The Inside Story of the Peace Conference Part 20

Nor was that all. In the summer of 1916 a free fight occurred between Chinese and j.a.panese soldiers in Cheng-cha-tun, the rights and wrongs of which were, as is usual in such cases, obscure. But the Ok.u.ma Cabinet, a.s.suming that the Chinese were to blame, pounced upon the incident and made it the base of fresh demands to China,[247] two of which were manifestly excessive. That China would be better off than she is or is otherwise likely to become under j.a.panese guidance is in the highest degree probable. But in order that that guidance should be effective it must be accepted, and this can only be the consequence of such a policy of cordiality, patience, and magnanimity as was outlined by my friend, the late Viscount Motono.[248]

At the Conference the policy of the j.a.panese delegates was clear-cut and coherent. It may be summarized as follows: the j.a.panese delegation decided to give its entire support to the Allies in all matters concerning the future relations of Germany and Russia, western Europe, the Balkans, the African colonies, as well as financial indemnities and reparations. The fate of the Samoan Archipelago must be determined in accord with Britain and the United States. New Guinea should be allotted to Australia. As the Marshall, Caroline, and Ladrone Islands, although of no intrinsic value, would const.i.tute a danger in Germany's hands, they should be taken over by j.a.pan. Tsingtao and the port of Kiaochow should belong to j.a.pan, as well as the Tainan railway. j.a.pan would co-operate with the Allies in maintaining order in Siberia, but no Power should arrogate to itself a preponderant voice in the matter of obtaining concessions or other interests there. Lastly, the principle of the open door was to be upheld in China, j.a.pan being admittedly the Power which is the most interested in the establishment and maintenance of peace in the Far East.

At the Conference, when the Kiaochow dispute came up for discussion, the j.a.panese att.i.tude, according to their Anglo-Saxon and French colleagues, was calm and dignified, their language courteous, their arguments were put with studied moderation, and their resolve to have their treaty rights recognized was inflexible. Their case was simple enough, and under the old ordering unanswerable. The only question was whether it would be invalidated by the new dispensation. But as the United States had obtained recognition for its Monroe Doctrine, Britain for the supremacy of the sea, and France for the occupation of the Saar Valley and the suspension of the right of self-determination in the case of Austria, it was obvious that j.a.pan had abundant and cogent arguments for her demands, which were that the Chinese territory once held by Germany, and since wrested from that Power by j.a.pan, be formally retroceded to j.a.pan, whose claim to it rested upon the right of conquest and also upon the faith of treaties which she had concluded with China. At the same time she expressly and spontaneously disclaimed the intention of keeping that territory for herself. Baron Makino said at the Peace Table:

"The acquisition of territory belonging to one nation which it is the intention of the country acquiring it to exploit to its sole advantage is not conducive to amity or good-will." j.a.pan, although by the fortune of war Germany's heir to Kiaochow, did not purpose retaining it for the remaining term of the lease; she had, in fact, already promised to restore it to China. She maintained, however, that the conditions of retrocession should form the subject of a general settlement between Tokio and Peking.

The Chinese delegation, which worked vigorously and indefatigably and won over a considerable number of backers, argued that Kiaochow had ceased to belong to Germany on the day when China declared war on that state, inasmuch as all their treaties, including the lease of Kiaochow, were abrogated by that declaration, and the ownership of every rood of Chinese territory held by Germany reverted in law to China, and should therefore be handed over to her, and not to j.a.pan. To this plea Baron Makino returned the answer that with the surrender of Tsingtao to j.a.pan in 1914[249] the whole imperial German protectorates of Shantung had pa.s.sed to that Power, China being still a neutral. Consequently the entry of China into the war in 1917 could not affect the status of the province which already belonged to Nippon by right of conquest. As a matter of alleged fact, this capture of the protectorates by the j.a.panese had been specially desired by the British government, in order to prevent Germany from ceding it to China. If that move meant anything, therefore, it meant that neither China nor Germany had or could have any hold on the territory once it was captured by j.a.pan.

Further, this conquest was effected at the cost of vast sums of money and two thousand j.a.panese lives.

Nor was that all. In the year 1915[250] China signed an agreement with j.a.pan, undertaking "to recognize all matters that may be agreed upon between the j.a.panese government and the German government respecting the disposition of all the rights, interests, and concessions which, in virtue of treaties or otherwise, Germany possesses _vis-a-vis_ China, in relation to the province of Shantung." This treaty, the Chinese delegates answered, was extorted by force. j.a.pan, having vainly sought to obtain it by negotiations that lasted nearly four months, finally presented an ultimatum,[251] giving China forty-eight hours in which to accept it. She had no alternative. But at least she made it known to the world that she was being coerced. It was on the day on which that doc.u.ment was signed that the j.a.panese representative in Peking sent a spontaneous declaration to the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs, promising to return the leased territory to China on condition that all Kiaochow be opened as a commercial port, that a j.a.panese settlement be established, and also an international settlement, if the Powers desired it, and that an arrangement be made beforehand between the Chinese and j.a.panese governments with regard to "the disposal of German public establishments and populations, and with regard to other conditions and procedures."

The j.a.panese further invoked another and later agreement, which was, they alleged, signed by the Chinese without demur.[252] This accord, coming after the entry of China into the war, was tantamount to the renunciation of any rights which China might have believed she possessed as a corollary of her belligerency. It also disposed, the j.a.panese argued, of her contention that the territory in question is indispensable and vital to her--a contention which j.a.pan met with the promise to deliver it up--and which was invalidated by China's refusal to fight for it in the year 1914. This latter argument was controverted by the Chinese a.s.sertion that they were ready and willing to declare war against Germany at the outset, but that their co-operation was refused by the Entente, and subsequently by j.a.pan. This allegation is credible, if we remember the eagerness exhibited by the British government that j.a.pan should lose no time in co-operating with her allies, the representations made by the British Amba.s.sador to Baron Kato on the subject,[253] and the alleged motive to prevent the retrocession of Shantung to China by the German government.

The arguments of China and j.a.pan were summarily put in the following questions by a delegate of each country: "Yes or no, does Kiaochow, whose population is exclusively Chinese, form an integral part of the Chinese state? Yes or no, was Kiaochow brutally occupied by the Kaiser in the teeth of right and justice and to the detriment of the peace of the Far East, and it may be of the world? Yes or no, did j.a.pan enter the war against the aggressive imperialism of the German Empire, and for the purpose of arranging a lasting peace in the Far East? Yes or no, was Kiaochow captured by the English and j.a.panese troops in 1914 with the sole object of destroying a dangerous naval base? Yes or no, was China's co-operation against Germany, which was advocated and offered by President Yuan Shi Kai in August, 1914, refused at the instigation of j.a.pan?"[254]

The j.a.panese catechism ran thus: "Yes or no, was Kiaochow a German possession in the year 1914? Yes or no, was the world, including the United States, a consenting party to the occupation of that province by the Germans? Why did China, who to-day insists that that port is indispensable to her, cede it to Germany? Why in 1914 did she make no effort to recover it, but leave this task to the j.a.panese army? Further, who can maintain that juridically the last war abolished _ipso facto_ all the cessions of territory previously effected? Turkey formerly ceded Cyprus to Great Britain. Will it be argued that this cession is abrogated and that Cyprus must return to Turkey directly and unconditionally? The Conference announced repeatedly that it took its stand on justice and the welfare of the peoples. It is in the name of the welfare of the peoples, as well as in the name of justice, that we a.s.sert our right to take over Kiaochow. The harvest to him whose hands soweth the seed."[255]

If we add to all these conflicting data the circ.u.mstance that Great Britain, France, and Russia had undertaken[256] to support j.a.pan's demands at the Conference, and that Italy had promised to raise no objection, we shall have a tolerable notion of the various factors of the Chino-j.a.panese dispute, and of its bearings on the Peace Treaty and on the principles of the Covenant. It was one of the many ill.u.s.trations of the incompatibility of the Treaty and the Covenant, the respective scopes of which were radically and irreconcilably different. The Supreme Council had to adjudicate upon the matter from the point of view either of the Treaty or of the Covenant; as part of a vulgar bargain of the old, unregenerate days, or as an example of the self-renunciation of the new ethical system. The majority of the Council was pledged to the former way of contemplating it, and, having already promulgated a number of decrees running counter to the Covenant doctrine in favor of their own peoples, could not logically nor politically make an exception to the detriment of j.a.pan.

What actually happened at the Peace Table is still a secret, and President Wilson, who knows its nature, holds that it is in the best interests of humanity that it should so remain! The little that has as yet been disclosed comes mainly from State-Secretary Lansing's answers to the questions put by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

America's second delegate, in answer to the questions with which he was there plied, affirmed that "President Wilson alone approved the Shantung decision, that the other members of the American delegation made no protest against it, and that President Wilson alone knows whether j.a.pan has guaranteed to return Shantung to China."[257] Another eminent American, who claims to have been present when President Wilson's act was officially explained to the Chinese delegates, states that the President, disclosing to them his motives, pleaded that political exigencies, the menace that j.a.pan would abandon the Conference, and the rumor that England herself might withdraw, had constrained him to accept the Shantung settlement in order to save the League.[258] Rumors appear to have played an undue part in the Conference, influencing the judgment or the decisions of the Supreme Council. The reader will remember that it was a rumor to the effect that the Italian government had already published a decree annexing Fiume that is alleged to have precipitated the quarrel between Mr. Wilson and the first Italian delegation. It is worth noting that the alleged menace that j.a.pan would quit the Conference if her demands were rejected was not regarded by Secretary Lansing as serious. "Could j.a.pan's signature to the League have been obtained without the Shantung decision?" he was asked. "I think so," he answered.

The decision caused tremendous excitement among the Chinese and their numerous friends. At first they professed skepticism and maintained that there must be some misunderstanding, and finally they protested and refused to sign the Treaty. One of the American journals published in Paris wrote: "Shantung was at least a moral explosion. It blew down the front of the temple, and now everybody can see that behind the front there was a very busy market. The morals were the morals of a horse trade. If the muezzin were loud and constant in his calls to prayer, it probably was to drown the sound of the d.i.c.kering in the market. There is no longer any obligation upon this nation to accept the Covenant as a moral doc.u.ment. It is not."[259]

All that may be perfectly true, but it sounds odd that the discovery should not have been made until j.a.pan's claim was admitted formally to take over Shantung, after she had solemnly promised to restore it to China. The Covenant was certainly transgressed long before this, and much more flagrantly than by President Wilson's indors.e.m.e.nt of j.a.pan's demand for the formal retrocession of Shantung. But by those infractions n.o.body seemed scandalized. _Quod licet Jovi non licet bovi._ Debts of grat.i.tude had to be paid at the expense of the Covenant, and people closed their eyes or their lips. It was not until the j.a.panese asked for something which all her European allies considered to be her right that an outcry was raised and moral principles were invoked.

The j.a.panese press was nowise jubilant over the finding of the Supreme Council. The journals of all parties argued that their country was receiving no more than had already been guaranteed to it by China, and ratified by the Allies before the Peace Conference met, and to have obtained what was already hers by rights of conquest and of treaties was anything but a triumph. What j.a.pan desired was to have herself recognized practically, not merely in theory, as the nation which is the most nearly interested in China, and therefore deserving of a special status there. In other words, she aimed at the proclamation of something in the nature of a Far Eastern doctrine a.n.a.logous to that of Monroe. As priority of interest had been conceded to her by the Ishii-Lansing Agreement with the United States, it was in this sense that her press was fain to construe the clause respecting non-interference with "regional understandings."

That policy is open. The principles underlying it, always tenable, were never more so than since the Peace Conference set the Great Powers to direct the lesser states. Moreover, j.a.pan, it is argued, knows by experience that China has always been a temptation to the Western peoples. They sent expeditions to fight her and divided her territory into zones of influence, although China was never guilty of an aggressive att.i.tude toward them, as she was toward j.a.pan. They were actuated by land greed and all that that implies, and if China were abandoned to her own resources to-morrow she would surely fall a prey to her Western protectors. In this connection they point to an incident which took place during the Conference, when Signor t.i.ttoni demanded that Italy should receive the Austrian concession in Tientsin, which adjoins the Italian concession. But Viscount Chinda protested and the demand was ruled out. To sum up, the broad maxim underlying j.a.pan's policy as defined by her own representatives is that in the resettlement of the world the principle adopted, whether the old or the new, shall be applied fairly and impartially at least to all the Great Powers.

Every world conflict has marked the close of one epoch and the opening of another. Into the melting-pot on the fire kindled by the war many momentous problems have been flung, any one of which would have sufficed to bring about a new political, economic, and social constellation.

j.a.pan's advance along the road of progress is one of these far-ranging innovations. She became a Great Power in the wars against China and Russia, and is qualifying for the part of a World Power to-day. And her statesmen affirm that in order to achieve her purpose she will recoil from no sacrifice except those of honor and of truth.

FOOTNOTES:

[244] _Novoye Vremya_, June 13-26, 1915.

[245] Cf. _The Problem of Asia_ (Capt. A.T. Mahan), pp. 150-151.

[246] The late President of the Chinese Republic.

[247] These demands were (1) an apology from the Chinese authorities; (2) an indemnity for the killed and wounded; (3) the policing of certain districts of Manchuria by the j.a.panese; and (4) the employment of j.a.panese officers to train Chinese troops in Manchuria.

[248] Minister of Foreign Affairs. He repudiated his predecessor's policy.

[249] November 8th.

[250] May 25, 1915.

[251] On May 6, 1915.

[252] On September 24, 1918.

[253] On August 7, 1914.

[254] Cf. _Le Matin_, April 25, 1919.

[255] _Le Matin_, April 23, 1919.

[256] "His Majesty's Government accede with pleasure to the requests of the j.a.panese Government for a.s.surances that they will support j.a.pan's claims in regard to the disposal of Germany's rights in Shantung, and possessions in islands north of the Equator, on the occasion of a Peace Conference, it being understood that the j.a.panese Government will, in the event of a peace settlement, treat in the same spirit Great Britain's claims to German islands south of the Equator." (Signed) Conyngham Greene, British Amba.s.sador, Tokio, February 16, 1917. France gave a similar a.s.surance in writing on March 1, 1917, and the Russian government had made a like declaration on February 20, 1917.

[257] As a matter of fact, the entire world knew and knows that she had guaranteed the retrocession. Baron Makino declared it at the Conference.

Cf. _The_ (London) _Times_, February 13, 1919; also on May 5, 1919; and Viscount Uchida confirmed it on May 17, 1919. It had also been stated in the j.a.panese ultimatum to Germany, August 15, 1914, and repeated by Viscount Uchida at the beginning of August, 1919.

[258] Mr. Thomas Millard, some of whose letters were published by _The New York Times_. Cf. _Le Temps_, July 29, 1919.

[259] _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 20, 1919.

X

ATt.i.tUDE TOWARD RUSSIA

In their dealings with Russia the princ.i.p.al plenipotentiaries consistently displayed the qualities and employed the standards, maxims, and methods which had stood them in good stead as parliamentary politicians. The betterment of the world was an idea which took a separate position in their minds, quite apart from the other political ideas with which they usually operated. Overflowing with verbal altruism, they first made sure of the political and economic interests of their own countries, safeguarding or extending these sources of power, after which they proceeded to try their novel experiment on communities which they could coerce into obedience. Hence the aversion and opposition which they encountered among all the nations which had to submit to the yoke, and more especially among the Russians.

Russia's opposition, widespread and deep-rooted, is natural, and history will probably add that it was justified. It starts from the a.s.sumption, which there is no gainsaying, that the Conference was convoked to make peace between the belligerents and that whatever territorial changes it might introduce must be restricted to the countries of the defeated peoples. From all "disannexations" not only the Allies' territories, but those of neutrals, were to be exempted. Repudiate this principle and the demands of Ireland, Egypt, India to the benefits of self-determination became unanswerable. Belgium's claim to Dutch Limburg and other territorial oddments must likewise be allowed. Indeed, the plea actually put forward against these was that the Conference was incompetent to touch any territory actually possessed by either neutral or Allied states. Ireland, Egypt, and Dutch Limburg Were all domestic matters with which the Conference had no concern.

Despite this fundamental principle Russia, the whilom Ally, without whose superhuman efforts and heroic sacrifices her partners would have been pulverized, was tacitly relegated to the category of hostile and defeated peoples, and many of her provinces lopped off arbitrarily and without appeal. None of her representatives was convoked or consulted on the subject, although all of them, Bolshevist and anti-Bolshevist, were at one in their resistance to foreign dictation.

The Conference repeatedly disclaimed any intention of meddling in the internal affairs of any other state, and the Irish, the Egyptian, and several other a.n.a.logous problems were for the purposes of the Conference included in this category. On what intelligible grounds, then, were the Finnish, the Lettish, the Esthonian, the Georgian, the Ukrainian problems excluded from it? One cannot conceive a more flagrant violation of the sovereignty of a state than the severance and disposal of its territorial possessions against its will. It is a frankly hostile act, and as such was rightly limited by the Conference to enemy countries.

Why, then, was it extended to the ex-Ally? Is it not clear that if reconst.i.tuted Russia should regard the Allied states as enemies and choose the potential enemies of these as its friends, it will be legitimately applying the principles laid down by the Allies themselves?

No expert in international law and no person of average common sense will seriously maintain that any of the decisions reached in Paris are binding on the Russia of the future. No problem which concerns two equal parties can be rightfully decided by only one of them. The Conference which declared itself incompetent to impose on Holland the cession to Belgium even of a small strip of territory on one of the banks of the Belgian river Scheldt cannot be deemed authorized to sign away vast provinces that belonged to Russia. Here the plea of the self-determination of peoples possesses just as much or as little cogency as in the case of Ireland and Egypt.

President Wilson and Mr. Lloyd George had inaugurated their East European policy by publicly proclaiming that Russia was the key to the world situation, and that the peace would be no peace so long as her hundred and fifty million inhabitants were left floundering in chaotic confusion, under the upas shade of Bolshevism. They had also held out hopes to their great ex-ally of efficient help and practical counsel.

And there ended what may be termed the constructive side of their conceptions.

It was followed by no coherent action. Discourses, promises, maneuvers, and counter-maneuvers were continuous and bewildering, but of systematic policy there was none. Statesmanship in the higher sense of the word was absent from every decision the delegates took and from every suggestion they proffered. Nor was it only by omission that they sinned. Their invincible turn for circuitous methods, to which severer critics give a less sonorous name, was manifested _ad nauseam_. They worked out cunning little schemes which it was hard to distinguish from intrigues, and which, if they had not been foiled in time, would have made matters even worse than they are. From the outset the British government was for summoning Bolshevist delegates to the Conference. A note to this effect was sent by the London Foreign Office to the Allied governments about a fortnight before the delegates began their work of making peace. But the suggestion was withdrawn at the instance of the French, who doubted whether the services of systematic lawbreakers would materially conduce to the establishment of a new society of law-abiding states. Soon afterward another scheme cropped up, this time for the appointment of an Inter-Allied committee to watch over Russia's destinies and serve as a sort of board of Providence. The representatives of the anti-Bolshevist governments resented this notion bitterly. They remarked that they could not be fairly asked to respect decisions imposed on them exactly as though they were vanquished enemies like the Germans. The British and American delegates were swayed in their views mainly by the a.s.sumptions that all central Russia was in the power of Lenin; that his army was well disciplined and powerful; that he might contrive to hold the reins of government and maintain anarchism indefinitely, and that the so-called constructive elements were inclined toward reaction.

In other words, the delegates accepted two sets of premises, from which they drew two wholly different sets of conclusions. Now they felt impelled to act on the one, now on the other, but they could never make up their minds to carry out either. They agreed that Bolshevism is a potent solvent of society, fraught with peril to all organized communities, yet they could not resolve to use joint action to extirpate it.[260] They recognized that so long as it lasted there was no hope of establishing a community of nations, but they discarded military intervention on grounds of their own internal policy, and because it ran counter to the principle of self-determination. Over against that principle, however, one had to set the circ.u.mstance that they were already intermeddling in Russian affairs in Archangel, Murmansk, Odessa, and elsewhere, and that they ended by creating a new state and government in northwestern Russia, against which Kolchak and Denikin vehemently protested.

In mitigation of judgment it is only fair to take into account the tremendous difficulties that faced them; their unfamiliarity with the Russian problem; the want of a touchstone by which to test the overwhelming ma.s.s of conflicting information which poured in upon them; their const.i.tutional lack of moral courage, and the circ.u.mstance that they were striving to reconcile contradictories. Without chart or compa.s.s they drifted into strange and sterile courses, beginning with the Prinkipo incident and ending with the written examination to which they navely subjected Kolchak in order to legalize international relations, which could not truly be described as either war or peace.

Neither the causes of Bolshevism in its morbid manifestations nor the unformulated ideas underlying whatever positive aspect it may be supposed to possess, nor the conditions governing its slow but perceptible evolution, were so much as glanced at, much less studied, by the statesmen who blithely set about dealing with it now by military force, now by economic pressure, and fitfully by tentative forbearance and hints to its leaders of forthcoming recognition.

One cannot thus play fast and loose with the destinies of a community composed of one hundred and fifty million people whose members are but slackly linked together by a few tenuous social bonds, without forfeiting the right to offer them real guidance. And a blind man is a poor guide to those who can see. Alone the Americans were equipped with carefully tabulated statistics and huge ma.s.ses of facts which they poured out as lavishly as coal-heavers hurl the contents of their sacks into the cellar. But they put them to no practical use. Losing themselves in a labyrinth of details, they failed to get a comprehensive view of the whole. The other delegations lacked both data and general ideas. And all the Allies were dest.i.tute of a powerful army in the East, and therefore of the means of a.s.serting the authority which they a.s.sumed.