyond the limits of endurance, should 
 elect to invest half its revenues in armaments. 
 Nor is there any economic justification for such 
 a capital outlay except conquest. 
 
 Japan has only to convince Peking that it 
 would pay the Chinese nation to become part 
 of her family and the world will be brought 
 suddenly face to face with the fait accompli. 
 Japan *s first step would be to place Japanese 
 or pro- Japanese officials in every position of 
 importance and to remove every Chinaman that 
 showed opposition. Peking's policy would be 
 telegraphed from Tokio. The reorganization of 
 China's finance, customs, military and naval 
 services would soon follow. The foreigner who, 
 for so long, has been tolerated in China and 
 allowed to batten on his ill-gotten gains, acquired 
 at China's expense in her weakness, would be 
 asked to retire to other fields, and the East 
 would then stand for the first time in ages as a 
 bulwark against all further Western aggression 
 and exploitation. Indeed, if England is per- 
 mitted to remain in India without interference, 
 it will be only on condition of recognizing and 
 offering no opposition to the new arrangement. 
 The question of what the new Anglo- Japanese 
 AlHance will contain, provided it is renewed, is 
 left for later discussion. But it will be remem- 
 bered that the existing amended Alliance included 
 
A CHINO-JAPANESE UNION S7 
 
 India in its scope, and since the Alliance has 
 required Japan to act in aiding to defend India 
 in certain circumstances, the Japanese have made 
 it the pretext for extending their influence there, 
 and as leader and champion of the Eastern 
 peoples, Japan stands forth in the guise of 
 protector, to whom the existing racial and religious 
 community of interests can no longer be a matter 
 of indifference. This attitude of Japan's towards 
 India has been cleverly devised with the view 
 to strengthening Japan in her position towards 
 China. The Great Powers would like to rescue 
 China from Japan. England, however, the only 
 Power that could be expected to take the 
 initiative in this direction, must decline to do 
 so on account of India. 
 
 In judging of the strength of this movement 
 looking towards the union of the Yellow races 
 under Japanese leadership, a number of factors, 
 usually overlooked in the West, must be given 
 consideration. Mention has already been made 
 of the Military Party in Japan, whose ambitions 
 rest upon an historical basis and are founded 
 upon the teachings of Japan's greatest educators 
 since the early part of the eighteenth century. 
 Partly to realize these ambitions, from patriotic 
 motives, and partly to retain for themselves 
 their position of power and privilege, the Military 
 Party have exerted themselves, since the organ- 
 ization of the Island Empire as a modem State, 
 
98 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 to instil the spirit of Imperialism and self-confi- 
 dence into the people, and to lead their minds 
 away from the ideas of democracy and social re- 
 form. Every war thus far waged by Japan has 
 aided greatly in the accomplishment of these ends. 
 The idea of a world mission has been propagated 
 and permitted to grow to such proportions that 
 it is fair to say one would have difficulty in finding 
 many, even among the educated classes, who are 
 free from its influence. The idea of race superior- 
 ity is as firmly fixed in the national consciousness 
 as is the doctrine of the divine descent of the 
 Emperor; and the Shinto worship of the upper 
 classes, with its suggestion of divine direction and 
 control, has exercised a most potent influence 
 upon the lower classes as well. Like the Hebrews 
 of old, the Japanese look upon themselves as a 
 chosen people, whose destiny it is to lead the 
 nations to a higher and nobler fate. Moreover, 
 the contemptuous attitude of the West towards 
 Orientals has done much to stiffen the Japanese 
 desire for world dominion. To carry out his plans, 
 he must first demonstrate his superior military 
 power, and this he can only do when he has been 
 accepted as the leader of the Eastern nations and 
 has succeeded in applying to them his methods of 
 efficiency. With China under Japanese tutelage, 
 the rest would be easy. 
 
 Events since the outbreak of the war have 
 greatly aided the Japanese in their designs upon 
 
A CHINO-JAPANESE UNION 99 
 
 China. The complete absorption of the other 
 Great Powers in Europe afforded Japan a golden 
 opportunity to promote her plans unhindered. 
 And the very uncertainty as to the outcome of 
 the struggle which lasted tmtil the autumn of 1 918 
 made it all the easier to escape the opposition 
 of her European competitors. The United States, 
 standing alone, could only protest for the time 
 being, and besides, the American Government 
 was convinced that China's wrongs would be 
 righted by the Peace Conference. But it was just 
 here that Japan's impregnable position in Asia, 
 in the face of the entire concert of the Powers, 
 became clear to China for the first time. Presi- 
 dent Wilson's abandonment of his principles was 
 a disillusionment to China such as a nation seldom 
 experiences, and her statesmen saw themselves 
 the dupe of a behef in Western principles of fair 
 play. President Wilson's weakness, moreover, 
 betrayed a lack of political insight remarkable 
 in the head of a State who possessed every facility 
 in the world for correct information and advice. 
 And the blow thus dealt by President Wilson to 
 China's futiure destinies may be fraught with con- 
 sequences that will be of concern to the farthest 
 ages. For the bankruptcy of his principles and of 
 the League of Nations idea, upon which China 
 had built all her hopes, has brought the union of 
 China and Japan a long stride nearer, if, indeed, 
 it has not made it inevitable. 
 
100 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 What has served to undermine Chinese belief in 
 th ^ good faith of the Western Powers still more is 
 the recognition given in the Covenant of the 
 League of Nations to '* regional understandings 
 like the Monroe Doctrine/' By ** regional under- 
 standings" are to be understood policies such as 
 that of Austria, before the war, clashing with the 
 similar policy of Russia, with respect to the 
 Balkan States; or such as the policy of England, 
 clashing until yesterday with the similar policy 
 of Russia, towards Persia and Afghanistan; or 
 such a policy as Japan's with respect to North- 
 eastern Asia. ' 
 
 Much as these policies or imderstandings differ 
 from the Monroe Doctrine, they all have this in 
 common with it, namely, the insistence by some 
 strong Power that no other strong Power shall 
 extend its control into zones where such extension 
 is Imputed as a threatened danger to the interests 
 of the first Power. And in all such cases the 
 larger part of the menace which is feared proceeds 
 upon the theory that the older interests may be 
 attacked by the arms of the incoming sovereignty. 
 
 Japan has already procured from the United 
 States in the Ishii-Lansing Agreement a recog- 
 nition of her *' special interests'' in China. Eng- 
 land and the other Allied Powers have recognized 
 those special interests by their action in the 
 Shantung question and by their failure to call for 
 the annulment of the twenty-one demands. By 
 
A CHINO-JAPANESE UNION 101 
 
 these various steps, therefore, Japan has un- 
 doubtedly succeeded in creating a ** regional un- 
 derstanding'' with respect to China, and by virtue 
 of Article 21 of the Covenant of the League of 
 Nations, the validity thereof is no longer subject 
 to attack on the part of those nations who sub- 
 scribe to the Covenant. And, indeed, should the 
 United States, which is not a member of the 
 League, undertake to attack its validity, then 
 Article 17 of the Covenant comes into play, and 
 if the United States refuses arbitration thereunder 
 and resorts to war, then the provisions of Article 
 16 of the Covenant become pertinent, involving 
 application of the blockade by all the other 
 members of the League and the use of armed 
 force, if necessary, until America is reduced to 
 submission. 
 
 Accordingly, it is not to be wondered at if the 
 Chinese look upon the Covenant of the League of 
 Nations as an instrument for their undoing. Their 
 refusal to sign the Peace Treaty was, therefore, 
 in effect merely a last effort to save their in- 
 dependence; and, severe as the lesson was for 
 them, it was an illuminating one. The absolute 
 lack of good faith of the allied nations stood forth 
 in all its nakedness. Only the action of the 
 United States Senate saved America from being 
 involved in the same dishonour, and if the Amer- 
 ican people can only be brought to understand that 
 fact, constitutional government and the cause of 
 
102 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 democracy will have been greatly strengthened 
 in the Union. 
 
 Other factors of importance which will aid 
 greatly in the creation of a Chino- Japanese union 
 are the existence in China of a large and in- 
 fluential pro- Japanese Party and the existing 
 chaos in her finances. The pro- Japanese Party is 
 to be found, for the most part, in the north of 
 China, and numbers a great many of the military 
 leaders among its adherents. While it is true that 
 Japan has advanced a great deal of money in 
 secret loans to these elements, giving colour to the 
 oft-repeated charge of widespread corruption 
 among them, it is nevertheless a fact that many 
 leading Chinese favour the union on purely 
 patriotic grounds. They sincerely believe that 
 no other way lies salvation for China. 
 
 The disorganization of her finances has been 
 due to a variety of causes. The revolution in 
 China brought with it a great deal of civil dissen- 
 sion, out of which arose the setting up in each 
 province of a Home Rule government in the hands 
 of a Tuchun or Military Governor. Centralized 
 government ceased to exist; the Tuchuns made 
 war on one another, while at the same time suf- 
 fering from the ravages of civil war at home. 
 Each of these Tuchuns maintained an army, to 
 a great extent supported by foreign loans. Such 
 a condition of things naturally lent itself easily 
 to the intrigues of any foreign Power that wished 
 
A CHINO-JAPANESE UNION lOS 
 
 to take advantage of the situation. Until these 
 armies are disbanded there would seem to be 
 little hope of improving the condition of China's 
 finances. Japan is, of course, in a position to 
 profit most by these conditions, and in the exist- 
 ing Four-Power Consortium for relieving the 
 financial needs of China, Japan will naturally, 
 from her position and interests, take the leading 
 part. England and France may be somewhat 
 embarrassed by their own pressing needs at home, 
 which leaves the United States to hold the bag 
 with Japan. The latter coimtry, having already 
 secured a first lien on China's most profitable 
 tax-producing means, is thus in a position to 
 exercise a controlling voice in the disposition of 
 whatever assets remain. 
 
 Thus we perceive a net spread about China 
 from which it will be difiicult for her to escape. 
 Nor is it a matter entirely free from doubt, under 
 present conditions, whether it is desirable for her 
 to escape. 
 
 It is, however, another question whether the 
 great]^Westem Powers, including Russia, can afford 
 in their own selfish interests (leaving moral con- 
 siderations out of the question) to permit such a 
 union to be consimimated between the Yellow 
 races. It is surely fraught with many future 
 perils, and the immediate effect of it would no 
 doubt be disastrous in its economic aspects. 
 
 If anything is to be done to forestall China's 
 
IM THE NEW, JAPANESE PERIL. 
 
 doom, it must 'Be cTone witJiout much delay. 
 Peace with Russia is an immediate necessity. 
 Then must follow the creation of the only possible 
 alliance that can save the Chinese Empire, namely. 
 Great Britain, America, Germany and Russia. 
 
CHAPTER TWELVE 
 
 Britain's change of policy in asia 
 
 The Anglo- Japanese Alliance Treaty, which ex- 
 pires nominally on July 13, 1921, contains a self- 
 extending clause, as follows: ''In case neither 
 of the High Contracting Parties should have 
 notified twelve months before the expiration of 
 the said ten years the intention of terminating it, 
 it shall remain binding until the expiration of one 
 year from the day on which either of the High 
 Contracting Parties shall have denounced it." 
 
 At the present writing it seems altogether 
 unlikely that the treaty will be renewed. Ordi- 
 narily, negotiations for its renewal would now 
 be under way, and the fact that they have not 
 taken place speaks volumes. For Britain is 
 beginning to have some doubts of the wisdom 
 of her policy, which, though successful in weaken- 
 ing Russian and German influence in Asia, has 
 created in their stead a far more dangerous 
 opponent of British power and prestige on the 
 Asiatic Continent than either of the others could 
 ever hope to be. 
 
 105 
 
106 THE NEW. JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 Indeed, the Anglo- Japanese Alliance has alto- 
 gether been a costly^aflEair for Britain. Its eflfect 
 has been to establish, by slow but steady stages, 
 Japanese paramountcy in China, and its ultimate 
 effect may be even more far-reaching. Step by 
 step, British diplomacy retreated before the Jap- 
 anese onslaught. Let us examine briefly how it 
 was done. 
 
 In 1907-8 British- American interests received 
 concessions from China for the construction of 
 two lines of railway in Manchuria. Without 
 going into particulars, they were laiown as the 
 Fakumen and the Chinchow-Aigun railway proj- 
 ects. J Japan objected to the construction of 
 these railroads, and induced Russia to join her 
 in objecting to the Chinchow-Aigim Railroad, on 
 the groimd that they would compete with the 
 Manchurian railways under their control and 
 that the leasehold rights tmder which they held 
 protected them against such competition. With- 
 out attempting to go into the merits of the case, 
 suffice it to say that this contention was warmly 
 disputed in England and America, and in China, 
 also, the claim was considered to be without 
 sufficient justification. Nevertheless, the Japan- 
 ese veto was upheld by the British Foreign Office. 
 
 In Manchuria, Japan likewise asserted her 
 right to establish innumerable other regulations, 
 designed to close out British and American com- 
 petition, in connection with the administration 
 
BRITAIN^S CHANGE OF POLICY 107 
 
 of the railway zone and of the ports of entry in 
 South Manchuria. Indeed, from the beginning 
 of her occupation Japan indicated that she held 
 herself in a position of superior advantage and 
 privilege in the matter of industry and trade, 
 and that, in despite of the principle of the "Open 
 Door" and equal opportunity to all nations, 
 she was invested with the right to regulate the 
 activities of other nations who sought to obtain 
 any benefits or to conduct any enterprise for 
 profit in this exclusively Japanese sphere of 
 influence. And again the British Foreign Office 
 acquiesced. 
 
 In 1909, Secretary Knox made his famous 
 proposal for the neutralization of the Manchurian 
 railways under international control. The effect 
 of this, if accepted, would have been to secure 
 for China the enjoyment of her political rights 
 in Manchuria and to promote the normal develop- 
 ment of her eastern provinces. It would have 
 put an end to the constantly arising disagreements 
 among the Powers with respect to the policy of 
 the *'Open Door" and trade with China. 
 
 The Chinese Government assented to the pro- 
 posal. Russia and Japan rejected it, the moving 
 spirit, however, being, as always, Japan. The 
 British Foreign Office, which was supposed by 
 Secretary Ejiox to be in accord with him in the 
 proposal, in reality took its cue from Japan and 
 failed to back up the Knox plan. Thus China's 
 
108 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 wishes were disregarded and Japan was per- 
 mitted to flout the plain provisions of the Ports- 
 mouth Treaty. Henceforth, with England's 
 approval, China was to be denied the right to 
 decide upon the course of railway development 
 within her territory, and Japan's strategical and 
 political interests were recognized as paramount 
 in planning a railway system within China's 
 territory. Moreover, Japan now had the right 
 to decide who would finance, construct and 
 operate railways within China's territory and to 
 veto arrangements with respect to these matters 
 which China wished to carry out. 
 
 In this connection, it may perhaps remove any 
 still remaining doubt in the reader's mind with 
 respect to the above conclusions if I recall the 
 fact that in still another part of China, far away 
 from Treaty Ports and all acknowledged spheres 
 of influence of foreign Powers, an American syndi- 
 cate proposed to construct railways 1,500 miles in 
 length, the principal being from Feng Chen in 
 Mongolia to Kansu, on the remote western borders. 
 It promised great economic results. It had no 
 , connection whatever with politics. It was solely 
 a work of development. This project, like all 
 the others we have mentioned, fell under the ban of 
 the Japanese Government. The American protest 
 was unheard. The Japanese veto held good, for 
 England stood with Japan. 
 
 Korea since 1883, and up to the time of her 
 
BRITAIN'S CHANGE OF POLICY 109 
 
 annexation by Japan in 1910, was always con- 
 sidered more or less of a protege of America, 
 Missions and schools were established there by 
 American philanthropic and religious circles, and 
 there had grown up^a close feeling of sympathy 
 and regard in America for their Korean bene- 
 ficiaries. The fate of Korea could, accordingly, 
 never be a matter of indifference to Americans, 
 and when Japan carried through her ruthless 
 annexation plans in 1910, involving the complete 
 subjection of the Korean nation, American circles 
 were deeply moved. And here again we perceive 
 the hand of Britain, for Korea's fate had been 
 sealed in the Anglo- Japanese Treaty of Alliance 
 of 1905, imder which Korea is dealt with as 
 follows : 
 
 *' Article III. — ^Japan possessing paramotmt po- 
 litical, military and economic interests in Korea, 
 Great Britain recognizes the right of Japan to 
 take such measures of guidance, control and pro- 
 tection in Korea as she may deem proper and 
 necessary to safeguard and advance those in- 
 terests- . • ." 
 
 Britain's acquiescence in Japan's designs upon 
 Korea, equally with her assent to the granting of 
 a free hand to Japan and Russia in Manchuria 
 and Mongolia, was an indication that she was 
 moving in the direction of a complete abandon- 
 ment of the **Open Door" policy, whereas the 
 rejection of Secretary Knox's plan, the greatest 
 
no THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 and wisest proposal that has ever been made to 
 assist China in her struggle to preserve her au- 
 tonomy, is convincing evidence of her complete 
 surrender to Japan in the Far East. But as there 
 are always bound to be doubters, let us examine 
 some further evidence of England's strange yield- 
 ing to Japan in Far Eastern questions. 
 
 In the province of Fukien an American firm 
 had secured a contract to build a dry-dock for 
 China. It was purely a commercial project and 
 had no political significance. As soon as Japan 
 heard of the matter, she lodged a vigorous protest 
 with the State Department at Washington. Not 
 having been consulted in the matter, or asked to 
 participate, she warned the State Department that 
 imless the project was dropped Japan would re- 
 gard the assent of the American Government as 
 an unfriendly act. Japan's viewpoint prevailed. 
 But not content with her success in opposing the 
 project in question, Japan now set to work to 
 make her veto on all similar projects permanent, 
 by causing to be inserted in the twenty-one 
 demands imposed on China in 1915 an article to 
 the effect that China is to grant to no other Power 
 than Japan any concession for a shipyard, coaling 
 station or similar establishment, and to permit no 
 private establishment of the kind with foreign 
 capital. 
 
 While it is true that it may be claimed that the 
 dry-dock project concerned the United States 
 
BRITAIN'S CHANGE OF POLICY 111 
 
 alone and not Britain, in reality it is not so. 
 For the State Department's final decision to bow 
 to the Japanese decree was influenced, if not 
 exclusively dictated, by the knowledge that the 
 British Foreign Office was not opposed to the 
 Japanese stand, and that America would be 
 playing a lone hand if she insisted on her rights 
 in the matter. 
 
 With Britain, moreover, rests the chief respon- 
 sibility that Japan has had her will over China in 
 the matter of Shantung, for it was under the 
 initiative of England that the other Allied Powers 
 signed the secret agreement of February-March 
 1 91 7, agreeing to support Japan's claims on Shan- 
 timg at the Peace Conference. It was upon 
 England's initiative in this, as in most other inter- 
 AlHed matters, for the reason that Britain, as the 
 foremost nation in the Western coalition, was in a 
 position, by reason of her military, naval and 
 financial strength, to impose her guidance upon 
 the other allied nations in all questions which did 
 not affect any vital interests of her alUes, and, of 
 course, in the Far East England's interests were 
 superior to those of any other Western nation. 
 
 Up to 1 91 5 British commercial interests in the 
 Far East looked on, astounded and somewhat 
 exasperated, at what they perceived was a con- 
 stant sacrifice of their interests to the interests of 
 Japan, and they asked themselves what compen- 
 sations Britain was getting. I say ** up to 1915/' 
 
112 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 for up to that time these British commercial 
 interests had grown firm in the beHef that Britain 
 was playing to retain her position of exclusive 
 privileges in the Yangtse Valley, and was sacri- 
 ficing her position elsewhere because of the neces- 
 sity of making concessions to the vigorous Japanese 
 onslaughts. Accordingly, it was expected that in 
 return for England*s complacency elsewhere, 
 Japan would at least respect her paramount posi- 
 tion in the Yangtse Valley and in South China. 
 
 Not so, however. For in 191 5 and 1916 Japan 
 laid her hands upon the chief British enterprises 
 in this region, notably the Han-Yeh-Ping Iron 
 and Coal Company, and, what is more, made the 
 permanency of her control over the mines and 
 other important enterprises in this region a matter 
 of negotiation with China, and accordingly wp 
 find the matter treated and disposed of, witK 
 Japanese particularity, in Section III of the 
 twenty-one demands presented to China in 1915. 
 It is true that in the revised demands which were 
 actually imposed on China in May 1915, tlie 
 original demands with respect to the Yangtse 
 Valley were somewhat modified. But this did 
 not take away from the purpose of the Japanese 
 Government to supersede British influence in the 
 Yangtse Valley. Nor, so far as is known, has the 
 British Government ever protested against the 
 demands. Only the American Government did so. 
 
 One further instance of Japan's interference 
 
BRITAIN'S CHANGE OF POLICY US 
 
 where foreign Governments have sought to inter- 
 est themselves in the affairs of China is to be 
 found in the history of the Four-Power Loan. 
 After the revolution and the establishment of re- 
 publican government in China, the so-called Four- 
 Power financial group, composed of British, 
 American, French and German bankers, respond- 
 ing to the request of the Chinese Government, 
 tmdertook to make financial advances for im- 
 mediate use, pending the issue of a large covering 
 loan. China needed money for internal adminis- 
 tration and for internal improvements and develop- 
 ments. Without foreign help it was an utter im- 
 possibility for the Chinese Treasury to meet its 
 already existing obligations, to say nothing of the 
 programme of internal reform and administration 
 with which the new Government proposed to 
 inaugurate its official career. 
 
 The ensuing negotiations with the Four-Power 
 group continued for nearly a year and were at- 
 tended by various developments which it is beyond 
 our purpose to go into. Arrangements for the 
 loan had proceeded to quite an advanced stage, 
 when Japan decided it was about time to interfere. 
 Accordingly, she procured Russia to join with her 
 in a demand to be included in the group. The 
 request was objectionable, coming at the time it 
 did, for the reason that it raised a hitch in the 
 negotiations at a moment when China was in 
 crying need of fimds, and for the further reason > 
 
114 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 that neither Japan nor Russia had, at the time, 
 any free capital to invest. Moreover, Japan's 
 objection put political questions to the fore, par- 
 ticularly with respect to the use of any part of the 
 loan for the promotion of industrial enterprises in 
 Manchuria. Thus, as Japan put it, the Russian 
 and Japanese spheres oi influence would be en- 
 croached upon. The Four-Power bankers, realiz- 
 ing the complications that would ensue, imme- 
 diately recognized the inadvisability of admitting 
 Russian and Japanese participation in a loan 
 agreement which they had striven to make of a 
 purely commercial character. The British For- 
 eign Office, however, true to its new Asiatic policy, 
 exerted its Influence in favour of accepting the 
 Japanese proposal. China, the United States and 
 Germany were opposed to it. But the British 
 view finally prevailed, and the result was precisely 
 what the Four-Power bankers had apprehended. 
 Complications were at once made. Russia and 
 Japan, mutually supporting one another, wanted a 
 stipulation in the reorganization loan that those 
 Powers must be consulted about any provisions 
 and expenditures in Manchuria and Mongolia. 
 Discord arose among the group bankers. Many 
 conferences were held, but it seemed impossible 
 to arrive at a definite understanding. The 
 American representatives, with the approval of the 
 American Government, refused to participate 
 further if any restrictions were placed on China's 
 
BRITAIN'S CHANGE OF POLICY 115 
 
 autonomy and the principle of the "Open Door/' 
 Finally, after months of haggling, the Six-Power 
 group reached an understanding. But the delay, 
 aside from its other impleasant issues, had one 
 tmexpected result. A new Administration had, in 
 the meantime, come into power in Washington, 
 and President Wilson was averse to American 
 participation on the ground that the reorganiza- 
 tion loan touched the internal affairs of China, and, 
 accordingly, the American bankers had to with- 
 draw as participants in the loan. Thus China 
 lost the benefit of an influence that would have 
 been of the utmost service to her, not only in 
 maintaining the *'Open Door" poKcy, but in 
 creating a wider international market for Chinese 
 investments. Moreover, American participation 
 would have greatly ameliorated foreign pressure 
 upon the conduct of China's internal affairs. 
 China's evil genius, however, had, with British 
 support, scored another point. 
 
 From the foregoing pages, it must be clear to 
 the reader that Britain, since her rapprochement 
 with France (1904) and Russia (1907), has had a 
 policy in Asia which, even to many thoughtful 
 Englishmen, has seemed to border on the mys- 
 terious. Inquiring minds are imable to arrive 
 at a reasonable conclusion with respect to what 
 advantages Britain has received or expects to 
 receive by reason of her continued and tmin- 
 terrupted support of the Japanese programme in 
 
116 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 Asia. It IS true, as has been stated, that the 
 Treaty of Alliance runs out in 1921. But it is 
 self-extending, and the failure to renew it or to 
 denounce it before a balance of account has 
 been struck between Britain and Japan gives 
 rise to surmises that the treaty contains secret 
 clauses which it is in the interest of neither nation 
 to make public, but which have some bearing on 
 Britain*s past and future policy in Asia. And, 
 indeed, it is the uncertainty with respect to this 
 fact which may make it difficult for other nations 
 to work together with Britain in negotiating for 
 a future poUcy in the Far East. 
 
CHAPTER THIRTEEN 
 
 THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE 
 
 As has already been indicated in the foregoing 
 chapter, the question of the renewal of the Anglo- 
 Japanese Alliance is already a moot point, and 
 in considering the probabilities and possibilities 
 thereof, it will be well to consider some new 
 aspects of the subject which have arisen since 
 the last Treaty of Alliance was signed in 1911. 
 
 In the first place, it must be bome in mind that 
 aside from putting a check on the aggressive 
 tendencies of Russia in Asia, and aside from the 
 aid and protection given to Britain's European 
 policy after 1907, the main purpose of the Anglo- 
 Japanese Treaty of Alliance was to protect and 
 preserve the integrity of China as an independent 
 state and to maintain therein the principle of 
 the **Open Door'* for the commerce of all nations 
 on a footing of equality. 
 
 Accordingly, any renewal of the Alliance which 
 failed to emphasize and safeguard this principle 
 and to insist upon its equitable application 
 would not only be useless from the British point 
 
 117 
 
118 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 of view, but a certain source of trouble in the 
 future. In Japan, on the contrary, the Anglo- 
 Japanese Alliance is now regarded, in many- 
 respects, as a hindrance rather than as an advan- 
 tage, because of the possible restrictions that 
 may flow out of it upon Japanese policy in China, 
 due to its fundamental clash with British interests 
 there. Thus far Japan has managed to have 
 her way, in spite of the restrictions of the treaty. 
 But in doing so she has made herself an object 
 of suspicion and distrust in British Government 
 circles, which may in the end go far to offset any 
 gains that have been acquired at a time when 
 Britain was not in a position to oppose her full 
 strength to the Japanese encroachments. For 
 in Great Britain it is at present realized chat she 
 has paid more for the Alliance than it was worth 
 to her. 
 
 We must now consider what are the central 
 facts in the actual situation in the Far East 
 that have a bearing upon the question of the 
 renewal of the treaty. These may be summed 
 up as follows: 
 
 (i) A lack of centralization in the government 
 of China. Discord and dissension among the 
 governing forces or those able to govern have 
 made it possible for Japan to acquire a position 
 of ascendancy. China's financial difficulties have 
 been exploited by Japan in a manner to strengthen 
 her hold on the various factions who rule, or 
 
THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE 119 
 
 pretend to rule, in the contending sections and 
 provinces of China. There being no regular 
 revenues, the Peking Government has been com- 
 pelled to negotiate foreign loans, for the most 
 part in Japan, who, in each instance of a new 
 loan, manages to attach such terms and conditions 
 as will tighten the hold she already has on the 
 economic and financial resources of China and 
 will make it difficult for that unhappy country to 
 free itself from a financial incubus that threatens 
 to stifle its very national existence. 
 
 (2) The first condition of a restoration to 
 healthful conditions in China must be to free her 
 government from the shackles that bind it to 
 Japan. There are enough independent elements, 
 a sufficiently large ruling class, in China, and a 
 well-enough organized body of administrative 
 functionaries to successfully conduct a free gov- 
 ernment. But China must really be free to act 
 for herself. So long as the shadow of Japan 
 hovers over the land, there can be little hope of 
 reconstruction and centralization along really 
 democratic lines. 
 
 (3) Under no consideration should there be 
 any attempt at foreign intervention. Foreign 
 intervention has brought China to what she is 
 to-day, namely, a land torn by faction, verging 
 on bankruptcy, impotent to oppose force by force, 
 a complex of divergent tendencies that are not 
 permitted to tmite or to attain uniformity. A 
 
120 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 virile, intelligent, thrifty and hard-working people 
 have been rendered impotent to realize and put 
 forth their full strength. They have in turn 
 been hoodwinked, bargained with, coerced by 
 force of arms, lied to, cheated, and even drugged 
 and narcotized in order to keep them in leading- 
 strings, to bind them to the paying of tribute to 
 their unscrupulous oppressors, and to prevent 
 them from rousing themselves from their slumbers 
 and throwing off their tormentors. Indeed, what 
 the Far East, and in particular China, needs is 
 a fresh breeze, perhaps a cyclone, to drive out 
 the poisonous gases which threaten to destroy 
 its very life. 
 
 (4) Any attempt to establish a consortium of 
 the Powers, to attend to the financial needs of 
 China, will play into the hands of Japan, unless 
 at the same time measures are taken to prevent 
 unnecessary interference in the administrative 
 processes of China. It would, if established 
 without the proper safeguards, simply mean the 
 organization of a committee, representing certain 
 of the Great Powers, with a Japanese chairman 
 and Japanese influence predominant thereon 
 throughout. It would mean another oppor- 
 tunity for Japan, tmder the guise of exercising 
 international control, to strengthen her mastery 
 over China and to make that country entirely 
 subservient to her interests and leadership. 
 
 (5) The newly created world situation demands 
 
THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE 121 
 
 that increased recognition be given to the fact 
 that the negotiations for a renewal of the AlU- 
 ance would be entirely out of harmony with 
 the principles of the Covenant of the League of 
 Nations. That the hour is approaching when 
 the Chinese Republic, with its 400,000,000 inhab- 
 itants, will decide between a close offensive and 
 defensive alliance with Japan and representation 
 as an independent Power (restored to all its 
 rights of sovereignty, which have been seriously 
 impaired by the actions and measures of Japan 
 and other Great Powers) in the League of Nations. 
 That the Chinese Republic having become a 
 member of the League of Nations (by signing the 
 Treaty of St.-Germain, with Austria) is in a 
 position to demand that the principles of the 
 Covenant be applied to it as to any other inde- 
 pendent signatory Power, and that China cannot, 
 as formerly, be brought within the scope of any 
 international agreement, on the lines of the 
 existing Anglo- Japanese Alliance Treaty, without 
 offending the principles of the Covenant of the 
 League of Nations. That it is now squarely up 
 to the Western nations to decide what course 
 they are in future to pursue towards China, 
 namely, whether they shall apply the principles 
 of the League of Nations to China, and, there- 
 fore, defend and protect her independence and 
 territorial integrity, or whether they shall betray 
 these principles, and with them the League gf 
 
122 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 Nations, by returning to the old methods of pillage 
 and exploitation. 
 
 The foregoing are the outstanding facts that 
 will have to be weighed carefully by the British 
 Foreign Office before coming to any definite 
 conclusions with respect to the renewal of the 
 treaty. The inclination is, perhaps, present, in 
 view of many still undetermined factors elsewhere, 
 for Britain to allow the whole business of the 
 treaty to rest a while, and even to permit the 
 Alliance to run on unrevised under the self- 
 extending clauses of the treaty. If so, such a 
 course is certain to perpetuate many difficulties 
 under which British commerce suffers and will 
 seriously prejudice British prestige in the eyes 
 of the Chinese. Indeed, the Chinese have wit- 
 nessed with astonishment the apparent com- 
 placency which up to now has been displayed by 
 the British, in the face of the fact that the spirit 
 of the Alliance has been broken in so many 
 important particulars, as witness the mockery of 
 the so-called ''Open Door** policy in Manchuria, 
 the abuse of trade-marks, the innumerable petty 
 loans to Peking which have wasted China's 
 resources and kept the country in perpetual 
 unrest, and the uncertainty of Japan's future 
 action with respect to the province of Shantung. 
 
 If we look now at the attitude of the Japanese 
 towards the treaty, we find that the chief en- 
 thusiasm for a renewal is to be found among 
 
THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE 123 
 
 those whose principal fear is lest Japan find her- 
 self poUtically isolated in world diplomacy. For 
 them, the renewal of the AlHance is desirable for 
 the one reason* if for no other, that thereby Japan 
 may show the world that the many signs which 
 have been pointing recently to the political isola- 
 tion of Japan are completely without meaning. 
 The Japanese sensitiveness to the judgment of 
 the outside world, in this regard, may be a power- 
 ful factor in England's hands to secure such a 
 revision of the Anglo- Japanese Alliance as will 
 render- her position with respect to China some- 
 what stronger and that of Japan somewhat 
 weaker. If Britain should decide upon a revision 
 of the treaty along lines which respected Chinese 
 rights, the Liberal Party in Japan would be her 
 ally in such a diplomatic move, but the question 
 is, whether the growth of Liberalism in Japan 
 Jhas yet attained to such proportions as to consti- 
 tute a sufficient check on the Imperialism of the 
 ruling classes. The result of the recent elections 
 would seem to indicate the contrary. We may, 
 therefore, conclude that as yet the militaristic 
 elements in the political life of Japan will continue 
 to steer a course of adventure and expansion in 
 world politics and that they will try to offset the 
 possible advantages of a new Anglo- Japanese 
 Alliance by pointing out the disadvantages to 
 Japan's world position in case she yields too much 
 for the sake of securing the British signature to 
 
124 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 a new treaty that may carry with it greater 
 hindrances than benefits. In other words, the 
 leaders of Japanese Real Politik deny that Japan 
 can obtain as great substantial material advan- 
 tages from such a treaty as she can obtain if she 
 goes on playing a lone hand, imembarrassed by 
 any treaty obligations. 
 
 Japan is a member of the League of Nations, 
 but the ties which bind her to it are of the lightest, 
 and she is in much the same position, with respect 
 thereto, as Germany, who is able to choose 
 whether she will throw in her commercial and 
 industrial future with the League or with America, 
 which is outside the League. 
 
 Similarly, Japan might try to resolve all diffi- 
 culties with America and, dependent as she is on 
 the latter country for much of her raw material, 
 make a virtue of necessity and close a very tight 
 agreement with both America and Germany. 
 Both of these coimtries afford great markets for 
 Japanese manufactured goods, and both of them 
 produce, in large measure, what Japanese industry 
 and trade require. Such an understanding would 
 rest upon purely financial and economic grounds 
 and have as a basis for its existence over a meas- 
 urable term of years the calling of a truce with 
 respect to all outstanding controversies, the 
 coimtries recognizing the paramount need of the 
 world to get back to work and restore prosperity 
 to the peoples before engaging themselves in new 
 
THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE 125 
 
 disputes over political questions of prestige, power 
 and expansion which will lead to more wars. 
 
 As the writer sees it, the only other successful 
 alternative for England, as against such a working 
 together of America, Japan and Germany, would 
 lie in the combination already referred to in these 
 pages, namely, America, England, Germany and 
 Russia. 
 
 For it is only a question of time, and of a 
 much shorter time than is generally supposed, 
 when Germany will regain her old position of 
 Britain's most active competitor. The recent 
 war has demonstrated that it is more costly to 
 attempt to destroy such a competitor than it is 
 to try to live on good terms with him, imder a 
 policy of give and take, live and let live. Those 
 who are the first to learn the lessons of the war 
 in this regard will also be the first to restore 
 prosperity to their own ruined fortunes. 
 
 It is undoubtedly true that very little can, 
 with any degree of certainty, be forecasted with 
 respect to future Anglo-Japanese relations, with- 
 out some knowledge of what Japan's policy is to 
 be and the reaction of the United States thereto. 
 If negotiations for a removal or revision of the 
 Alliance are commenced, Britain will, of course, 
 be guided, to a very great extent, by the views 
 her statesmen entertain with respect to these 
 questions. Nor will they venture to lose sight 
 of the fact that the events of the last five years 
 
126 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 have been full of portents that point the way of 
 future trouble between Great Britain and Japan. 
 Those who think otherwise confine their argu- 
 ments to the fact that Japan is apparently con- 
 cerning herself only with matters in the North 
 Pacific and China, where the extent of her 
 ** special interests'' is less a question of dispute 
 than are her claims in other directions. But 
 those who hold to the opinion that the Japanese 
 will, in the future, by no means be content with 
 the playing of a partial or subordinate r61e in 
 the Pacific, conceding to Britain and America a 
 share in the division of spheres of influence, point 
 out that if Japanese interests lie wholly in the 
 North Pacific, it is hard to understand why she 
 has come southward more than 3,000 miles to the 
 Marshall and Caroline Islands and to the French 
 islands (the Loyalty and Marquesas groups), less 
 than 1,500 miles from the eastern coast of Australia. 
 
 Before the new or revised Anglo- Japanese 
 Alliance becomes a fixed fact, there must surely 
 come a clearing up of certain points which, as 
 yet, are obscure both to Australians and to 
 Americans. So far as the former are concerned, 
 their demand is that Japan give a definite guaran- 
 tee to confine her operations to the North Pacific 
 and that she assent to the recognition of Australia 
 as a white man's country exclusively. 
 
 On the other hand, America will always see in 
 an Anglo- Japanese AlUance a possible menace 
 
THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE 127 
 
 to her interests, and nothing can ever remove the 
 fear of such a menace from the minds and hearts 
 of Americans except a declaration contained in 
 the treaty itself that in no circumstances is the 
 Alliance aimed at America, and that in the event J 
 of a Japanese conflict, into which America may 
 be drawn, England does not obligate herself to 
 join with Japan or to take sides in any way against 
 the United States. 
 
 So long as such a guarantee is left out of future 
 agreements between England and Japan, just so 
 long will Americans, even though they be true 
 friends of both countries, harbour suspicions 
 which cannot fail to weaken those cordial relations 
 between States which are the chief and most 
 valuable elements of future international concord. 
 Nor should these guarantees be confined to an 
 assurance as regards America alone. Holland 
 in her East Indies and France in her South Asian 
 and Southern Pacific possessions have likewise 
 an interest in knowing that the Anglo- Japanese 
 Alliance does not concern itself with matters 
 antagonistic to the maintenance of the status quo. 
 
 Secret diplomacy stands under condemnation 
 by the peoples of the world, and Governments 
 would do well to remember that, in future, 
 peoples will not so easily allow themselves to be 
 dragged into wars, the seeds of which have been 
 sown by those who refuse to listen to the awakened 
 voice of humanity. 
 
CHAPTER FOURTEEN 
 
 THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE 
 
 With respect to the course which Anglo- Japanese 
 relations are to take in the future, there is one very 
 important possibility that it will scarcely do to 
 ignore. Thus far, in discussing the probabilities 
 of an Anglo- Japanese renewal of the Treaty of 
 Alliance, the writer has based his conjectures 
 upon what might be termed the normal factors 
 in international relations. They are the factors 
 such as we have grown accustomed to from long 
 usage and tradition, such as, for example, that 
 civilized nations will not employ barbarous 
 methods in making war and will respect the usual 
 usages of war; that they will not employ savages 
 or semi-civilized tribes to make war on other 
 civilized nations or to occupy their territory with 
 such troops; that civilized nations will no longer 
 engage in the slave-trade or, what is equally bad, 
 compel their savage or semi-civilized subjects 
 by methods that are repulsive to humanity to 
 serve in their conscript armies; that an inferior 
 
 128 
 
THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE 129 
 
 civilization, like the African, shall not be put 
 in a position where it may become a menace to 
 the higher civilization of the White man or the 
 Yellow man. 
 
 Such are some of the normal factors in inter- 
 national relations that we have learned to honour 
 and observe in times that are past. But we 
 have seen them all violated in the past six years. 
 Moreover, the guilty ones are confined to no one 
 group of the belligerent Powers, and some of the 
 worst of the violations were committed after 
 hostilities had ceased. 
 
 Bearing these facts in mind, the purport of 
 which simply is that precedents, usages and 
 traditions (even though they are of the kind 
 which all the moral forces of mankind approve) 
 no longer possess any power to hold our minds 
 in thrall, we may, perhaps, be compelled to revise 
 some of our conclusions, or, at least, to give con- 
 sideration to certain possibilities which, under 
 the old normal conditions, we should reject as 
 crude and fanciful. 
 
 And among such possibilities is that of an 
 Anglo-Japanese Alliance the terms of which 
 will include a sharing of the Asiatic Continent 
 and of all the Russias between the two allied 
 nations. 
 
 If the foregoing suggestion seems at all fan- 
 tastic to the reader, let him bethink that Japan 
 and Britain, by slow and quiet stages, have 
 
130 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 already seized upon and now control all the 
 approaches to Russia, China and the Asiatic 
 Continent. 
 
 Russia and China together are potentially the 
 most important commercial fields in the world. 
 All the world wishes to trade with them. But 
 Japan has occupied Eastern Siberia and together 
 with Britain controls all the strategic approaches 
 to China from the east — Dalny, Tsingtau, the 
 Luchu Islands, Formosa, Hong Kong, Singapore, 
 and the Straits of Malacca. On the west and 
 south, Britain now controls all the approaches 
 to Russia and the Asiatic Continent — Gibraltar, 
 the Dardanelles, Suez, Egypt, Aden, the Persian 
 Gulf, East Africa, the Cape of Good Hope. On 
 the north, Britain controls the approaches to 
 Russia by reason of her command of the sea, her 
 control of the Baltic and its approaches, and from 
 the naval base she is creating for herself at Danzig. 
 Thus we perceive that foreign trade can only 
 enter Russia by passing through a Japanese zone 
 on the east and a British zone on the north, west 
 and south. Moreover, a glance at the map will 
 prove to the reader that Japanese occupation of 
 Siberia east of Lake Baikal, together with the 
 existing occupation of Manchuria by Japan, pro- 
 vides that country, to use a wrestler's expression, 
 with a *' half -Nelson'' hold on the Northern 
 Provinces of China. Japan's occupation of East- 
 em Siberia is, accordingly, a move directed not 
 
THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE 131 
 
 only against Russia, but against China. Indeed, 
 no action that Japan has taken, since the inaugura- 
 tion of her imperial policy of expansion, more 
 loudly proclaims her intentions as regards China 
 and the Asiatic Continent than this occupation, 
 with British approval, of Siberia east of Lake 
 Baikal. For here, if anywhere, Chinese interests 
 are paramount, in view of the fact that China and 
 Siberia are contiguous on a land frontier extending 
 for thousands of miles and that the Eastern 
 Siberian region is traversed by the Siberian Rail- 
 road, which also runs for a thousand miles through 
 Chinese territory, where it is known as the 
 Chinese Eastern Railway. This great avenue of 
 communication, the overland connection between 
 Europe and the shores of the Pacific, has now, so 
 far as its entire Eastern section is concerned, fallen 
 a prey to the Japanese. China, who sought, after 
 the breakdown in the Russian governmental 
 functions after the Revolution, to take over from 
 Russia the operation of the Chinese Eastern 
 Railway, by reason of her reversionary ownership 
 therein, has been ruthlessly pushed aside by 
 Japan. Making use of the alleged menace of 
 Bolshevism, Japanese military authorities at once 
 assumed a superior authority over the officers of 
 Chinese troops that had been sent to maintain 
 order in those localities. The Chinese com- 
 manders in Manchuria showed firmness in main- 
 taining that they controlled in Chinese territory 
 
132 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 and in refusing to yield authority there to the 
 Japanese. This situation led to many clashes 
 between Chinese and Japanese troops. Japanese 
 troops moved along the Chinese Eastern Railway, 
 placing guards at all bridges, culverts and stations. 
 As Chinese guards had already been stationed at 
 those points, maintaining the operation of the 
 line in absolute safety, it became apparent that 
 the Japanese object was political and that this 
 demonstration of force by the Mikado's military 
 authorities would soon be followed by the com- 
 plete occupation of Manchuria and of Eastern 
 Siberia, together with the railroads. China was 
 permitted to take no part in these operations, 
 although they were taking place in Chinese ter- 
 ritory and Chinese interests were affected to a 
 much greater extent than those of any other na- 
 tion. Japan's occupation became complete and 
 undisputed after the breakdown in the joint 
 Allied and American intervention programme, and 
 the failure to make good of the Stevens Com- 
 mission, under which the Chinese Eastern and 
 Siberian Railways were to be operated under joint 
 international control. The difficulties raised by 
 Japan were, of course, responsible for the failure 
 of both these ventures. 
 
 Now, it so happens that Japanese military oc- 
 cupation of Eastern Siberia is coexistent and co- 
 extensive with the similar advance on the part of 
 Britain on the other side. Japan's military oc- 
 
THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE 133 
 
 cupation on the east is paralleled by Britain's 
 naval occupation on the west, in the Baltic and 
 the Dardanelles. Accordingly, if these two Em- 
 pires should effect a combination for mutual 
 security of their gains, it is evident what will be 
 the fate of Russia and China. 
 
 For America, this question is one of vital 
 importance. Outside of the fact that the exist- 
 ence of such an Alliance, directed towards an 
 interference with the free play of forces in China 
 and Russia, would eventually result in stifling the 
 democratic movements which have arisen in 
 those countries, America has an interest in the 
 matter which might even extend to the point 
 where it would have to consider the same as a 
 menace to her security. 
 
 Moreover, from the commercial point of view 
 the menace is a serious one. For Japan's com- 
 mercial policy in the parts of China which she 
 already has penetrated, and Britain's policy of 
 commercial penetration of weaker nations, gives 
 sufficient intimation of what such zones on each 
 side of Russia and China would mean to American 
 and all other foreign trade. 
 
 There is, again, a distinct danger to be appre- 
 hended by America, aside from the political and 
 other dangers already alluded to. We refer to 
 the probability that Japan, backed by England, 
 will seize the occasion of such an alKance to make 
 a direct attack on the Monroe Doctrine. Then 
 
134 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 ihere is the Panama Canal, the one waterway of 
 international importance which is not already 
 under Britain's control. 
 
 There have been not a few political observers 
 who have doubted whether the Anglo-Japanese 
 Alliance had any possible application to the 
 United States. All the more so, when in the last 
 Alliance treaty a provision was included to the 
 effect that ** Should either of the High Contract- 
 ing Parties conclude a treaty of general arbitra- 
 tion with a third Power, it is agreed that nothing 
 in this Agreement shall impose on such contract- 
 ing party an obligation to go to war with the 
 Power with whom such an arbitration treaty is 
 in force.'' 
 
 Such a treaty of general arbitration was in 
 fact negotiated with Great Britain by President 
 Taft in 191 1, but the same failed of ratification 
 in the Senate. There is, therefore, no existing 
 provision in any Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Alli- 
 ance which excludes the possibility of Britain 
 participating with Japan in a war against the 
 United States. On the other hand, what positive 
 evidence is there that the Anglo-Japanese Alliance 
 does apply to the United States? Some of this 
 evidence has already been alluded to, in another 
 connection, in a previous chapter, but it will, 
 perhaps, add something to the clarity of the 
 present discussion if we recapitulate our proofs 
 once again. 
 
THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE 135 
 
 We must first consider what conclusions are 
 to be drawn from the changed and still changing 
 relations between Britain and Japan as evidenced 
 by the modifications which were made in each 
 new treaty as it was signed. There have been 
 three alliances — the first signed in 1902, which 
 was superseded by one signed in 1905, which in 
 turn was amended in 1911. 
 
 In the first treaty, which was signed prior to 
 the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, it was 
 provided that Britain should come to the assist- 
 ance of Japan in case of an attack on Japan in 
 which a second Power should join as aggressor. 
 The alliance also guaranteed the independence of 
 Korea and of China. It is thus apparent that 
 the first alliance anticipated the Russo-Japanese 
 War. The alliance assured Japan that when 
 she joined battle with Russia she would be pro- 
 tected by Great Britain against attack by any 
 other Power. In other words, Britain guar- 
 anteed that Japan would have to deal with but 
 one adversary. 
 
 When the second alliance was made in 1905, 
 of course things had changed. Japan had 
 defeated Russia and was in occupation of Korea 
 and Manchuria. Accordingly, the scope of the 
 treaty was now widened, and whereas in the 
 first treaty Britain's engagement was limited 
 to ** maintaining the independence and terri- 
 torial integrity of the Empire of China and the 
 
136 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 Empire of Korea/' in the second treaty Britain's 
 engagement was enlarged to include ''the con- 
 solidation and maintenance of the general peace 
 in the regions of Eastern Asia and India." Fur- 
 thermore, Japan was now granted a free hand 
 in Korea, an accompanying memorandum by 
 Lord Lansdowne, Minister of Foreign Affairs, 
 stating that **it has become evident that Korea, 
 owing to its close proximity to the Japanese 
 Empire and its inability to stand alone, must 
 fall under the control and tutelage of Japan.** 
 And, finally, the scope of the second treaty was 
 widened by making British assistance to Japan 
 in case of war conditional upon an attack by a 
 single Power. In other words, notice to the 
 world to keep ''hands off Japan. The bonds 
 between the two nations were accordingly getting 
 tighter. 
 
 To the impartial observer it must be clear 
 that the inclusion of India within the scope of 
 the second treaty is the keynote of the whole 
 enterprise so far as Britain was concerned. 
 Britain had been the only nation which from the 
 very first had formed a correct estimate of Japan- 
 ese ambitions and of Japan's capacity to realize 
 those ambitions. British policy at this time 
 followed two aims — firstly, to weaken Russia 
 in the Far East and then, that having been 
 accomplished, Britain was prepared to make an 
 ally of Russia in the pursuit of her second object, 
 
THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE 137 
 
 which was to meet the rise of Germany in the 
 West. 
 
 In pursuing the aforesaid aims, Britain realized 
 that Japan had grown too great and powerful 
 to be held in leading-strings in the East. Accord- 
 ingly, Japan had *'to be given her head.** She 
 must be allowed to have her way in Asia up to the 
 point where Britain's vital interests were touched, 
 and those vital interests are simimed up in one 
 word — India. Accordingly, the second Treaty of 
 Alliance is a bond between Britain and Japan 
 in which, in effect, the former says to the latter: 
 '*You recognize and protect my special interests 
 in India and I shall recognize and protect your 
 special interests in Eastern Asia.*' 
 
 In the third treaty, signed July 13, 191 1, the 
 preamble is especially significant. It reads as 
 follows: ''The Government of Japan and the 
 Government of Great Britain, having in view the 
 important changes which have taken place in 
 the situation since the conclusion of the Anglo- 
 Japanese Agreement of August 12, 1905, and 
 believing that the revision of that Agreement 
 responding to such changes would contribute to 
 general stability and repose, have agreed upon 
 the following stipulations to replace the Agree- 
 ment above mentioned, such stipulations hav- 
 ing the same object as the said Agreement, 
 namely: 
 
 *'A. The consolidation and maintenance of 
 
138 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 the general peace in the regions of Eastern Asia 
 and India, 
 
 "B. The preservation of the common inter- 
 ests of all the Powers in China by ensuring the 
 independence and integrity of the Chinese Em- 
 pire and the principle of equal opportunities 
 for the commerce and industry of all nations in 
 China. 
 
 "C. The maintenance of the territorial rights 
 of the High Contracting Parties in the regions 
 of Eastern Asia and of India and the defence of 
 their special interests in those regions/' 
 
 It has been said by so competent an authority 
 as Lord Beaconsfield that diplomats speak a 
 language that is only understood by themselves. 
 Indeed, this is nowhere given a better illus- 
 tration than in these three treaties we are now 
 discussing. For, if in the first treaty pres- 
 ervation of the independence of Korea was 
 given as one of its objects, it would appear 
 that the phrase was inserted because Japan 
 intended to go to war to destroy the independence 
 of Korea, and this was known at the time the 
 phrase was written into the treaty. Similarly, 
 if treaties one, two and three each contain as- 
 surances that the parties thereto mutually guar- 
 antee the independence and territorial iategrity 
 of the Empire of China, then the reason of it is 
 to be found in the fact that the parties had in 
 reality mutually agreed that the independence and 
 
 \ 
 
THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE 139 
 
 territorial integrity of the Chinese Empire was to 
 be the subject of attack. And, indeed, subsequent 
 events demonstrated that such was in fact the 
 intention, when by various acts it became clear 
 that Britain was committed to support Japan's 
 claim of a paramount position in Manchuria and 
 her violation of the principles of the **Open 
 Door'' and the integrity of China. Such acts are 
 those we have already entunerated in a previous 
 chapter, namely, Britain's support of the Japanese 
 veto on the Fakumen and Chinchow-Aigun Rail- 
 way schemes; her recognition and support of 
 Japan's paramotmt position in Fukien Province; 
 her support of Japan's actions and policy in 
 Shantung, Manchuria and Mongolia. 
 
 Britain's insistence upon forcing her own reading 
 of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty with reference to 
 the administration of the Panama Canal, coming 
 at the same time as the raising of the Japanese 
 immigration issue in California, was the first sharp 
 reminder America had thus far received that in 
 case of trouble between the United States and 
 Japan the Anglo- Japanese Alliance might apply. 
 Recently, also, has come a realization for the first 
 time that the Anglo- Japanese AlHance really 
 meant something quite different from what its 
 published terms are permitted to disclose. In- 
 deed, the conviction that this is so has been grow- 
 ing upon Americans, until to-day we doubt if any 
 treaty that might be signed between Japan and 
 
140 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 Britain would be received by them with anything 
 but profound suspicion and distrust. For it is 
 from conclusions such as we have made above that 
 Americans have come firmly to believe that the 
 Anglo- Japanese AlHance does indeed apply to 
 the United States. 
 
CHAPTER FIFTEEN 
 
 ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE — THE JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 In the pursuit of her main object, namely, to attain 
 the hegemony in the Far East, Japan had, up to 
 1911, the support of Britain — ^not freely granted, 
 it is true, for it was a question not of choice but 
 of necessity. In the amended treaty of 1911, 
 Britain, while still retaining in the preamble of the 
 treaty stipulations with respect to her special 
 interests in India, no longer makes mention of 
 India in the body of the treaty, and the treaty 
 was further emasculated by providing that Britain 
 need not come to Japan's assistance in case of 
 attack by a Power with whom she had concluded 
 a treaty of general arbitration. This was inserted 
 in view of the impending treaty of general ar- 
 bitration between Great Britain and the United 
 States. This partial weakening of the force of 
 the treaty of 1905 meant, in other words, that 
 Britain felt impelled, for certain reasons, to *'pour 
 a little water in her wine.*' The beverage had got 
 to be stronger than was agreeable to the British 
 palate. 
 
 141 
 
142 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 One reason for the change lay in the fact that 
 Britain, having made an entente with Russia in 
 1 90 7, had ceased to fear an attack on India from 
 that quarter. Other reasons are to be sought in 
 the growing fear of a too rapid aggrandizement of 
 Japan in China, in which event Britain would 
 simply have destroyed one Frankenstein only to 
 raise up another, and finally Britain, having sensed 
 the approach of a great European war in the not 
 too distant future, recognized the timely need of 
 soothing the rising susceptibilities of America 
 with respect to the objects of the Anglo- Japanese 
 Alliance and its possible future attitude towards 
 the United States. 
 
 From her experiences with Japan since the 
 signing of the 1911 treaty, and particularly during 
 the war, Britain perceives that she is probably 
 again face to face with a question not of choice 
 but of necessity. It is a question for her of 
 whether she is to choose the friendship of Japan 
 or the friendship of America. It would seem ab- 
 solutely impossible, as matters stand now, for her 
 to have the friendship of both of these countries 
 at one and the same time. Accordingly, she must 
 make her choice, and upon that choice, possibly 
 the most momentous one she has ever been called 
 on to make, depends the entire future of the 
 British Empire. Let us examine briefly what is 
 involved in it. 
 
 America's foreign policy revolves about two vital 
 
THE ANGLO^APANESE ALLIANCE 143 
 
 doctrines known as the Monroe Doctrine and the 
 Hay Doctrine. The one involves nothing less than 
 a guarantee of the continued independence, free 
 from foreign interference, of all countries in the 
 Western Hemisphere — Canada included. Simi- 
 larly, the Hay Doctrine involves nothing less than 
 an obligation to resist any interference with the 
 territorial integrity or independence of China. 
 
 Both of these doctrines have been recognized 
 and subscribed to by all the Powers. They have 
 been challenged by Japan alone, and she has 
 given clearly to understand what kind of a doc- 
 trine she wants to substitute for these policies. 
 What her idea of a Monroe Doctrine in the Far 
 East is has been shown in Korea, in Manchuria, 
 in Shantung and in other regions of China. 
 
 In fact, nothing could be in sharper antithesis 
 to the real Monroe Doctrine than the Japanese 
 interpretation of it in practice. For in China 
 it means that no railway can be built, no mines 
 or other natural resources exploited, except imder 
 conditions dictated by Japan; that no foreign 
 loan can be made without the consent of Japan 
 being first obtained and except with Japanese 
 participation; that Japan must be consulted in 
 all important industrial enterprises requiring 
 foreign capital; that Japanese must be employed 
 as political, financial and military advisers in 
 China; that China must consult Japan when she 
 wishes to purchase armaments and must purchase 
 
144 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 a majority of such supplies in Japan; that when 
 foreign capital is used to build railways in China, 
 Japanese managers must be employed and traffic 
 rates be fixed so as to give Japanese commodities 
 an advantage over other foreign goods; that 
 supplies used in railways and other utilities in 
 China must be purchased in Japan or through 
 Japanese firms; that Japanese goods entering 
 China shall be given preferential custom rates; 
 that Japanese shall have the right to own lands 
 and reside in all parts of China and not be subject 
 to China^s laws; that Japanese must be heads of 
 police in important Chinese cities; that China 
 shall not lease any of her own territories without 
 first consulting Japan; that no contracts to build 
 naval bases or harbour works in China shall be 
 permitted without first obtaining the consent of 
 Japan ; that Japan must be consulted when China 
 desires to change her fiscal systems. 
 
 Now, the Anglo- Japanese Alliance gives as one 
 of its objects: *'The preservation of the common 
 interests of all Powers in China by ensuring the 
 independence and integrity of the Chinese Empire 
 and the principle of equal opportunity for the 
 commerce and industry of all nations in China." 
 And yet, in the face of this provision and of 
 similar provisions contained in treaties with three 
 other Great Powers, Japan has acted in entire 
 disregard thereof, in the manner we have seen, 
 and the Anglo- Japanese Treaty of Alliance has 
 
THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE 145 
 
 protected her in so doing. In other words, the 
 Hay Doctrine, one of the two main pillars upon 
 which rests American foreign policy, has been 
 wrecked by Japan with Britain's consent. 
 
 The question now arises as to what is the 
 importance to America of insisting upon uphold- 
 ing the Hay Doctrine. The importance of the 
 question has a twofold aspect — a material and a 
 moral aspect. On the material side, the chief 
 importance of insisting upon the Hay Doctrine 
 rests in the fact that to allow a neighbour of the 
 United States on the Pacific Ocean, with a much 
 lower standard of living and perhaps a different 
 standard of ethics, to wax so great that eventually 
 it may become a menace to her security, or to 
 grow so strong as to compel the United States to 
 accept its standards of living and ethics in place 
 of her own, would be suicidal to America as a 
 nation. How could America defend her position 
 on the Immigration Question, for example, if at 
 some future time Japan has extended her sway 
 over the immense population and material re- 
 sources of China? Or how would America be 
 able to defend that other great policy — the Monroe 
 Doctrine — if at some future time Japan, with the 
 greater part of Asia behind her, should insist on 
 some of the South American States, or Mexico, 
 being thrown open to the invasion of the Yellow 
 man? 
 
 Morally, the United States has obligations in 
 
148 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 this connection of a very far-reaching character. 
 As the exponent of certain phases of Western 
 civilization, such as democracy and liberal insti- 
 tutions; as the champion of liberty, right, justice, 
 free speech, representative institutions, free edu- 
 cation and other of the humanities, America can- 
 not afford to abdicate from the high position she 
 has attained in these regards, and more especially 
 not if driven thereto by the representatives of 
 another race, religion and culture. 
 
 We have not touched upon the large commer- 
 cial interests possessed by Americans in the Far 
 East that require to be protected, nor spoken of 
 the protection against Japanese invasion which 
 America owes as a moral duty to the Filipinos, 
 nor of the transcendental importance to American 
 trade and American security that lies in placing 
 an American interpretation in place of a British 
 interpretation upon the terms of the Hay- 
 Pauncefote Treaty. Nevertheless, all of these 
 questions are bound up with the Eastern Question 
 in some way, and are entitled to be given great 
 weight in any discussion of America's attitude 
 towards a renewal of the Anglo- Japanese Alliance. 
 
 Since the cessation of hostilities America has 
 learned a great deal about the iniquities of secret 
 treaties. Moreover, she has been filled with an 
 ever-increasing feeling of abhorrence for the meas- 
 ures and manipulations of diplomats who make a 
 treaty say one thing, according to its plain sense, 
 
THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE 147 
 
 while meaning a totally different thing according 
 to their interpretation — perhaps the antithesis of 
 what is written and published to the world. There 
 is a well-grounded belief, furthermore, that some 
 of the clearest terms of treaties, as published, are 
 set at naught by secret provisions which are known 
 to none but the parties concerned. Thus, for 
 example, Russia and Japan in 1916 made a treaty 
 for the protection of their interests in China which 
 in effect pointed to the future partition of China 
 between them and which provided that the same 
 should be kept a secret even from their own allies. 
 This treaty was, of course, in complete contra- 
 vention of the Anglo- Japanese Alliance, and is 
 an additional proof of Japan's intention to have 
 her own way — ^with British support if possible, 
 or without it if necessary. Again, Japan is 
 reputed to have been on the point of concluding 
 a secret treaty with Germany in the early summer 
 of 1 918 and before the German reverses put an 
 end to a move in this direction. Other examples 
 of double-deaHng engaged in by the Great Powers 
 through the medium of secret treaties are the 
 Sykes-Picot Treaty of 191 7 between France and 
 Britain for the partition of Turkey, in which the 
 interests of their allies, Russia and Italy, went 
 unnoticed; the secret agreements between France 
 and England on the one side, and Japan on the 
 other, in February, 191 7, for the support of 
 Japan's claims in Shantung, claims which werd 
 
148 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 in direct conflict with China's interests, and to 
 obtain a just settlement of which China had been 
 induced to enter the war as the ally of Britain 
 and France; and finally the London Agreement 
 of April 26, 1915, between Italy and Britain, 
 France and Russia, in which the rights of another 
 ally of the Allies, namely, Serbia, were bargained 
 away without the knowledge and consent of such 
 ally. While this list by no means exhausts the 
 roll of perfidious documents which marked the 
 relations of the Allies among themselves, it is 
 large enough to give point to our argument that 
 Americans who have been initiated into such 
 mysteries as these are convinced that political 
 treaties, whatever their pretended objects may 
 be, are not to be regarded in any other wise than 
 with suspicion and distrust. How should they 
 be able to regard an Anglo-Japanese Alliance 
 with any other feeUngs, when they perceive the 
 manner in which the last treaty between those 
 two countries has been interpreted by Japan, 
 with the acquiescence of Britain? What con- 
 fidence can they ever again feel in the published 
 announcements with respect to the intentions of 
 such a treaty, when they have seen how such 
 alleged intentions have been made a mockery of 
 in past treaties? How can they beHeve the asser- 
 tions of these countries with respect to the absence 
 of secret provisions in their treaties when they 
 perceive how these very nations have * 'double- 
 
THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE 149 
 
 crossed** their own allies in these particulars? 
 Of course, *'the answer is in the negative/* and 
 both Britain and Japan may rest assured that 
 American public opinion will never again be 
 easily influenced, by the published assertions 
 with res^pect to treaties like the one now under 
 discussion, to commit their future fortimes to 
 blind trust in the good faith of any nation what- 
 soever. 
 
 America's attitude towards any renewal of the 
 Anglo- Japanese Alliance is strengthened by her 
 conviction that her position in the matter has 
 the sympathy and probably the active support of 
 those former auxiliary members of the British 
 Empire, namely, Canada, Australia, New Zealand 
 and the Union of South Africa, who have now 
 been raised by the force of events, according to 
 the pronoimcement of General Smuts, to the 
 plane of equal partners in the British Common- 
 wealth. On the question of the new Japanese 
 peril, all of these States stand side by side with 
 the United States, and their influence must 
 necessarily be extended in opposition to so dan- 
 gerous a policy as that of interlacing their future 
 destiny with that of the Land of the Rising Sun. 
 
 One other consideration in this connection de- 
 serves mention. According to the statement 
 made by Mr. Balfour two years ago, and reiterated 
 by him in a recent speech (in which he made 
 cynical references to the Council of the League of 
 
150 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 Nations as constituting in reality only the Supreme 
 Council of the Allies sitting at Paris), the British 
 Government is not prepared to, or cannot as yet 
 see its way clear to, abandon what is usually 
 called the ** balance of power'' theory of world 
 politics. In other words, he favours a continu- 
 ance of the checks-and-balances principle in inter- 
 national relations. By this we presume he must 
 mean that, as against the growing power and 
 strength of the United States, a convenient check 
 lies in supporting the pretensions of Japan. 
 
 Thus, for example, what is more natural than 
 for Britain on the Atlantic and Japan on the 
 Pacific to act in concert as Naval Powers against 
 America, whose naval strength in capital ships 
 will surpass that of Britain in 1924, as we are 
 informed by that capital British naval commen- 
 tator, Archibald Hurd. 
 
 Furthermore, there is the question of the 
 American merchant marine. The Atlantic trade 
 of the United States was before the war carried 
 on chiefly by Great Britain and Germany, whilst 
 the Pacific trade was largely in the hands of the 
 Japanese. The United States very naturally de- 
 sires to recover the shipping trade she has lost 
 from those countries to which she has lost it. 
 The chief obstacle thereto is now Britain, owing 
 to her predominance on the seas. The American 
 maritime policy is therefore necessarily and in- 
 evitably anti-British, and Britain, for the first 
 
THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE 151 
 
 time in her history, sees herself compelled to wit- 
 ness the rise of a rival Maritime Power without 
 being able to take measures of retaUation, since 
 American raw materials are needed to keep her 
 factories running. If Britain is to lose her old 
 paramountcy in shipbuilding and shipping, what 
 is to be the future of the British Empire? The 
 answer is that much depends on the Empire's 
 power of production. If the British Empire can- 
 not keep pace with America in the power of pro- 
 duction, then the United States will in course of 
 time dominate the world, not only in general 
 industrial production, but in shipbuilding and 
 shipping as well. 
 
 Indeed, we may find the key to the recent war, 
 as also of the next coming war, in what that dis- 
 tinguished British economist EUis Barker says ^ 
 about coal and iron. Mr. Barker points out that 
 he who dominates the coal and iron industries 
 dominates the world. Germany, if victorious, 
 says Mr. Barker, would have dominated the world 
 not so much owing to her territorial acquisitions 
 as owing to her acquisition of a monopoly of coal 
 and iron on the continent of Europe. The present 
 age is the age of coal and iron. Modem ma- 
 chinery, modem implements and modem means of 
 locomotion and transport by land and sea are 
 made of steel. Providence has given the United 
 States not only the hulk of the world's coal, but also 
 
 ^ Economic Statesmanship t by J. Ellis Barker. 
 
152 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 the bulk of the world's iron. The conclusion he 
 reaches is that Britain went to war to prevent 
 Germany from controlling the bulk of the world's 
 coal and iron, and just so she may have to go to 
 war to prevent America from indulging herself 
 in a monopoly of these products. And Americans 
 are asking themselves if there is any necessary 
 connection between such facts as these and a 
 renewal of the Anglo- Japanese Alliance. 
 
CHAPTER SIXTEEN 
 
 ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE — THE JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 When Mr. Ellis Barker states that he who 
 dominates the coal and iron industries dominates 
 the world, we believe that he is stating what is 
 only relatively true. It is surely as important 
 for the existence and prosperity of a nation that 
 it dominate the sources of food supply, whether 
 within its own domains or abroad. Suppose, for 
 example, that the British Isles contained more than 
 half of the world's total supply of coal and iron, 
 what would that fact avail Great Britain in a 
 contest with a foreign foe who should succeed 
 in sinking her transports of food or in blockading 
 her ports? Similarly, one of Germany's greatest 
 economic problems, both before the war and after, 
 has been and is her food supply. And whatever 
 we may think of her efforts to dominate the coal 
 and iron industries, behind that lay the inexorable 
 demands of her rapidly growing population for a 
 sufficient food supply, which she is unable to 
 supply out of her own soil. For even the United 
 States, with an area nearly fifteen times as great 
 
 153 
 
154 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 as Germany and a population only little more 
 than 50 per cent, greater, are rapidly approaching 
 the time when they will have little, if any, food for 
 export. The United States have no longer a huge 
 regular surplus of cattle, beef and butter, and 
 before long they may not produce sufficient meat 
 for their domestic requirements. The same thing 
 is true of all breadstuffs, vegetables and fruit. 
 Prom being the greatest granary in the world, 
 the United States have become the greatest work- 
 shop, and according to the census of 1910 the pro- 
 duction of the United States manufacturing in- 
 dustries was valued at approximately 2o>^ billion 
 dollars, whereas the production of the farms came 
 only to S}4 billion dollars, and in the interval the 
 disproportion has grown even greater. 
 
 The main reason, aside from the rapid increase 
 of population, for the serious falling off in Amer- 
 ica's export of food-stuffs, lies in the fact that 
 agriculture is not sufficiently productive, due 
 mainly to a relatively continuous diminution 
 in the rural population devoted to agricultural 
 labours and a flocking thereof to the cities — 
 phenomena which we see repeated, in a more or 
 less degree, in such other great industrial nations 
 as Britain and Germany, and for identical reasons, 
 namely, higher wages and shorter hours in the city, 
 together with more opportunity for amusement. 
 
 In the British Isles the bulk of the agricultural 
 land has been abandoned by the plough and has 
 
THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE 155 
 
 been turned into grazing land, where rough grass 
 produces only an insignificant quantity of meat, 
 so that the food situation for Great Britain is 
 even a more desperate one than in Germany, 
 where 6i per cent, of the soil is imder cultivation 
 for com crops, as against only i8 per cent, in the 
 former country. From these figures it must be 
 apparent that agriculture in Great Britain is an 
 utterly decayed industry and that the nation is 
 absolutely dependent on foreign supplies for its 
 existence. Indeed, Germany, in normal times, 
 if thrown back entirely on her own resources of 
 food, might, perhaps, just manage to exist, albeit 
 on short rations, whereas Britain in a similar 
 situation would be reduced to absolute starvation. 
 The relevancy of all these facts and figures to 
 the subject in hand lies in the fact^ that the next 
 great war, like the last one, will have to be fought 
 over the question of food supply. For from the 
 beginning of history the most vital problems of 
 war and statesmanship have centred about the 
 food supply and the conditions of its distribution 
 to the peoples of the world. No Government, 
 whatever be its form, whether theocratic, pluto- 
 cratic, autocratic, oligarchic or democratic, could, 
 imder any circumstances, long maintain itself in 
 power unless it has managed to solve this fimda- 
 
 * Since this was written the writer's view has been confinned 
 by an address delivered at Princeton College by Sir Auckland 
 Geddes, British Ambassador at Washington. 
 
156 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 mental problem of the food supply, and it is of the 
 very essence of government that it should be con- 
 cerned with this problem before it is able to con- 
 cern itself with any other question. It was the 
 knowledge of this fact on the part of the Allied 
 Governments that caused them to make use of 
 the blockade after the armistice to bring pressure 
 to bear upon Germany for the enforcing of the 
 armistice terms. For it was in response to that 
 pressure that the German Government gave up 
 some of its dearest possessions — its ships, its gold, 
 its rolling stock, its coal and its cattle. Only by 
 making these sacrifices was it possible for Ger- 
 many to secure the one needful thing — ^food. 
 And it is from this terrible example that the na- 
 tions of the world have learned to prize anew the 
 control of the sources of food supply. 
 
 Accordingly, with the certain elimination of the 
 United States, in the near future, as a source of 
 food supply, it becomes necessary for a nation 
 like Britain, which has for so many decades drawn 
 the bulk of her provisions from abroad, to look 
 about her and take stock of what other possible 
 sources of food supply she may avail herself if 
 she is to keep her people from starvation. And 
 such stock-taking results in disclosing, as such 
 sources, firstly Russia, and secondly the South 
 American countries. We do not exclude other 
 possibilities from this calculation, as, for ex- 
 ample, Canada and Australia, but we are limiting 
 
THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE 157 
 
 the subject to its rough outlines only, in which 
 minor factors can make no appreciable change. 
 
 We have, then, on the one hand, Germany, who 
 will in time to come be compelled to become a 
 formidable competitor for the harvests of Russia, 
 in which her geographical situation, to say nothing 
 of other factors, gives her great advantages. We 
 have, on the other hand, the United States, 
 which are also destined to become a competitor 
 not only for the harvests of Russia, but for the 
 harvests of the South American countries. Her 
 geographical position and the Monroe Doctrine 
 give her an advantage in the latter countries. 
 And now comes Japan, whose agricultural pro- 
 duction is also said to be reaching its limit and 
 demands a *' look-in" in the countries which are 
 to provide the future world supply of food. 
 
 How are all of these claims to be met without 
 war? That is the question which henceforth is 
 to strain the thinking powers of these leading 
 nations of the world until such time as the genius 
 of man shall have evolved a new solution for an 
 age-old problem. For there will be involved in 
 this problem the fate of China, the stability of 
 the Monroe Doctrine, the balance of power in the 
 Pacific Ocean, and the question of the new 
 Japanese or Yellow peril. So far as concerns the 
 international balance of power formerly existing 
 in the Far East, that has already been destroyed 
 through the reactions of the Great War. What 
 
158 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 is to take Its place? Constructive statesmanship 
 alone can supply the answer. And constructive 
 statesmanship demands first of all the settlement 
 of the problems of the war on the basis of right 
 and justice. It demands that no nation be 
 pimished for the fault of its rulers, and that the 
 spirit of hatred and revenge between former 
 belligerents shall give place to sympathy and good 
 will. There must come a recognition of the fact 
 that no peace can be permanent which does not 
 take into consideration the fact that for a nation 
 to seek for and accept political advantage out of 
 the recent war, as so many have done since the 
 cessation of hostilities, is to make the sacrifice of 
 some of the noblest lives himianity has had to 
 offer a matter of trade and barter. It is to deceive 
 the very bone and sinew of the nations with'' 
 promises that are cashed in by the unworthy who 
 are left behind. It is a wrong to the peoples and 
 a wrong to the State, for in the growing intelli- 
 gence of the masses of the people there will grow up 
 a determination that they will never permit their 
 leaders to deceive them again and to make of their 
 sacrifices a ladder upon which to climb to unde- 
 served heights of glory, where the joy of the victors 
 can be measured only by the misery of their 
 victims. Such thoughts as these will awaken the 
 peoples to the realization that their liberties are 
 in jeopardy — not from without, but from within 
 the State. For they will have understood that 
 
THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE 159 
 
 the war has not settled the struggle for a really 
 democratic world, but that in reality it has 
 served to strengthen and rejuvenate the forces of 
 reaction and to engraft upon the body politic the 
 "balance of power'' system for another epoch. 
 
 The chief importance of the League of Nations 
 idea lay in the fact that it would have provided, 
 if properly organized, an international body which 
 could have taken in hand the absolutely vital 
 question of the future equitable distribution of the 
 world's supplies of food and raw materials. It 
 would be idle to talk of disarmament until such 
 an organization had been founded, with its Su- 
 preme Economic Council given authority and 
 power to regulate such distribution for the entire 
 world. In the prosecution of its work, such an 
 Economic Council would encounter great, per- 
 haps insuperable, obstacles. There is, for ex- 
 ample, the question of the various standards of 
 living. Under pre-war standards it is estimated 
 that ten Japanese can live on what one American 
 consumes and five Japanese upon what one Ger- 
 man consumes. Accordingly, the absorption by 
 one section of the human family of what might be 
 considered more than its due share of food prod- 
 ucts might lead to diflQculties. Indeed, the main ^ 
 cause of Australia's, as of America's, opposition, 
 to Japanese immigration is an economic one J 
 The Australian and American worker, with his 
 high standard of living, cannot compete with the 
 
160 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 Japanese, with his much lower standard. And 
 similarly the Japanese Government excludes the 
 Chinese from the Island Empire because the 
 Chinese have a still lower standard than the 
 Japanese, and to admit them in large numbers 
 would greatly handicap the Japanese workman 
 and throw him out of employment. 
 
 The problem in South American countries Is 
 essentially the same as it is in the countries we 
 have just mentioned. So long as the Monroe 
 Doctrine is upheld, they may retain their present 
 standard of living. But what if a European na- 
 tion like Russia, or an Asiatic nation like Japan, 
 were to invade and annex any of those countries? 
 There can be no doubt that their standard of 
 living would undergo an immediate lowering. 
 
 To go more deeply into this subject would only 
 carry us too far afield. It is our purpose to dis- 
 cuss the matter no further than is necessary to 
 show the inevitable connection of these ques- 
 tions with the proposed renewal of the Anglo- 
 Japanese Alliance. Such an alliance can only be 
 regarded in the future as a menace to the stability 
 not only of the United States, but of Australia, 
 Canada and the South American States. For the 
 alliance of a State possessing a high standard of 
 living with a State possessing a low standard can 
 only result in the long run in effecting a lowering of 
 standard in the former, and finally in imposing a 
 lower standard of living upon the victims of their 
 
THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE 161 
 
 opposition and attack, if they chance to be, not 
 Chinese or Indians, but Australians or Americans. 
 
 Indeed, it is this fundamental problem of the 
 food supply and of the wide variance between 
 the standards of living of the European, American 
 and Australian on the one hand, and the Japanese 
 and other Asiatics on the other hand, which makes 
 it imperatively necessary for the European, the 
 American and the Australian to stand together, 
 as it were, against a common foe. We do not 
 mean that Europe and America should unite to 
 keep Asia in subjection. By no means. But the 
 Asiatics should be permitted to work out their 
 own destinies, and every interference or interven- 
 tion by Westerns in attempting to control or 
 direct those destinies must necessarily result in the 
 end in making the peoples of the West accept the 
 lower and more servile standards of the East. 
 
 If, for example, Asia, which means Japan, and 
 Great Britain should join hands in the organiza- 
 tion of any future Supreme Economic Coimcil of a 
 League of Nations, they would, perhaps, be in a 
 position to dominate its decisions. The world 
 shortage of food and other raw materials would 
 then be set forth as due to the selfish consumption 
 by the Americas and Australasia of more than their 
 share thereof, or to a refusal on their part to share 
 their unoccupied lands with others who require 
 their use for the production of food and the 
 development of other natural resources. In such 
 
i 
 
 162 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 a contingency and upon such an issue, Britain and 
 Japan would naturally have the sympathy and 
 support of every nation in the worid that suffered 
 from a similar shortage. And particulariy of all 
 those nations, colonies and dominions, like the 
 African, which have been or will hereafter be 
 erected out of tribes, races and nationalities that 
 possess a low standard of living, since those with 
 the low standard must assuredly profit by reducing 
 the consumption of the high standard nations. 
 Britain and France betrayed what may be re- 
 
 Igarded as almost a fatal weakness when they made 
 use of their coloured subject races to fight their 
 battles for them in a conflict between two groups 
 of highly civilized white nations. Able au- 
 thorities on the subject of the Black Continent 
 and the coloured races, like E. D. Morel, foresee the 
 most serious consequences to the future of white 
 civilization from this misuse of subject coloured 
 races in the white man's armies. They believe 
 that it will surely affect the white man's security 
 in Africa, and eventually his security in Europe 
 as well. Indeed, judging from the analogies of 
 past history, the Senegalese must some day rule 
 in Paris and the Bengalese or the Punjabi in 
 London. 
 
 Be that as it may, certainly harm has been done, 
 and this is spoken in no spirit of race prejudice, 
 and still more harm will be done if this working 
 together of white with coloured races, having a 
 
THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE 163 
 
 totally different standard and point of view with 
 respect to the humanities and modes of living, is 
 allowed to develop to the point where two such 
 allies can unite in a common purpose against a 
 common foe. Indeed, we should regard it as just 
 as great a betrayal of race if the Japanese should 
 consent to aid the British in suppressing an 
 Indian uprising as wotdd be British consent to aid 
 the Japanese in upsetting the Monroe Doctrine 
 in a war against America. Neither of these con- 
 tingencies ought to be so much as even thinkable, 
 and surely nothing could more positively fore- 
 shadow the decline and fall of the British Empire, 
 if not of all Western civilization, than would 
 either of these eventualities, if it should come to 
 pass. For the world would be divided against 
 itself, and could no more survive under such 
 conditions than could the Union, imder Lincoln, 
 ''half slave, half free.'* 
 
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 
 
 CHINA AND THE WESTERN POWERS 
 
 Looking forward, at the close of the Great War, 
 it would seem to the thoughtful observer that 
 the greatest political problem which the Western 
 nations have to solve outside their own boimd- 
 aries is the question of how to avoid a future race 
 conflict in the East. As the writer has already 
 pointed out, it is one of the probabilities that have 
 to be reckoned with that Japanese^ Militarism 
 and Imperialism must sooner or later call such 
 a race conflict into being, unless steps are taken 
 by the Western Powers to check the current of 
 the stream before it has become a torrent. An 
 avalanche is a wonderful thing to witness from 
 afar, but let us beware of being caught in one. 
 
 Wise statesmanship will decree that a coalition 
 composed of America, Britain, Germany and 
 Russia is the soundest proposal that can be made 
 if we are really in earnest in seeking a means of 
 defeating the plans that are being brewed to over- 
 turn and overwhelm the Western world-order. 
 Western civilization were well advised to have 
 
 164 
 
CHINA AND WESTERN POWERS 165 
 
 no illusions on the subject. For, unless a higher 
 statesmanship is exhibited than has hitherto been 
 shown in the settlement of the terms of Peace, 
 the West will once again see an Attila leading his 
 hordes into their capitals and quartering his 
 beasts in the pews of their cathedrals. And when 
 that time comes, there may perhaps be some sur- 
 vivors of a cultured and literary turn of mind 
 who will ruefully recall Macaulay's clairvoyant 
 and prophetic words about the traveler from New 
 Zealand who would one day, in the midst of a great 
 solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London 
 Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's. 
 
 The League of Nations as at present consti- 
 tuted will never be the effective instrument its 
 authors intended it to be. That is to say, '4ts 
 authors'* who, like General Smuts and Lord 
 Robert Cecil, really had a vision of a better 
 world when they advocated and championed a 
 set of principles which were to have embraced all 
 mankind in their scope. Their failure to secure 
 the acceptance of those broader ideals set its 
 seal upon the instrument as it finally emerged 
 from the Council Chamber of the ''Big Five." 
 It was the seal of doom, and the opportunity to 
 benefit mankind unto the farthest ages by making 
 one sweeping gesture to eliminate the seeds of 
 war will not recur again, perhaps, for centuries. 
 Accordingly, there remains but one effective 
 weapon which the West may employ to save us 
 
166 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 from that '*sea of troubles'* towards which our 
 statesmen are more or less blindly conducting 
 us. There must be Russia, with her far-flung 
 territory reaching to the Pacific, who must erect 
 the outer dykes to stem the devastating floods 
 of the Yellow races when they begin to move. 
 And Russia must in turn be supported by the 
 arms and industry of Germany, for Russia's 
 most vulnerable flank must be secure in the event 
 of such a race struggle. America and England 
 must, of course, hold the seas and keep open the 
 trade routes of the world in so far as it is necessary 
 to secure the victory. 
 
 But the real purpose of the coalition would be 
 to promote a political and diplomatic course of 
 action which will render a conflict unnecessary. 
 And to do so they must first clear their own decks 
 for action and put their own homes in order. 
 That is to say, that preliminary to any united 
 action on the part of the nations named there 
 must first come a thoroughgoing revision of the 
 Treaties of Versailles and St. -Germain and a 
 satisfactory solution of the Russian, Turkish, 
 Persian, Egyptian, Indian and Irish questions. 
 
 A combination of the four Powers named 
 would be in a position to take in hand the reor- 
 ganization of the Chinese Republic and to offer 
 successful opposition to the intrigues and aggres- 
 sive tactics of the Japanese in the Far East. 
 First and foremost, however, in this new orienta- 
 
CHINA AND WESTERN POWERS 167 
 
 tion of the four Powers must be a scrupulous 
 regard and respect for the interests of China. 
 By pursuing such a course they will, in time, 
 discover, not only that it is "more blessed to give 
 than to receive," but also that to him who comes 
 laden with gifts more material rewards are ren- 
 dered than to him who comes armed with a blim- 
 derbuss, prepared only to rob and despoil. To 
 effect any lasting and beneficent results, they 
 must come prepared to surrender their spheres 
 of influence, their Treaty Ports and their Boxer 
 indemnities. Only thus can the confidence and 
 trust of the Chinese nation in the Western Powers 
 be restored. Only thus may the Powers expect 
 to win the sympathy of the Chinese people to 
 their aims. And as a corollary to these steps, 
 the four Powers must see to it that all leases and 
 agreements, in which, of course, are included the 
 Chino- Japanese secret agreements of 1915 and 
 1 918, shall be abrogated in order that China may 
 at last be restored to full sovereignty in Man- 
 churia, Mongolia and Shantung. Other reforms 
 will include the abolition of extra-territoriality, 
 which deprives the Chinese courts of legal juris- 
 diction over the foreigner, and the right of China 
 to fix her own tariff dues. Financially, the 
 Republic must be assisted to her feet by taking 
 in hand a reorganization of the finances of the 
 realm and by making loans at a reasonable rate 
 of interest and upon reasonable conditions, the 
 
168 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 same to be devoted to the restoration and revival 
 of China's industrial and economic processes. 
 As much technical and expert assistance as is 
 required for the attainment of these ends must 
 be generously offered, without, however, in any 
 manner depriving the Chinese themselves of the 
 actual control. Similarly, the imification and 
 extension of China's transport and commimica- 
 tion system must be taken in hand in order that 
 all parts of the commonwealth may be boimd 
 together in one central organization whose admin- 
 istrative and executive acts shall reach to and 
 be respected in the remotest regions of the State. 
 
 Among Chinese statesmen of pre-eminence who 
 have given much thought to the subject imder 
 discussion is Liang Chi-Chao, whose conclusions 
 with respect to what is needful for the reform of 
 China must be followed by every enlightened and 
 impartial critic Indeed, no student of Chinese 
 affairs can afford to disregard the thoughts of this 
 wise and patriotic Chinese author and statesman, 
 who has devoted his life to the cause of progress 
 in his native land. 
 
 Liang Chi-Chao's participation in Chinese af- 
 fairs goes back to the year 1898, at which time 
 began the first real assertion of progressive in- 
 fluence in modem China. The late Emperor, 
 Kuang-Hsu, had summoned arotmd him men 
 who held advanced views, chief among whom 
 was Kang-Yu-wei, the **modem sage," as he was 
 
CHINA AND WESTERN POWERS 169 
 
 known to his countrymen. At the instigation 
 of this truly remarkable man the young Emperor 
 issued a series of enlightened edicts which, could 
 they have been carried into execution, would 
 have revolutionized the national polity. A Court 
 cleavage was the immediate sequel. Then fol- 
 lowed the memorable coup d'etat which gave the 
 Dowager-Empress supreme power and reduced 
 her well-meaning nephew, the Emperor, to the 
 position of a puppet. Among the prominent 
 leaders in the new movement was Liang Chi- 
 Chao. Some of his associates were put to death 
 for their part in the movement, and Liang escaped 
 a similar fate by taking flight to Japan. 
 
 Liang Chi-Chao now devoted himself in other 
 ways to the uplift of his country. In the religious 
 thought of his countrymen he saw much that 
 required purification, and accordingly we find 
 him directing his efforts to bring Chinese Bud- 
 dhism back to the older, purer form of worship 
 and thought and freed from superstitious and 
 unscientific accessories which had clung about 
 the faith in the long centuries of its observance. 
 Moreover, by rendering Western works in science 
 and literature accessible to the Chinese, Liang 
 Chi-Chao and some of his co-workers have done 
 glreat service. By dint of hard labour, Liang 
 became in time the most important literary 
 exponent of Chinese nationaUsm. In his his- 
 torical work, he caused Chinese history to be 
 
170 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 studied in the schools in a critical and scientific 
 manner. 
 
 More recently, Liang Chi-Chao has devoted his 
 extraordinary talents to political writing; pri- 
 marily, preaching the doctrines of constitutional 
 government and representative institutions, but 
 in general seeking to introduce the pubHc mind 
 to the thought of the world. 
 
 Such, in brief, is the man whose political views 
 and insight have attained to such influence on 
 the Chinese nation and according to whom China's 
 misfortunes are to be attributed to the policy of 
 intervention employed by the foreign Powers ever 
 since the occupation of Hong Kong by the English 
 in 1842, followed by the French in Annam and 
 Tongking in 1885, by the Germans in Tsingtao 
 and the Russians in the Liao-tung Peninsula in 
 1898, and by the Japanese in South Manchuria in 
 1905. Each one of these interventions became 
 the provocation for still others, and the list we 
 have given is far from complete. Accordingly, 
 with such conflicting elements grazing one an- 
 other in China in every direction, it cannot be 
 wondered at that in course of time there have 
 evolved innumerable causes of strife, discord and 
 dissension among the Powers concerned; and one 
 has only to read an impartial account of what 
 occurred among the European Powers represented 
 at Peking during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 and 
 the siege of the Legations to perceive that the 
 
CHINA AND WESTERN POWERS 171 
 
 feelings and antagonisms then aroused already 
 carried the seeds of a general world conflict, 
 which, in reality, broke loose only fourteen years 
 later. These seeds of conflict will continue to 
 exist, so Liang Chi-Chao believes, just so long as 
 the Powers continue their present policy of in- 
 terference and intervention. 
 
 The cure lies, says Liang, in the complete restora^ 
 tion to China of all the territory of which she has 
 been despoiled since first she had to do with the 
 foreigner from the West in the early years of the 
 Victorian era. At the very least, China should 
 be restored to the status quo existing prior to the 
 date of the Chino-Germanic lease agreement of 
 March 6, 1898. *'Then,'' says Liang, ''China will 
 gladly place all her treasures at the disposal of all 
 the world, will abandon her obstructive tactics, 
 and rescind the laws which now embarrass the 
 trade of foreigners in the interior. If, however, 
 these reforms are not carried out, then will 
 China constitute a menace to the peace of the 
 world." ^^ 
 
 Nor is the programme of reforms which are to 
 put China in a position to devote herself to her 
 nobler tasks in the world to be regarded as com- 
 pleted with the restoration of the leased terri- 
 tories. In addition thereto, Liang demands the 
 complete liberation of China from foreign in- 
 fluences, the annulment of existing treaties, a re- 
 form of the tariff, cancellation of the Boxer in- 
 
172 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 demnities, abolition of the extra-territorial rights 
 and other speciar privileges enjoyed by foreigners, 
 rescission of the 191 5 and 1918 Agreements with 
 Japan, and a reorganization of the Chinese 
 railways. 
 
 It is of importance that foreign interests should 
 reach a recognition of the fact that the programme 
 of reforms thus promulgated and championed by 
 Liang Chi-Chao is one that has the support and 
 approval not only of the most authoritative ele- 
 ments in China's public life, but likewise of the 
 J masses of the people. Nor should the fact be lost 
 ' sight of that, with all his patriotism, Liang would 
 probably be among the first to advocate a union 
 with Japan, or at least the acceptance of Japanese 
 leadership and a tentative agreement submitting 
 to Japanese administrative control for a term of 
 years, provided the Western Powers fail to accord 
 China a timely concurrence in her just demands. 
 In the latter possible event, assuming that the 
 nation follows Liang's lead, all the elements for a 
 future race conflict will have been gathered to- 
 gether, and the consequences thereof will not take 
 long in making themselves felt upon the Western 
 nations. 
 
 There are those who profess to believe that the 
 raising of the cry **Save China!'* is merely a new 
 form of camouflaged Western hypocrisy, seeking to 
 advance selfish interests under the guise of a new 
 crusade for right and justice. 
 
CHINA AND WESTERN POWERS 173 
 
 This would be true if the Western nations now 
 intervene in the affairs of China without first 
 offering to make the sacrifices which are absolutely 
 essential if the situation is to be saved. The 
 writer would not favour, much less advocate, the 
 exclusion of Japan from participation in the in- 
 ternal affairs of China, if he did not at the same 
 time advocate exclusion of the other Powers as 
 well. There is no question here of ill-will towards 
 Japan and of complacent advocacy of the so-called 
 ''superior rights'' of the Western nations. On 
 the contrary, there can be no doubt that the 
 Western nations have no superior rights here. 
 But it has been the writer's purpose to show in the 
 preceding pages that Japan, likewise, has no 
 superior rights, and that all the advantages she 
 requires in order to promote the happiness and 
 prosperity of the Japanese may be obtained 
 without extending Japanese sovereignty over vast 
 regions on the Asiatic Continent at the expense 
 of the Chinese and other neighbouring peoples. 
 It has been shown that Japan can make no use 
 of these outlying regions for colonization purposes, 
 because the Japanese, like the French, may own 
 colonies but they are not a colonizing race. Nor 
 is the plea of over-population a good one when 
 we compare the population and area of the 
 Japanese Empire with the population and area 
 of such densely populated countries as the United 
 Kingdom, Germany, Italy and France. Japan's 
 
174 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 need for raw materials, particulariy coal and iron, 
 can be supplied in China without going to the 
 length of depriving the Chinese of territory and 
 independence. Moreover, if Japan's reasons for 
 seeking further expansion on the Asiatic Continent 
 are sound, then no country in the world can be 
 considered safe from the rapacity of its neigh- 
 bours and the whole world must remain an armed 
 camp. To save the peoples from such a fate will 
 be the highest task of our statesmen in the coming 
 years, and they will have only half accomplished 
 their labours if they save Europe and neglect 
 Asia. For we are in accord with those ** people 
 in East and West, in the Old World and the New, 
 who are convinced that the only hope of better 
 things is in a constant striving to bring better 
 understanding between the races; and that the 
 West cannot be free unless the East is made free 
 too." 
 
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 
 
 AMERICA FACES THE NEW WORLD SITUATION 
 
 The outbreak of the Great War in 19 14 saw no 
 country in the world, not even China, so unpre- 
 pared to face its consequences as was the United 
 States. Ever since the close of the Civil War in 
 1865, the subject of war was one which had grown 
 to have but the merest academic interest for 
 Americans, and with the exception of the Spanish- 
 American War of 1898, a war of such small dimen- 
 sions as scarcely to deserve the name of a national 
 conflict, nothing had occurred in half a century to 
 arouse America to any real sense of danger of 
 attack from without, or to diminish in any sensible 
 degree the sense of security which came from her 
 geographical position of isolation. And even after 
 the hurricane broke loose in the summer of 1914, 
 the great mass of Americans continued to believe, 
 for at least two years longer, in the possibility of 
 being able to pursue their peaceful pursuits with- 
 out having to take much thought for what was 
 going on beyond their boundaries. 
 Many causes contributed to this detached way 
 
 175 
 
176 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 of looking at foreign affairs, aside from the im- 
 portant fact of geographical isolation. Tradi- 
 tionally, Americans had been warned to hold 
 themselves aloof from European entangling alli- 
 ances and from foreign disputes generally. Mili- 
 tarism was a thing imknown on the Western 
 Hemisphere. Americans, whatever their native 
 combative instincts or fighting spirit might be, 
 had seen their country grow to become the richest 
 and most prosperous among the nations by the 
 arts of peace. Providence had blessed the United 
 States with abundance. Among the nations of the 
 world she was the largest producer of com, wheat, 
 cotton, tobacco, pigs, mules, fish, fruit, coal, iron, 
 copper, zinc, lead, petroleimi, natural gas, timber 
 and many other products. She was second to 
 none in her wonderful system of free education, 
 and her success had been due not alone to the 
 possession of vast natural resources, but to the 
 unexampled energy and foresight of her leaders 
 and to the inborn gifts, the acquired abiUties 
 and character of the people. Psychologically 
 a people possessed of a strange mixture of com- 
 mercialism and ideaUsm, Americans, within their 
 limited horizon, became a nation, for a large part 
 devoted to a humanitarian pacifism. They did 
 not covet their neighbour's goods, and their 
 idealism prevented them from believing that any 
 neighbour could ever harbour contrary sentiments 
 towards themselves. 
 
AMERICA FACES THE SITUATION 177 
 
 But whatever the causes may be, it is certain 
 that here was one of the cleverest and most intel- 
 ligent nations of the world, who regarded foreign 
 affairs in a manner quite as detached and quite as 
 academical as did the Chinese up to the year 1 900, 
 when at last, after suffering many humiliations 
 at his hands, the nation was roused to offer re- 
 sistance to the foreigner, and to make an attempt, 
 however futile, to free the country from the yoke 
 of foreign interference. 
 
 When the storm broke, and for more than two 
 years thereafter, the attitude of the United 
 States, in its physical weakness, its unprepared- 
 ness, its indecision, its flabby foreign policy, was 
 indeed a humiliating spectacle. In the Pacific 
 the American merchant marine had been swept 
 from the board by Congressional legislation which 
 created a set of conditions making it impossible to 
 compete with foreign lines. Honolulu, the Philip- 
 pines and Guam were in a state of half -defence, 
 the Navy concentrated in the Atlantic and pre- 
 vented from sending quick relief to Pacific stations 
 by reason of the filling up of the Panama Canal 
 at Culebra; no ships were available for munitions 
 to the outlying possessions; the Government itself 
 had been struck by panic, in which the State 
 Department lost its chief, William J. Bryan, and 
 its ablest adviser, Professor John Bassett Moore; 
 the War Department suffering similarly in the 
 resignation of Secretary Garrison, by general 
 
178 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 acknowledgment the ablest man in the Wilson 
 Cabinet; and the Navy likewise having to endure 
 the serious loss of one of its ablest Admirals, 
 Fiske, who resigned because of differences with 
 his superiors. Not content with providing the 
 world this picture of absolute consternation, 
 Congress now proceeded to heap fuel upon the 
 flames by taking up for consideration an Act for 
 abandoning the Philippines, and the Bill actually 
 passed one Chamber of the Legislature. 
 
 Thus America was playing a sorry part during 
 a period when she saw her neighbour on the 
 opposite side of the Pacific developing and ex- 
 hibiting all the traits of strength, preparedness 
 and efficiency in which she herself was so sadly 
 lacking. She saw Japan setting forces in motion 
 that would include the fate of the Asiatic Con- 
 tinent in the course and outcome of the conflict 
 and which would involve American position and 
 prestige in the Orient. America beheld with 
 amazement the promptness with which, a few 
 days after hostilities commenced, Baron Kato, 
 Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs, annoimced 
 in the Diet that Japan was prepared to assume her 
 obligations under the Anglo- Japanese Alliance. 
 With still more amazement, America perceived 
 Japan blocking China's proposal to neutralize all 
 territory leased to foreign nations, a solution 
 which would have obviated Japan's declaration 
 of war on Germany to obtain possession of Kiao- 
 
AMERICA FACES THE SITUATION 179 
 
 chow, and delivering an ultimatum to Germany 
 on August isth, followed by a declaration of war 
 on August 24th. Nor was America's astonish- 
 ment in any wise decreased by the subsequent 
 steps taken by the Government at Tokio. The 
 efficient naval and military demonstrations at 
 Kiao-chow were followed by administrative steps 
 taken in the interior of Shantung, the seiz- 
 ing of the Tsingtao-Tsinan Railroad, the taking 
 over of the customs, by numerous acts regulating 
 the internal affairs of the province, and all of 
 this culminated finally in the presentation of the 
 twenty-one demands on China in January 1915. 
 
 These occurrences, involving as they did the 
 undermining of solemnly contracted treaties and 
 the repudiation of Japan's promises, were slowly 
 turning the light on Japan's real attitude towards 
 America. They showed a realization on Japan's 
 part of America's weakness and a purpose to 
 profit by it. Nor did the Tokio Government 
 confine itself to veiled threats. 
 
 Soon after the war began, Japan sent a strong 
 fleet to cruise in the Pacific, although she had 
 stated that her naval operations would be con- 
 fined to Chinese waters. Not only was the 
 Japanese fleet found to be cruising in American 
 waters, but it is believed that attempts were 
 made to obtain a coaling station in Mexican ter- 
 ritory on the coast of Lower California. The 
 Japanese battleship Asama went aground there 
 
180 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 in December 1914, in Turtle Bay, and it did not 
 add to the sense of security, of which the American 
 people now began to feel the lack, when they 
 were informed that it was three months before 
 the United States learned definitely of the situa- 
 tion of the Asama so near to her own coasts. 
 By that time other Japanese war-vessels had 
 assembled, ostensibly to assist the Asama from 
 her perilous position. Thus the situation re- 
 mained until June 1915, with the American 
 battle fleet concentrated in the Atlantic and 
 unable to use the Panama Canal for a swift move- 
 ment into the Pacific, and in the meantime the 
 twenty-one demands had been imposed upon 
 China against the paper protest of the United 
 States. If it was pure madness, as some have 
 asserted, for Japan to make these bellicose ges- 
 tures in the face of Uncle Sam at just this par- 
 ticular time, there surely was method in it. 
 
 Thus America saw the new Asia growing up 
 before her eyes — a new Asia in which the system 
 of checks and balances, which had formerly 
 existed to keep the most predatory Powers in 
 check, had now been superseded by the omnip- 
 otent power of Japan. If there was any doubt 
 with respect to Russia's future position there, 
 it was soon removed with the outbreak of the 
 Revolution in March 191 7. This was the finish- 
 ing touch that put America in a position where she 
 would have to face an entirely new set of world 
 
AMERICA FACES THE SITUATION 181 
 
 forces in the future, both in the Atlantic and 
 in the Pacific. For there surely could have been 
 no illusions with respect to America's future 
 position in the Atlantic after the old European 
 balance of power had been destroyed by victory 
 over Germany. Such a victory meant that 
 Britain's naval power was set free to pursue the 
 aims of the British Government in any part of 
 the world without having to fear an attack upon 
 her flank on the part of a powerful continental 
 nation. It meant that if complications ensued 
 between the United States and Japan, Britain 
 would be in a position to take sides against 
 America. It meant that America would have 
 to vie with Britain in naval strength, because 
 otherwise the principle for which America pri- 
 marily stands in her foreign diplomacy, of peace- 
 ful penetration of foreign markets, with equal 
 opportunities for all, could not be upheld 
 against a nation that held command of the seas. 
 Involved in this principle were America's most 
 cherished Monroe Doctrine and her Hay Doc- 
 trine. These tenets of American foreign policy 
 had not hitherto lain at the mercy of Britain, 
 because Britain had been forced to have regard 
 for her continental enemies. Now she was not 
 only America's leading trade competitor, but like- 
 wise the dominating factor upon the seas, and as 
 such she could open and close the doors of trade 
 to her leading trade rival entirely at her own 
 
182 THE NEW JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 sweet will. The numerous notes of protest 
 which the American State Department presented 
 to the British Foreign Office during the war 
 demonstrated effectually that in time of war the 
 rules of international law are treated with as 
 scanty respect by the British as the Germans 
 showed for the neutrality of Belgium. It is the 
 unmolested right of a neutral to trade, within cer- 
 tain recognized limits, whether with belligerents 
 or with other neutrals, that has constituted a 
 ground of policy of American statesmanship that 
 dates back to the Napoleonic wars. Thence 
 arises America's championing of the principle 
 known as ''the freedom of the seas.'* And with 
 the development of the new methods of warfare 
 at sea, whereby merchantmen may now be 
 attacked not only on the surface, but likewise 
 from the air and from beneath the waters, the 
 doctrine of *'the freedom of the seas'* is an even 
 greater necessity than it has been in the past, 
 when trading merchantmen could protect them- 
 selves more or less successfully from raiders and 
 privateers. Thus the United States, if she cannot 
 by reason of newly acquired naval strength com- 
 pel the recognition and acceptance of the * 'free- 
 dom of the seas" principle, will see her entire 
 foreign trade jeopardized in any war of broad 
 dimensions between naval Powers. It is a prin- 
 ciple that every maritime nation in the world, 
 except one, has had an interest in supporting. 
 
IX 
 
 AMERICA FACES THE SITUATION 183 
 
 This fact alone is indicative of how disadvan- 
 tageous it is to the world at large for one Power 
 to have such predominance upon the seas that 
 the combined interests of all the rest of the world 
 cannot force her to recede from her position. 
 
 To summarize the situation, America now per- 
 ceives herself on one front opposite to Japan, j V" 
 which is now predominant in Asia, and on the 
 other front she stands face to face with Britain, 
 which is now predominant in Europe. And 
 these two nations, Britain and Japan, are known 
 to have common designs, partly set forth in a 
 Treaty of Alliance and partly secret, as numerous 
 disclosures since August 1914 have made clear to 
 the world. 
 
 Indeed, the peace of the world will continue to 
 be threatened so long as any Power or combina- 
 tion of Powers, be it Britain alone, Britain and 
 France, Britain and Japan, or Britain, France 
 and Japan, may impose their will on the commerce 
 and industry of other nations or by unfair regula- 
 tions make an attempt to seize their markets. 
 Every nation whose industrial development results 
 in pressure outward into foreign commerce must 
 be rendered secure against hostile measures of 
 any Power or Powers whose right to enforce such 
 measures rests purely upon superior force or upon 
 a superior balance of forces. The danger from 
 great militaristic adventures upon the land, such 
 as we saw in the recent war, has been broken for 
 
184 THE NEW| JAPANESE PERIL 
 
 the time being, and it will continue to remain 
 broken only in the event that the equally hateful 
 danger of navalism upon the high seas shall be 
 extinguished. 
 
 A close analysis of the causes of the recent war 
 must lead inevitably to the conclusion that the 
 fear of militarism which existed on the one side 
 was matched by the fear of navalism on the other 
 side. Fear of militarism meant fear of the 
 pronouncedly superior advantages in industrial 
 competition possessed by a nation which, like 
 Germany, could gain control of the bulk of 
 Europe's coal and iron. Fear of navalism, on 
 the other hand, meant fear of the blockade, fear 
 of starvation, fear of exclusion from the sources 
 of the world's food supplies, fear of insecurity 
 to trade, so long as one great naval Power could 
 set at defiance the universal demand for accept- 
 ance of the principle of *'the freedom of the seas." 
 
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