Is Japan peculiarly an obstacle to the practical, if informal, federation of the world to which we all hope that things are moving?
When I try to frame a hopeful answer to that question, it occurs to me with added force that Japan is not a people trying to express itself through a Government as we Atlantic peoples are, but a Government, a small ruling class, in effective possession of an obedience-loving people. And I remember that that small ruling class has a long tradition of romantic and chivalrous swordsmanship. Is that ruling class going to keep its power and is it going to preserve its tradition? No one would be more urgent than I for the complete disarmament of the entire world, but no one could be more convinced of the unwisdom of disarmament by America or any other power while any single country in the world maintains a spirit that must lead at last to a resumption of warfare. TO DISARM IN SUCH A SITUATION IS TO LEAVE THE TROUBLE TO ACCUMULATE UPON OUR GRAND-CHILDREN; TO PATCH UP A TEMPORARY PEACE BASED ON THE PERMITTED “EXPANSION” OF SUCH A POWER IS SIMPLY TO PREPARE FOR AN EXPANDED WAR IN THE FUTURE.
But is that Japanese ruling class resolved at any cost, even at the cost of another World War and at the risk of destroying Japan, to hold onto its present power and to adhere rigidly to its tradition? In the last hundred years Japan, because of her aristocracy and because of her general obedience, has achieved feats of adaptation to new conditions that are unparalleled in history. As we have noted, there have recently been indications of further changes in the spirit of Japan.
She is said to be pressing forward with the education of the common people and the liberation of thought and discussion. In the long run, what is happening in the schools of Japan is of more importance to mankind than what is happening in her dockyards. But at present we do not know what is happening in the schools of Japan. One hears much of New Japan and Liberal Japan, and there is even an unofficial representative of the Japanese Opposition in Washington. But, so far as we can judge at this distance, we must be guided by the policy and methods of the Japanese Government.
Before we can judge these we must consider the nature of the field in which they seem to clash most with American ideas and with American and European interests, namely, China and Eastern Asia generally. In my next paper I will ask, “What is China?” and consider the nature of the needs and claims of Japan in regard to China and the prohibitions and the renunciations the Western powers want to impose upon her. For it is on account of these restrictions and prohibitions that Japan has been building her battleships. Her fighting fleet is to secure her a free hand in China and Siberia; it can have no other purpose. And I shall take up the question whether the prohibitions and renunciations we want to force upon Japan are not prohibitions and restrictions that we are bound in fairness to impose equally upon all powers concerned with China and the Far East. If the other powers are not prepared for extreme general retractions and renunciation in China; if they want to bar out Japan from aggressive practices and exclusive advantages that other powers retain; if we cling to any sort of racial distinction in these matters, then I shall submit, we are asking impossible things from Japan and we are forcing her toward what must must be indeed a very desperate gamble for her, a refusal to enter into this proposed disarmament agreement—and that means war.
VIII
CHINA IN THE BACKGROUND
Washington, Nov. 16.
The Chinese propaganda in America and Western Europe seems on the whole to be conducted more efficiently than the Japanese. And the Chinese student, it seems to me, gets into closer touch with the educated American and European because his is a democratic and not an aristocratic habit of mind. He has an intensely Western sense of public opinion.
The masses of China may be destitute, ignorant and disordered, but in their mental habits they are modern and not mediæval, in the same sense that the Japanese are mediæval and not modern. The Chinese seem to “get on” with their Western social equivalents better than any of the Asiatic people. And increasing multitudes of Chinese are learning English today; it is the second language in China.
Now, if Japan is the figure in the limelight at Washington today, China is the giant in the background and scene of the present Pacific drama. We have had so much in the papers lately about these two countries, we have been treated to such a feast of particulars about them, that most of us have long since forgotten very thoroughly the broad facts of the case, and it will be refreshing to recall them here and now.