The Pacific Triangle Part 31

When the three other governments expressly declared to j.a.pan that they not only did not contemplate acts inimical to her vital interests but were ready to give a.s.surance sufficiently safeguarding them, the j.a.panese Government decided to confirm the Paris agreement.

What j.a.pan expected the powers to say other than just that is a matter for diplomats to play with. To the common person this statement is absolutely meaningless. It is a generalization which leaves the door open for j.a.pan to object to loans for any work which she feels will jeopardize her national life or vitally affect her "sovereignty." Any railroad scheme which might become a compet.i.tor by diverting freight from Manchurian lines owned by j.a.pan would be a menace to j.a.pan's sovereignty.

For instance, it seems understood that among these vital interests are certain loans to Chinese capitalists and corporations. And doubtless j.a.pan would right now much rather have the millions which she has sunk in China in her own hands. But if these loans are recognized, what guarantee is there that even under the nose of the consortium further "loans" will not be made?

Is it likely that j.a.pan will relinquish her hold on the South Manchurian Railroad, which in her opinion is of strategic importance? If the consortium is to have no say in such vested interests, obtained before its conclusion, how is it going to secure itself against these very interests being used as a means of breaking up the unity of the cooperative enterprises? How is so sweeping a clause going to be kept within bonds? If j.a.pan is left in full control of the Manchurian railways, if the consortium has not really dissolved the Sino-j.a.panese Military Agreement, if j.a.pan is to control the German-built railways in Shantung, how is the consortium going to better things in the Far East?

There is altogether too much silence on many points in the consortium project for the world to have any real a.s.surance. Secret diplomacy having been discredited, it seems that bankers have themselves broken into diplomacy. Of course, individuals have a perfect right in this modern world to discuss whatever matters they like,--and governments, too, for that matter,--but it should seem that the people as a whole whose money, whose happiness, and whose lives are involved have a right to know to the last detail what has been traded off in the making of the consortium. China evidently was placated by Lamont with full explanations of what the consortium intended. In brief it was this:

The agreement calls for the pooling of all such interests of the several powers in China as had not been already developed separately, in a "full and free partnership." In this way it is hoped that future spheres of influence will be eliminated, jealousies between the powers be done away with, and Chinese grafters be prevented from pitting one power against the other for their own selfish ends. Chinese complain that now they will not be able to secure loans on a compet.i.tive basis and that therefore they are being more surely strangled. That is partially true.

But it is also true that corrupt Chinese officials have been keeping China and the world in turmoil for their own greedy ends. Both of these things must be stopped if peace is to obtain in the Pacific.

The guarantees given to China were to the effect that in no circ.u.mstances would the consortium undertake such private enterprises as banking, manufacturing, or commerce, but would devote itself entirely to the construction of railroads, the laying of highways, and the reorganization of China's currency. The consortium was to make loans to the central or provincial government only, but as a condition of their advancement, peace between the North and South was urged. The consortium was not to interfere in the domestic affairs of China. Loans were to be made only with the approval of the governments behind the bankers. Nor, of course, can you compel any one to borrow money from you, wherein China has the whip hand. Herein lies a very important possibility.

China has plenty of money. Its bankers h.o.a.rd enough to clean up the country's debts in no time. But they cannot trust their governmental officials; they never have trusted them. But just lately these bankers have been awakening to the wisdom of foreign financial methods, and are adopting them. This may be the first good result of the consortium.

On the other hand, should the terms of the Anglo-j.a.panese Alliance displease China, she may refuse to recognize the consortium. What then?

China has set out to strangle the alliance, which was formed without consulting her. But we speculated enough in the last chapter to show that should the consortium really work, the Anglo-j.a.panese Alliance would cease to have any functional value.

But there are dangers in the consortium,--and even in the cooperative development of China. If j.a.pan joins whole-heartedly in the consortium, she may be the greatest gainer. For here are all the powers mutually developing China, laying railways, and opening up the resources of the country. Who, more than j.a.pan, is going to tap China's unlimited raw supplies,--the coal in Shansi, for instance, which is enough to supply the world's needs for a thousand years? And should j.a.pan in the end still seek the hegemony of the East, she could utilize these railroads and resources for her own aggrandizement. Who could stop her? Have not the separate governments given j.a.pan their a.s.surance that she "need have no reason to apprehend that the consortium would direct any activities affecting the security of the economic life and national defense of j.a.pan?"

There is, it is said, only little left to be told, but that little may be more than enough. But if China is really helped to strength and independence, then the greatest menace that has ever faced mankind will have been averted, and China, a country with the oldest culture in the world, will have been won back to civilization. Not in emasculated alliances but in a healthy cooperation will the peace of the Pacific be preserved. And the consortium, as things are in the world, is the first example of international good sense known to modern history.

Now, the Consortium Agreement is not an idealistic scheme. The powers recognize that the future peace of the world depends on how they manage their affairs in China. If the consortium throws all secrecy to the winds and comes out openly and at all times for the principles on which it was formed and for which the several governments have guaranteed their protection to these banking-groups, what use is there going to be for the alliance? Perhaps, to paraphrase President Wilson's statement when he went across the Atlantic with his challenge for the freedom of the seas, Great Britain and j.a.pan may now have to say to the world: "Gentlemen, the joke's on us. Why, if the consortium works in China there is going to be no need of an alliance!"

CHAPTER XXIV

UNCHARTED SEAS

We have taken a long journey together. The main routes along the Pacific which are the highways of our past and future intercourse have been inspected. But the great Pacific basin is not yet everywhere safe for navigation. There is, I understand, a scientific expedition now at work thoroughly charting every inch of that wonderful watery waste. There is, I know, a scientific body under the directorship of Professor Gregory of Yale for the thorough research of ethnological materials among the races of the Pacific. But aside from the efforts of individuals, politically and socially and hygienically, there is nothing going on to bind the peoples together. I had nearly forgotten that a year ago we did send out a political expedition to the Far East, a Congressional expedition which spent four days in j.a.pan and, I daresay, a week in China. Otherwise, we are still at the mercy of individual scribes, who, like myself, have their own points of view, their own motives, and their own reactions.

For years I have read religiously every interview reported in the press, with spokesmen for one country or the other on the Pacific. The ma.s.s of clippings I have acc.u.mulated I have time and again sifted carefully for some word or sign that might indicate the real problem. But I have failed to find any. I cannot lay the responsibility on the press. It rests with the individuals who have been asked to give their opinions.

But as far as substance goes, they may all best be ill.u.s.trated by a sentence from the speech of Viscount Uchida, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, delivered before the Imperial Diet. I have the speech as it came to me from the East and West News Bureau. The sentence I have selected, for the translation of which the Viscount is of course not responsible, is this: "It is true that this friendly relationship is not without an occasional mingling of incidents; that is almost inevitable in any international relations." All speeches such as these are remarkably free from definition. Speech after speech is reported, all plead for understanding, but in none of these is any basis for understanding given. Sentiment will not dissolve international suspicion.

Right here I should like to make it clear that j.a.pan is not the only nation that is being maligned, as some would have us believe. Exclusion is practised not against j.a.pan alone, though in other cases it is practised in a different manner. The Honolulu Chamber of Commerce excludes white men from entering its sacred sanctums nearly as much.

Unless you are approved by the chamber, you will find it very difficult to take up a profession. As I look back over my years of wandering in the farthermost reaches of the Pacific I recall incident after incident that is indicative of what is toward.

Wherever compet.i.tion is rife, the compet.i.tors lay themselves out to be courteous and friendly, but in the long runs that dissect the waters of that ocean, so secure have many of the steamship companies felt that decency has frequently been forgotten. The carelessness of the rights of the unhappy voyager who merely pays for a privilege on the Union Steamship Company is not conducive to international good feeling. The lack of common courtesy on the part of many of the employees of this company is proverbial even among the Britons in Australasia. Peoples in the goings and comings gain their impressions of countries very often from such samples as are forced upon their attention en route. And over the bars in the distant lands compatriots give vent to recriminations of the compatriots of other nations in a manner not flattering to either.

One of the most unfortunate features of the whole problem of the Pacific is that only too often the men who are accountable for the most serious sources of dislike are men who at home would be kept in check by a healthy fear of social ostracism. But once a white man enters trade in an Oriental port as a clerk or salesman, he seems to consider it his bounden duty as a representative of his country to run down the natives as viciously as he dare. I have seen white men who at home would hold their tongues lest they offend some decent woman's ears with their vile language a.s.sume an air of superiority toward the men amongst whom they are living that is certainly not conducive to international amity. I have heard them express a longing for a chance some day to come back and "lick" these natives that, considering the human sufferings involved, is at the very depths of unrighteousness.

Nor is this feeling directed against Orientals only. I have heard serious statements from Americans against the British that are not only unjustifiable but astounding. And the British themselves maintain a lordly superiority to all others. The boast that "the sun never sets on English soil" is ill.u.s.trative of a certain provincialism among Britons that is not healthful from an international outlook. Britons generally take such routes. .h.i.ther and thither as leave them always within the British Empire, and the result is a dull point of view with regard to foreign lands. To be regarded as a foreigner is a source of great irritation to a Briton; he cannot stand this "slur" when pa.s.sing through America. Even within the British dominions themselves there are childish prides that make understanding impossible,--the New Zealander being against the Australian and both against everybody else.

These antagonisms more than all else are at the bottom of the confusion obtaining to-day in the Pacific. Their utter folly and futility are simply suicidal. Were it not better that we study carefully the social and political ideals of every race on the Pacific and see in what manner such changes may be effected as will preclude conflict? Is not America's preeminence in the Pacific to-day due to her return of the Boxer indemnity, to her attempt at winning the sympathy of the Filipino, to her friendship for China? Cannot the sympathy and the emulation of races supplant their enmity and jealousy? In the manner in which the various peoples of the Pacific turn to their problems lies permanent peace. There is already a considerable veering round of national conceptions toward the recognition of our common welfare being dependent on mutual development, as in the case of the consortium.

One gets tired of the perennial expressions of felicitation of the "leaders" of states, of the sentimental balderdash which emanates from international "functions" of the world's "best" people, who don one another's garments and pledge one another eternal affection, of those who a.s.sure us that the fact that one nation has placed with "us" an order for the latest type of electrically driven super-dreadnaught indicates the love and fellowship obtaining between us. Only four years ago, Viscount Bryce admitted that "Most of us, however, know so little about the island groups of the Pacific, except from missionary narratives and from romances, like those of Robert Louis Stevenson, that the recent action of the white peoples in the islands is practically a new subject, and one which well deserves to be dealt with." And despite all those speeches, despite all the international societies--that exist, it seems, only to entertain celebrities, not to uncover misunderstandings that they may truly be corrected--real irritation comes from the average man's notions, and to him should attention be directed.

Those vast s.p.a.ces to which Viscount Bryce referred, once regarded with such awe, are now criss-crossed with a veritable network of steamers.

They have made short shrift of the distances between the East and the West. We may invite one another across for week-ends, but not necessarily for life, and the impressions each brings away with him will go toward making up the sum total of what is going to be the thought of the Pacific. Are we to navalize the Pacific or to civilize it? Are we to convert every projecting rock into a menace, or are we to be honest navigators exposing every treacherous island for the safety of all races? Are we to scramble for interests in the Pacific, or are we to help races there to rise to strength and independence, so that each will be a healthy buffer against aggression? The "Valor of Ignorance" is not to be met with the blindness of force.

I sought to obtain a bit of information once from a dispenser of "understanding" located in New York, but he tried to lead me off the scent. It was not, he feared, to his country's credit that such and such facts be known. He was very sensitive, and gave me no a.s.sistance. This covering up of our weaknesses before the eyes of our neighbors is certain to lead to disaster. This putting our best foot forward, only to have the other ready for a nasty kick, is not going to bring about amity. If there is an ideal worthy of emulation in any race in the Pacific, we ought to know and honor it. If there is a sore which needs scientific political treatment, let us attend to it. Our problems are well defined, if we will but look for them; our obligations are clear, if we will but undertake them courageously.

We are not going to solve our problems as we did with the coming of j.a.pan into the range of the world,--by adulation. To-day we are suffering from the effects of having made the j.a.panese feel that they are perfect and to be adored. The problem is one of unadulterated education, of education in the simple arts of self-support among the primitive people, and self-government among the more advanced.

But if our efforts are to be fruitful we must avoid abstract education which leads to hair-splitting. It is to be education in the fundamentals,--education in the use of hands and brain for self-support and mutual happiness founded on justice. It is to be education of ourselves as well as of those we wish to elevate.

But the problem is even deeper than that. Merely elevating other races will not preclude conflict. Germany was well educated and on a level with, if not in many ways superior to the nations roundabout her. Her very development created friction. And the talk of j.a.pan as a menace is largely due to the fact that j.a.pan has grown out of the lowly state in which her exclusionists had placed her for two hundred and fifty years.

As yet China is no "menace," for China has still her teeming hordes who curtail one another's usefulness.

Nor, as I have said in the chapter on Australasia, will the problem of our relationship with the people of the Pacific be solved by the effort of labor to keep up its own high standards by the exclusion of those of lower standard.

Nor will the problem be solved by our a.s.suming more and more protectorates over simple nations unused to the tricks of diplomacy.

Our problem will be solved only by working a.s.siduously for international cooperation. Our problem will clear away when all nations establish departments open to civil-service appointments of people who will enter the field of education and uplift work without other compensation possible than that of an honest salary. There should be a Department of Education for the Pacific in which the people of the United States do out of their own funds what we did in China out of the moneys paid in the Boxer indemnity. This department would study the races of the Pacific with a view to finding what are the special requirements of each particular people and how they can be supplied. There should be a Bureau of Social Hygiene and Sanitary Engineering recruited from the American student body with luring pay, drawing thousands of young physicians and engineers out into the various Pacific islands to study the questions of the eradication of disease and the care of body and mind. There should be a Bureau of Civics and International Law carrying to the peoples of the Pacific whose simplicity lays them open to the chicanery of political parasites the simple truths of human relationships as we understand them. So the entire fabric of civilization might be spread over the waters of the Pacific. But to guard against the possibility of some sword piercing it and rending it must come the voice of civilization calling shame upon the present practices of any nation now operating in the Pacific in other than pacific ways.

All this must be done not by America alone, but by all the people now in a position to cooperate. Just as j.a.pan codified her laws and changed them in conformity with those of the West, so as to regain full rights over foreigners in her own territory, so must all the nations reorganize their laws in conformity with the best interests of all. There must be judges in all lands who know the laws of other lands as well as their own and an attempt be made to bring them all in greater conformity to a universal standard of justice, of right and wrong. There must be educators set to work studying the educational systems of nations on the Pacific so as to bring the methods more and more in line with one another. There must be departments of health advising one another how so to remedy conditions as to eliminate the danger of spread of plague. It is not enough that we have an excellent department of health vigilant in the exclusion of plague; our department of health should co-operate with that of j.a.pan and of Australasia, and of every island in the Pacific. In other words, we must realize that the problems of every group anywhere in the world affect for good or ill our own welfare.

Our problem in the Pacific is therefore ten times more complicated than that which faced the powers in Morocco, Africa and Persia. While the diversity of nations was great in Europe, in the Pacific it is greater.

But while the relationship in the Balkans was in some cases close, not only in sheer propinquity, but in development, in the Pacific not only is the blood running in the veins of the races in many cases extremely alien, one to the other, but the distances separating them in s.p.a.ce and in development make cooperation and getting together difficult. This makes it easier for selfish nations to place themselves as wedges between them. The scramble after mandates in the Pacific indicates the recognition of their importance.

But in inverse ratio,--in so far as the races of the Pacific have none of the irritating intimacy which obtained in Europe, the problem is clearer. The repet.i.tion of the intrigues which Germany, through her daughter on the Russian throne, could carry out, is here impossible.

Only once in my knowledge has royal intermarriage been attempted and it proved a failure. The j.a.panese changed their law against the marriage of their royalty with royalty of another race in favor of Korea--and to forestall a j.a.panese-Korean union we are told, the Ex-Emperor of Korea committed suicide. Insurrection followed. The marriage has since taken place, but Korea is no longer an independent empire.

The more p.r.o.nounced differences of race should perhaps be recognized, but recognized with sympathy. Each race then presents its own problems.

But over all must come recognition of the commonalty of man. This does not mean international fawning and flattering of one another. Racial equality must be admitted, but not as j.a.pan sponsored it,--with the existence of her own castes and cla.s.ses, and the oppression of Korea,--but in full recognition of the latent possibilities in all peoples. j.a.pan regards herself as infinitely superior to all mankind.

So do we. But that must be replaced by realization of the historical worthiness of Orientals as well as Caucasians.

We have in the Pacific, as has been seen, a great number of races in varying degrees of development. Most of them know little of one another and hate one another less. They have never been close enough for serious conflict, and they need never be. We can instil into them through educational channels a regard for one another which all the love-potions in the world could not pour into the races of Europe, inured to war and slaughter and religious bigotry.

There is still one great obstacle in the way of a peaceful solution of the problems of the Pacific, an obstacle that can be overcome only by a rapid evolution or revolution. Even as the forces for the greater liberation of the people are at work in China, now bound no more by her own swaddling-clothes of imperialism, so must they be encouraged in j.a.pan, whose bureaucracy is to-day entangling not only her own liberal elements, but a greater number of nations in the Pacific. Jingoists speak of the yellow peril as though it were a single thing, elemental and simply conquerable. But it is not very different from the peril of imperialism everywhere.

In the working out of the problems of the Pacific, j.a.pan is the farthest from our ken. Our relations with Australia and New Zealand and with Canada--apart from Great Britain--are already more or less intimate.

Just as j.a.pan is beginning to realize that she must make China her friend, so must we four Western nations on the Pacific realize the fullness of the possibilities in cooperation. There should be an exchange of opinion, a greater supply of news from one to the other,--news of personal, educational and geographical value, in the nature of local news. With these four countries as a nucleus and the same thing going on between China and j.a.pan, the problem of the East understanding the West will be simplified.

But we must show that we appreciate the fine points in the Oriental civilizations, while the Orient will have to remove from its conscience the hatred of the foreigner. The millennium? Not in the least. Just the beginning of our groping toward human commonalty.

APPENDIX

A

Mr. Sydney Greenbie, New York, U.S.A.