There is something tremendous in the idea of that great passive three hundred and twenty-five million or more, the greatest single market on earth, and Japan’s natural market, passing by on the other side, leaving the goods untouched on docks and warehouses—but they do it. There are children of China who will refuse a toy to-day if told it was made in Japan, will go hungry rather than eat Japanese food, so they told me, these ardent young Chinamen.
“But if Japan insists on her demands, turns her navy on you?” I asked.
“Ah, then,” said trustful Young China, “our great friend the United States will take a hand. She will not permit Japan to force us.”
This confidence in America’s friendship was China’s strongest card at the peace table. For over sixty years we have been her avowed protector—ever since in 1858 we signed the quaintly worded compact: “They (the United States and China) shall not insult or oppress each other for any trifling cause so as to produce an estrangement between them, and if any other nation should act unjustly or oppressively, the United States will exert their good offices on being informed of the case to bring about an amicable arrangement of the question, thus showing their friendly feeling.”
Faith in the protection of the United States has worked its way far inland, to the very sources of the Yellow and the Yangtze rivers. I am told that many Chinamen in those distant places who never have looked on a white face will point to the Stars and Stripes and say “our friend.”
According to moderate Young China’s view of the case, the work of the Conference on the Limitation of Armament was to persuade Japan that her real economic progress lay in giving up the political and military privileges in China which she believes are fairly hers, as spoils of the late war, and to accept full opportunities of “peaceful penetration”—persuade if possible, force if not!
There was no question of where sympathy lay at the opening of the Conference—it was with moderate Young China. Sympathy for her and suspicion for Japan—this showed in a catlike watchfulness of Japan’s every move, particularly by the newspaper correspondents.
As a rule, newspaper people are instinctively suspicious. It seems sometimes to be the pride of the profession, and a smart characterization of a suspicion has almost the value of a scoop. There was an instance at the opening of the Conference, just after the naval program was announced, when Ambassador Shidehara fell ill of intestinal trouble. It had been announced that Japan could make no reply to the naval program until she had communicated with Tokyo, and somebody remarked brilliantly that the Baron’s illness was probably a “congestion of the cables.” As a matter of fact it turned out that the poor Baron was seriously ill, but the phrase stuck.
At the first press conference given by Admiral Baron Kato there was another evidence of this instinct. An interpreter translated the questions of the correspondent to the Admiral who replied in his native tongue, a delightfully musical voice; you could hardly believe you did not understand him, so understandable did his words sound. Once or twice Baron Kato did not wait for the interpreter to repeat the English question to him, but gave his answer at once in Japanese. Instantaneously there ran around the big circle of men the signal “He understands English.” Any one who has had any experience with a foreign language knows that often one does understand, but cannot speak; moreover, one understands when the question is simple but cannot follow it when involved. The point is simply here, that the moment Baron Kato showed he understood any English, the guards of the men were up. He was a Jap and must be watched. That is, Japan came to the Washington Conference handicapped by the suspicion of the American press and public, while China came strong in our good will.
Was there anything to be said for Japan? I had believed so a long time, but felt that my impressions were treasonable, so contrary were they to the expressed judgment of practically all of my liberal and radical friends—many of them knew vastly more than I did about the Far East—and to the feeling of the general public as I caught it in the press and in conversation. My treason consisted in thinking that although, as a matter of fact, Japan had been doing a variety of outrageous things, if you compared her operations with those of most of us, there was little reason to make a scapegoat of her. I have been impressed often in the last three years that there were a good many people trying to help China by crying down Japan—a practice that has played a mischievous part in history. I felt that we were not giving Japan the fair deal we should, even if we had no other object than aiding China. The books I read, the observers from the Far East with whom I talked, almost invariably were partisan in their attack. They liked one and did not like the other. Everything that one did was understandable and excusable; everything that the other did was oppressive and inexcusable.