CHAPTER XXVIII

A NEW WORLD WAR COMING?

The old World War ended with the Armistice. Was a new one looming?

If one came it would break in China--of that we were convinced. Unless it settled China's problems the Peace Conference would fall disastrously short of safeguarding the world against a renewal of its titanic conflict. In China the powers were rivals, each with its jealously guarded sphere of influence. In the extravagant language of fancy, Ku Hung-ming thus pictured to me the situation: "China's political ship, built in the eclipse and rigged with curses black, has been boarded by the pirates of the world. In their dark rivalries they may scuttle it and all sink together, but not until they have first plundered and burned civilization as we know it."

Should any action be taken which might be interpreted as a recognition of a special position for Japan in China, whether in the form of a so-called Monroe Doctrine or a "regional understanding" or in any other way, forces would be set in motion that in a generation would be beyond controlling. In comparison with this tremendous issue, even the complex re-alignments of Central Europe fell into relative unimportance. The same fatal result was sure to follow any further accentuation of spheres of influence.

We in China realized this, and in deadly earnest we worked out a plan of joint preventive action by the powers, which would unite them instead of leaving them in fatal rivalry. The root of all evil is in the love of money. It was local financing by single exploiting powers in spheres protected by political influence that was the evil. If, instead, the finance of the world could be made to back a united China, there would be a great constructive development, from which all would benefit far in excess of selfish profits garnered in a corner. We planned a system of joint international finance. That, despite its drawbacks, would destroy the localization of foreign political influence. The plan in its relations to the Chinese Government was worked out with everyone that we could reach competent to give advice. There were the official and business representatives of Great Britain and France; the Chinese cabinet ministers and other officials, and all of the American representatives, including the commercial attachés Julean Arnold and P.P. Whitham, and the American advisers, Dr. W.W. Willoughby, Dr. W.C. Dennis, and Mr. J.E. Baker of the Department of Railways. Day and night the conferences went on informally; by day and night these matters were threshed out. Japanese experts, too, were consulted.

The time seemed propitious. The Armistice brought the hope that the powers would coöperate. The separatist political aims in China might be overcome, together with the sinister intrigue for dismembering or dominating that mighty nation of freemen. Could foreign financial action and influence in China be gathered up into a unit? Could it be made to build for the whole of China, not tear it down in its several parts? At all events, we hammered out a plan to make this possible.

Foreigners had gone deeply into railway loans, making their chief investments there. Hence we made the plan of unified financial support apply, first of all, to the railway service. The operating of the different Chinese lines according to the respective national loans was a curse; it was evil politics, and it broke down the railway service. Foreign experts, acting as servants of the Chinese Government, might unify the Chinese railroads, though of this Liang Shih-yi, Chow Tsu-chi, and Yeh Kung-cho--who knew most about Chinese railway affairs--had their doubts. It would pile up the overhead expenses, they thought. The railways could be managed thriftily only by the Chinese. The foreign banking interests, too, might try to be depositories for the railway funds, as they were already for the customs and salt revenues. Thus Chinese capital would pay tribute to foreign capital. If still other revenues were thus absorbed, as might be feared, national economy would be fettered too much.

Therefore they proposed a Chinese banking group. It would help in the financing and could be made the depository of funds.

These men sympathized, however, with the main purpose of the suggested arrangement for unification. Foreign expertship on the railways, also, was highly valued by Chinese railwaymen trained in the West. True, Mr. Sidney Mayers somewhat frightened them by his proposals. This British industrial representative of long experience in China proposed internationalizing each separate line by putting on it an international group of experts. The Chinese objected; it would mean giving all the important positions to a large staff of foreign officials. Of this they had had enough in the Customs.

It was necessary to dissociate banking from building; such a union would mean monopoly and fierce attacks upon it by all outside interests. With the financing separate, the contracting might be left free to all competitors, bidding low and resting their bids upon their repute and responsibility.

So long as it remained possible for different countries to acquire special privileges in distinct spheres, promises of "integrity and sovereignty" would be nothing but empty words. No matter how much they might promise that they would not discriminate against the trade of other nations, the fact remains that established position in itself constitutes preference.

The favoured nations might more honestly say: "Give us our special position and we will give you all the equal opportunity you ask."

Foreign influence could safely be wielded only as a trusteeship for China and the world, without any vested political interests or economic advantages secured through political pressure. But Chinese administration was lax. I urged the Chinese officials to set their house in order, to put their public accounting on an efficient plane; even if necessary to employ foreign experts to do this. They said: "Yes, if the United States will lead," for a long record of square dealing had endeared our business men to the Chinese.

But Americans had been slow in China. Two years had fled, and the Grand Canal was not yet restored as promised. The half million dollars advanced had been spent on preliminary surveys. Silver had risen; American gold bought only one half what it had before. Overhead expense was high, and for the preliminary work more than the half-million was needed. The Chinese were disappointed, grief-stricken; they began to be suspicious.

The Japanese-controlled papers redoubled their attacks on Americans. Pretty soon a Japanese journal at Tsinanfu assaulted the name and character of President Wilson. I had an understanding with my Japanese colleague that all press misstatement should be corrected. I saw him about this attack on the head of a friendly nation. He promised to look into it. After ten days I wrote inquiring again. Under the press laws of Japan, he responded, a paper could indeed be punished for libellous attack upon the head of a foreign state, provided that such head happened to be in Japan at the time. As this paper was notoriously under the domination of the Japanese authorities, amenable to their very breath and whisper, I failed to see how the minister should find it hard to bring it to book. I merely called for a retraction where the Japanese, if a Chinese-owned paper so scurrilously had attacked the Japanese Emperor, would have asked for total suppression. The Japanese minister said he would "further consider the matter" and would see what he could do. A mild apology and retraction were eventually published.

The action of the Japanese in China, official and unofficial, during the war, had aroused the deepest resentment among the Chinese, who were on the verge of despair. The Chinese people were being whirled in the vortex of old and new. The old organization was beginning to crumble; the new had not yet taken shape. It was easy to find spots of weakness and corruption, aggravation of which would bring about an actual demoralization of social and political life and the obstruction of every improvement; bandits could be furnished with arms; weak persons craving a stimulant could be drugged with morphia; the credit of native institutions could be ruined; and the most corrupt elements in the government encouraged. For the original weaknesses and evils the outside influence was not responsible, but it was culpable for making them its instruments for the achievement of its aims of political dominion.

A vast system whose object was the drugging of China with morphia, which utilized the petty Japanese hucksters and traders throughout the country, was exposed in the "opium blacklist" published by the British papers in China. Specific proof was adduced in each case. Often the blacklist extended over two pages of a paper. Obviously these Japanese druggists, photographers, and the whole outfit of small-fry traders could not traffic in morphia without the connivance of the Japanese Government and the support of semi-official Japanese interests. The Japanese post offices were used for its distribution in China. Chinese police interference with the thousands of Japanese purveyors was ruled out under the exterritoriality agreements. In Korea, the Japanese opium grown officially for "medicinal uses" was produced far in excess of medicinal needs, and through the ports of Dairen and Tsingtao large quantities of morphia came into China.

The Japanese-controlled press at first answered the blacklist with charges of _tu quoque_; but when they defamed the American missionary hospitals, alleging that they were centres for distributing narcotic drugs, nobody among the Chinese paid further attention to them. The blacklists mapped graphically the thickly sown morphia "joints" around the police station of the Japanese settlement at Tientsin and the responsibility was brought home to Japan. An official Japanese announcement was evoked that no effort would be spared to stop the "regrettable, secret, illicit traffic."

In Shantung Japanese civil administration had been set up along the railway without a scintilla of right. It was later withdrawn for new concessions and privileges wrung from the Peking Government. The Japanese were old masters of this trick. Seize something which you do not really want, and restore it to its owner if he will give you something you do want. Then what you want you get, but it is not "stolen," and can be kept with smug immunity. The arrangements in Shantung were made secretly, riding roughshod over Chinese rights, and intended to sterilize in advance the enactments of the Peace Conference. If a foreign power should wish to own the Pennsylvania Railway system, and should actually come into the United States and occupy it, the parallel would be exact with what Japan did in Shantung. After taking the Shantung Railway and holding it, the Japanese stoutly claimed an "economic right" to it. The whole course of Japan in China during the Great War alarmed both Chinese and foreigners. I may not name the responsible and fair-minded writer of a letter from which I quote:

It would be in the highest degree unfortunate if the present fortuitous and temporary possession of the Leased Territory and Shantung Railway by Japan should be confirmed by the final Treaty of Peace, for not only would China's sovereignty in Shantung be in danger of impairment, but the trading rights of Chinese, Americans, and Europeans would undoubtedly be prejudiced.

Another consideration that has the greatest weight with the writer is that the principles for which the United States entered the European War and on behalf of which the United States, in common with the whole world, has paid an unthinkable price in gold and blood, make unbearable a continuance, not to say accentuation, of the old system of foreign intrigue in China. It is unbearable that one result of the victory bought in part with American lives should be the extension of Japanese power in China, when such extension means the further strengthening of the domination of a monarchical and imperialistic foreign nation over China, a result constituting in its own sphere a complete negation of the objects for which the United States devoted its entire resources in the war against Germany.

Dr. Sun Yat Sen wrote me at Shanghai on the 19th of November, referring both to internal and external troubles, and the union of militarists, foreign and Chinese:

Through you alone will the President and the people of the United States see the true state of affairs in China. Your responsibility is indeed great. Whether Democracy or Militarism triumphs in China largely depends upon Your Excellency's moral support of our helpless people at this stage.

These words show the Chinese belief in the sheer force of public opinion, and their wish that the Chinese situation be known and understood abroad. This achieved, the evils under which China groans and travails would shrivel.

We built up our solution of unity for China. In carefully weighed dispatches I sent it to the American Government, and cabled the President a statement of China's vital relation to future peace. I was constrained to condemn Japan's policy, quite deliberately, summing up the evidence accumulated in the course of five years. I had come to the Far East admiring the Japanese, friendly to them--my published writings show this abundantly. I did not lose my earnest goodwill toward the Japanese people but I could not shut my eyes to Japanese imperialist politics with its unconscionably ruthless and underhanded actions and its fundamental lack of every idea of fair play. The continuance of such methods could only bring disaster; their abandonment is a condition of peace and real welfare. The aims and methods of Japan's military policy in the Continent of Asia can bring good to no one, least of all to the Japanese people, notwithstanding any temporary gains. Such ambitions cannot permanently succeed.

A cure can come only when such evils are clearly recognized. Lip-service to political liberalism might mislead the casually regardful outside world. To those face to face with what Japanese militarism was doing to continental Asia there was left no doubt of its sinister quality. Japan herself needs to be delivered from it, for it has used the Japanese people, their art and their civilization, for its own evil ends. More than that, it threatens the peace of the world. If talk of "a better understanding" presupposes the continuance of such aims and motives as have actuated Japanese political plot during the past few years, it is futile. What is needed is a change of heart.

Here is the substance of the memorandum upon which my cablegram to the President was based:

In 1915, coercion was applied and China was forced by threats to solidify and extend the privileged position of Japan in Manchuria and Mongolia and to agree prospectively to a like régime in Shantung together with the beginnings of a special position in Fukien Province. After this there was a change of methods although the policy tended to the same end--domination over China.

Instead of coercion, Japan applied secret and corrupt influence through alliance with purchasable officials kept in office by Japanese support. The latter insidious policy is more dangerous because it gave the appearance that rights are duly acquired through grant of the Chinese Government; no demands or ultimatums are necessary because corrupt officials strongly supported by Japanese finance, acting absolutely in secret channels, suppressing all public discussion with the strong arm of the police, are able to deliver contractual rights regular in form, though of corrupt secret origin and evil tendency.

Japan has used every possible means to demoralize China by creating and sustaining trouble; by supporting and financing the most objectionable elements, particularly a group of corrupt and vicious military governors akin to bandits in their methods; by employing instigators of trouble; by protection given to bandits; by the introduction of morphia and opium; by the corruption of officials through loans, bribes, and threats; by the wrecking of native banks and the debauching of local currency; by illegal export of the copper currency of the people; by local attempts to break down the salt administration; by persistent efforts to prevent China from going into the war and then seeing to it that China was never in a position to render to the common cause such aid as would be in her power and as she would willingly render if left to herself: finally, by utilizing the war and the preoccupation of the Allies for enmeshing China in the terms of a secret military alliance.

As a result of these methods and manipulations, Japan has gained the following advantages: a consolidation of her special position in Manchuria and eastern Mongolia, and the foundation of the same in Shantung and Fukien; control in the matter of Chinese finance through the control of the Bank of Communications and the Bureau of Public Printing and the appointment of a high financial adviser together with the adoption of the unsound gold-note scheme happily not yet put in force. She has secured extensive railway concessions in Manchuria, Shantung, Chihli, and Kiangsu; mining rights in various provinces; and special monopolistic rights through the Kirin forestry loan, the telephone loan, and others. Through the secret military convention Japan attempts not only to control the military policy of China but incidentally national resources such as iron deposits. All these arrangements are so secretly made that in most cases not even the Foreign Office is in possession of the documents relating thereto. Together with this goes the persistent assertion of special interests which are interpreted as giving a position of predominance.

This is a strong indictment and I feel the fullest responsibility in making these statements. Fundamentally friendly to the Japanese as my published expressions show, I have been forced through the experience of five years to the conclusion that the methods applied by the Japanese military masters can lead only to evil and destruction and also that they will not be stopped by any consideration of fairness and justice but only by the definite knowledge that such action will not be tolerated.

As a steady stream of information from every American official in China and from every other source as well as my own experience have made this conclusion inevitable, I owe the duty to state it to the American Government in no uncertain terms. Nor is this said in any spirit of bitterness against the Japanese people but from the conviction that the policy pursued by their military masters can in the end bring only misery and woe to them and the world. During all this period it has not been possible for the European powers or the United States to do anything for China. The United States, though assisting all other Allies financially, could not contribute one dollar toward maintaining the financial independence of China as undivided attention was needed to the requirements of the west front. The Lansing-Ishii notes, undoubtedly intended to express a friendly attitude toward any legitimate aspirations of Japan while safeguarding the rights of China, were perverted by the Japanese into an acknowledgment of their privileged position in China. Now at last, when the pressure has been released, America as well as the European countries must face the issue which has been created, that is, whether a vast, peaceable, and industrious population whose most articulate desire is to be allowed to develop their own life in the direction of free and just government, shall become material to be moulded by the secret plottings of a foreign military despotism into an instrument of its power. If it is said that the aims of Japan are now but economic and in just response to the needs of Japan's expanding population, it must be remembered that every advantage is gained and maintained by political and military pressure and that it is exploited by the same means in a fashion, taking no account of the rights of other foreign nations or of the Chinese themselves. Divested of their political character and military aims the economic activities of Japan would arouse no opposition.

Only the refusal to accept the results of Japanese secret manipulation in China during the last four years, particularly, the establishment of Japanese political influence and a special privilege position in Shantung can avert the result of either making China a dependence of a reckless and boundlessly ambitious military caste which would destroy the peace of the entire world, or bringing on a military struggle inevitable from the establishment of rival spheres of interest and local privilege in China.

Peace is conditioned on the abolition for the present and future of all localized privileges. China must be freed from all foreign political influence exercised within her borders, railways controlled by foreign governments, and preferential arrangements supported by political power. If this is done, China will readily master her own trouble, particularly if the military bandits hitherto upheld by Japan shall no longer have the countenance of any foreign power.

The advantages enumerated above were gained by Japan when she was professedly acting as the trustee of the Associated Powers in the Far East, and they could not have been obtained at all but for the sacrifices made by them in Europe. They are therefore not the exclusive concern of any one power. With respect to Shantung the German rights there lapsed, together with all Chino-German treaties, upon the declaration of war. A succession of treaty rights from Germany to Japan is therefore not possible, and the recognition of a special position of Japan in Shantung could only proceed from a new act to which conceivably some weak Chinese officials might be induced but which would be contrary to the frequently declared aims of international policy in China and which would amount to the definitive establishment of exclusive spheres of influence in China leading in turn to the more vigorous development of such exclusive spheres by other nations. The present situation of affairs offers the last opportunity by common consent to avert threatening disaster by removing the root of conflict in China.

Never before has an opportunity for leadership toward the welfare of humanity presented itself equal to that which invites America in China at the present time. The Chinese people ask for no better fate than to be allowed freedom to follow in the footsteps of America; every device of intrigue and corruption as well as coercion is being employed to force them in a different direction, including constant misrepresentation of American policies and aims which, however, has not as yet prejudiced the Chinese. Nor is it necessary for America to exercise any political influence. If it were only known that America in concert with the liberal powers would not tolerate the enslavement of China either by foreign or native militarists the natural propensity of the Chinese to follow liberal inclinations would guide this vast country toward free government and propitious development of peaceful industrial activities, even through difficulties unavoidable in the transition of so vast and ancient a society to new methods of action.

But if China should be disappointed in her confidence at the present time the consequences of such disillusionment on her moral and political development would be disastrous, and we instead of looking across the Pacific toward a peaceable, industrial nation, sympathetic with our ideals, would be confronted with a vast materialistic military organization under ruthless control.