In view of the many problems confronting Japan in world politics, discussion of which is beyond the scope of this book, it was predicted freely by Far Eastern experts that Japan would make embarrassing demands at the conference, and that the refusal to accede to them would lead to the withdrawal of Japan. But the same irresistible current of public opinion, voiced by a war-weary and tax-ridden people, forced Japanese statesmen to enter the conference with the idea that failure to arrive at an agreement was unthinkable. In October, just as the delegation was leaving, Tokio newspaper comment indicated this. For example, the “Yomiuri” said:
As to the questions of population and food, these are, of course, matters of life and death, and it is necessary to make efforts at every possible opportunity to secure an understanding with the Powers. But at the same time ... all intelligent men in this country are unanimous in taking the stand that there is no other means of solving these problems except by making our policy toward China thoroughly pacific and economic and by thus developing our trade and industry.... It is urged that the open door and equal opportunity are synonymous with equality of races, and that as such race equality should be proposed to the Conference. If the Japanese delegates should withdraw in case that proposal is rejected, Japan might be the victor from the point of view of international morality, but the practical result would be greater isolation. We cannot afford to attend the Conference in expectation of increased international isolation.
The British had long known that it was hopeless to expect to continue indefinitely the effort to keep ahead of the United States in naval construction. They were pitted against a people possessing superior wealth and means of production, whose Government was already committed to the elaborate program adopted in 1916. It was better to adopt the principle of equality of sea-power with the United States than to find themselves outclassed within the next decade. While it was true that American sentiment had turned against extravagance in naval construction, refusal on the part of the British Government to accept limitation of armament on the basis of equality would undoubtedly have resulted in a determination of the Americans not only to go ahead with their program but to match any program Great Britain might adopt as a counter-measure. British public opinion did not regard the United States as a potential enemy, as had been the case with Germany, and as would be the case with any other European country or Japan. Public opinion in the British self-governing dominions was in favor of the termination of the Japanese alliance, and this fact had to be taken into account by the British Admiralty. The British faced graciously a condition, and accepted it.
Disarmament, or rather limitation of armament, had become a policy almost universally favored among Americans. There was something of religious fervor in the spirit with which the Americans opened the conference. The program proposed by Secretary Hughes meant relief from taxation, of course. But to the man in the street it signified far more than that. Looking at the problem of both land and sea armaments from a more academic standpoint than the other Powers could afford to adopt, the American people believed that the naval holiday was the first step toward the genuine reëstablishment of peace and good will among nations. They were taken somewhat aback when it developed during the conference that the agreement limiting armaments would have to be accompanied by other agreements that appealed less to the imagination and awakened again the fear of foreign entanglements. But in order to secure the first agreement the Senate felt that it did not dare to refuse to ratify a four-power treaty, binding the principal Pacific powers to respect one another’s Pacific territories.[25]
When the conference finished its work at the beginning of February, there was dissatisfaction in many quarters in America. Some felt that the naval holiday should have included sweeping reductions and a fixed ratio in other kinds of naval craft than capital ships. Others argued that the conference, before breaking up, should have bound the participating powers to reassemble in the near future to consider land armaments. All believed that the old principles of world politics were too much in evidence in the treatment of China. But none was able to contest the statement of President Harding that the Washington Conference was epoch-making in that it marked the beginning, and a distinct step forward, on the path toward a new method in putting an end to competitive armaments.
The conference had also to its credit the diminishing, if not the removal, of causes for conflicts among the powers in the Far East. For a time, at least, there would be no more loose talk of the inevitable war between the United States and Japan, and the suspicion and discord resulting from the Anglo-Japanese treaty improved the relations between the United States and Great Britain, between Great Britain and her self-governing dominions, and between Great Britain and China. The subsequent withdrawal of Japan from Shantung indicated how the Washington Conference had made possible the fulfilment of Japan’s promise to President Wilson. On the other hand, the character of the decisions made at the Washington Conference was in no way harmful to the interests of Russia, and will not be upset when Russia becomes once more a factor in Far Eastern affairs. The non-participation of Russia, therefore, does not vitiate the work of the Washington Conference in the same way as the exclusion of Russia from the deliberations of the Lausanne Conference threatens to make ineffective its decisions as to the Straits and other Near Eastern problems.
From the success of the initiative of the American Government in the autumn of 1921, however, it is unsafe to draw the analogy that we should have been equally successful had we made the same proposal that the powers come together in our far-off and virtually neutral capital to make a similar beginning in solving the imperative problem of limitation of land armaments of European nations. We had a stake at Washington which we do not have in Europe. We had vital interests to safeguard which we do not have in Europe. We had means of bringing pressure to bear upon the participating powers which we would not possess in a land disarmament conference. At Washington we gained equality of sea-power with the greatest naval nation without having to pay heavily for it. No balance of power question or any other subject of international politics in Europe affects our interests in the way the balance of power in the Pacific and the amelioration of China’s international position do. At Washington we had the trump argument that if competition in naval armaments was not stopped we should be compelled to become the predominant naval power.
Naval disarmament was essentially an extra-European question. Land disarmament affects primarily the nations of continental Europe, and enters only secondarily and indirectly into American, British, and Japanese foreign policy. In contrast to the Washington Conference, the continuation conferences in connection with the Paris peace settlement, as we shall see in the next chapter, have been dominated by France’s fear of Germany and the anxiety of the other beneficiaries by the treaties to preserve their newly won independence and increases of territory. Reparations are subordinated to security, and security seems still to depend upon standing armies. Standing armies are a drain on the finances of states already on the verge of bankruptcy. And, inseparable from the question of reparations and security, from the standpoint of the European states, is the problem we vainly try to make a business matter, the settlement of interallied debts.