It was hard for Americans to understand any such feeling as this. We have little or no sentiment about any ship, big or little. They mean nothing to us but taxes. We don’t depend upon battleships for safety as an island nation does. There is Japan, a little land all told, Formosa and Korea included, not as large as the state of Texas, with a sea front of over 18,000 miles. Ships mean food, contacts, security to her. When we asked her to sacrifice them we must remember that we were asking much more of her than we were of ourselves though our ratio might have been larger. We must remember the world is not ruled simply by tons of material. Symbols weigh more with nations than tonnage. We could give up our ships without a sigh; but when Japan scrapped hers, something of her heart went with the scrapping.
So far as the Mutsu was concerned, the answer came three days after the agreement over Yap and the Caroline Islands had been made public. On the 15th of December, at six o’clock in the evening, Mr. Hughes staged one of his private rehearsals for the press. It was the decision as to the capital-ship ratio which had been so long expected and which had been settled on the basis that had been proposed on November 12—5–5–3. But, while the ratio had been kept, the details had been changed. Great Britain and the United States had had the good will and the wisdom to recognize that Japan’s feeling about the Mutsu was genuine.
One has only to read the revised agreement to understand what pains the two countries took to readjust the calculations of the United States in such a way that the desired ratio would be preserved and Japan’s pride and sentiment saved. When nations come to the point that they are willing to try to understand and to consider one another’s feelings as well as one another’s force, there is some hope for the peace of the world.
There was no gainsaying the fact that the great triumph of this dramatic week was Japan’s. It was a legitimate triumph, honestly won. She understood what she gained. As the session of December 10 broke up, one of the ablest members of her delegation—a bitter critic of what had been doing—came out from the Conference hall with tears in his eyes, though they do say that no Japanese knows how to shed tears. “It is the greatest day in the history of the new world,” he said. And that was true,—if Japan would now be as generous toward the rights and aspirations of her great neighbor China as she had been tenacious of her own safety and dignity. The world had recognized her power and her diplomatic skill. Would she now win its confidence in her moral integrity?
But if December 10 was the beginning of Japan’s week of triumph, it was Mr. Balfour’s day. He made a little speech which will stick long in the minds of those who heard it.
“It so happens,” said Mr. Balfour, “that I was at the head of the British administration which twenty years ago brought the great Anglo-Japanese Alliance into existence. It so happens that I was at the head of the British Administration which brought into existence an entente between the British Empire and France, and through all my life I have been a constant, ardent and persistent advocate of intimate and friendly relations between the two great branches of the English-speaking race.
“You may well conceive, therefore, how deep is my satisfaction when I see all these four powers putting their signatures to a treaty which I believe will for all time insure perfect harmony of coöperation between them in the great region with which the treaty deals.”
That little speech gave one a clearer sense of what through all these years Arthur Balfour has been doing than anything that ever has before come to me. There is something supremely brave about a man of such fine understanding, such humorous and distinguished cynicism, standing by through all of the disillusions, disgust, deceptions, forced evil choices of public life, never quitting whatever the temptation. For forty years now Arthur Balfour has stood by. He is, I believe, 73 years old. He has never had so much reason in all his long political career to believe that the good will of men can be mobilized for the world’s service.
It was a great week, noble in its undertaking, dramatic in its planning, the just triumph of a people who know what they want and are willing to wait to get it. And for us, America, it was a week of brave deeds. We were coming to our senses, realizing that we are of the world, and if we are to enjoy its fruits, we must bear our share of its burdens; that if we would have peace, the surest way is to use our strength and our good will to guarantee it.