In that spirit, Europe—with Japan coming in presently as a hopeful student of European methods—had been trying to cook, carve up and fight for the portions of China for nearly a century, treating these wonderful people as an inferior race. The very worst that can be said about Japan with regard to China is that she has been too vigorously European.
Consider how it would have been with the United States in the years of discord that led up to the Civil War if these difficulties had been complicated by three such embarrassments as these: First, that most foreigners, except now the Germans and Austrians, are outside the reach of the native courts, that their disputes with Chinese go before special foreign courts, that they are specially favored in regard to property and shipping; secondly, that the Chinese Government is restricted from raising revenue by any tariff above a flat rate of 5 per cent., and that they are also strictly restricted to 2½ per cent. in their interior dues upon foreign (but not Chinese) trade, so that they are in fact unable to raise enough revenue to maintain an efficient Government; and thirdly, that nearly all the Chinese railways—and as every American knows, transport is the very life of modern state—are in the grip of this foreign country or that.
These are the open and manifest inconveniences of the situation, but behind these more open aspects there is a vast tangle of intervention between Chinamen and Chinese affairs—schemes for further exploitation, financial entanglements, vast concession plans and projects for “spheres of influence” for this aggressive foreign nation or that. And this foreign influence is not the influence of one foreign power pursuing a single and consistent policy but a number of competing powers, all pursuing different ends and pulling things this way and that. How could any country reconstruct itself while it was entangled in such a net of interference? No people on earth could do such a thing.
The plain fact is that if China is to reconstruct herself that net has to be cut away. It is not enough to warn Japan out of China or to say “open door” for China. The open door is good for the ventilation of that great apartment, but what is also needed is a clearing out of the encumbrance inside. These encumbrances are not primarily Japanese.
The five great powers sit at a green table in the form of a horseshoe in the conference and the four lesser powers are at a straight table like the armature of a horseshoe magnet. At the left hand corner, next the Japanese, are the three Chinese representatives. I gather they will be allowed to say “Shantung” at the conference in moderation but not Thibet nor Tonquin nor the East China—or indeed any—railway. I doubt if either Mr. Balfour or M. Briand will nerve himself to say these forbidden words. But an irresponsible journalist may write them.
If there is to be a real end to war and disarmament there has to be release of China to free Chinese control, and that means a self-denying ordinance from ALL the great powers. It will be an easy one for America and Italy to accept, but it will be a difficult sacrifice indeed for those two hoary leaders in the break-up of China, Great Britain and France. Neither country has a bad heart, but long ago in the East they acquired some very bad habits. This is a time when bad habits lead very quickly to disaster.
The real test of the quality of the conference will appear when some issue arises which involves an assertion or denial of the principle of “Unhand and keep your hands off China.” If the Chinese are worth while, the conference has to establish that principle. It cannot be gracefully advanced by America because America has so little to relinquish. It CAN be established at the initiative of either Britain or France.
It seems plain to me that official America is waiting for some move in this direction from either or both of these powers. If that principle of a free China is established at the Washington Conference the way will have been opened in the not very remote future to a healthy and vigorous United States of China, a great modern, pacific and progressive power. And when I write “China” I mean what any sensible man means when he writes “China”—I mean all those parts of Asia in which the Chinese people and the Chinese culture prevail. I include at least South Manchuria, which is as surely Chinese as Texas is American, and which can no more be GIVEN to any other power without the consent of China than my overcoat can be given by one passerby to another.
The plain alternative to a released and renascent China is the cutting up of China among the aggressive powers to the tune of that popular American air “The Open Door,” the demoralization and disintegration of the Chinese, international elbowing, competition, quarrels among the powers who have “shared” China, and, at last, the next great war—which it will be just as easy for America to keep out of as the great war of 1914–1918.