Peacemakers—Blessed and Otherwise / Observations, Reflections and Irritations at an International Conference

by Ida M. Tarbell

The most difficult problems with which the Conference for the Limitation of Armament had to deal were those centering about China. We wanted China to have her own. We wanted her to be let alone, to run her government to suit herself, to be free from exploitation, duress, intrigues. As a people we wanted this very much. We came as near being sentimental over China as one nation can be over another. We like the Chinese as a people. We would like to see them as sanitary as they are friendly, as honest as they are industrious, as free from their own vices as they are from most of ours.

We are more sentimental about them because our own dealings with them have been on the whole so fair. We are proud of the position we have taken as a nation toward China and we would like to keep up our record, justifying the Chinese conviction that we are a disinterested and reliable friend. Our dealings have been decent—the policy of the Open Door, the return of a large share of the Boxer indemnity, the protest that we made in 1915 when we learned of the outrageous twenty-one demands that Japan had forced from the Peking government: we have prided ourselves on these things, and when at Paris in 1919 President Wilson consented to the transfer of the German rights in Shantung to Japan, there was a chorus of disapproval, and we came to this Conference resolved that Shantung should be restored to China; moreover, that a long list of interferences with her freedom of administration should cease. The disappointment came in finding that what China wanted, and we wanted her to have, was much more difficult to realize than we had appreciated, and that in a majority of cases, probably the worst thing that could happen would be to have her full requests granted.

The primary difficulty in China’s getting what she wanted was that she has no stable government, nothing upon which she can depend and with which the nations can deal with any assurance that the engagements that are entered into will be faithfully carried out. The Conference began with an exhibit of disorganization in the Peking government which was most unfortunate—the failure to pay a loan due us at that moment. Moreover, it soon became a matter of common knowledge at the Conference that the Peking government was failing to meet all sorts of financial obligations at home as well as abroad, that it was not paying the salaries of its officials, its school-teachers. There were delegates in Washington who, it was claimed, had had no funds from their government for many months. A greater part of the moneys collected seemed to go into the pockets of the military chiefs of the provinces, whose leading occupation was to make life and property unsafe for the rich and to prevent political conditions becoming settled.

All of this had an important relation to these demands that the Chinese delegation presented to the Conference. Take the matter of tariff autonomy—nothing shows better China’s position. She does not and has not for many years controlled her customs. They are fixed by treaty with the powers and collected by them. They have been netting her recently but 3½ per cent. on her importations. Moreover, there have been vexatious discriminations and special taxes which have been both unfair and humiliating. China came to the Conference begging for freedom from all these restrictions. She wanted a tariff autonomy like other nations, and on the face of it what more reasonable request? And yet, after a very thorough inquiry by a sub-committee of the Conference, headed by Secretary Underwood, control of her tariff was denied her. To be sure, some of the worst of the discriminations were cleared up. She was given a rate which would immediately raise her revenue by some $17,000,000, and the promise of other changes in the near future which would increase the amount to something like $156,000,000. It looks small enough!

But why should China’s tariffs remain in the hands of foreigners? Why should she not be allowed to collect more than an effective 5 per cent. on her importations, while her exportations to this country, for instance, are weighted with tariffs all the way from 20 to 100 per cent.? Why, simply because the committee, after a long study made, as it declares and as there is no reason to doubt, in a spirit of sympathy and friendliness, believed that tariff autonomy would be a bad thing for China herself. When the committee presented its report, Senator Underwood said: “I am sure this sub-committee and the committee to which I am now addressing myself would gladly do much more for China if conditions in China were such that the outside powers felt they could do so with justice to China herself. I do not think there was any doubt in the minds of the sub-committee on this question that, if China at present had the unlimited control of levying taxes at the customs house, in view of the unsettled conditions now existing in China, it would probably work in the end to China’s detriment and to the injury of the world.”

So far as tariff autonomy was concerned, this judgment had to be accepted. It did not, however, answer the question why China should be able to collect but 5 per cent. on the machinery we send her, and we collect 35 to 50 per cent. on her silks. That is, it does not seem that if the powers believe that it is for the good of China that her duties should be kept at this low rate they would feel, as a matter of fairness, that they should grant reciprocity and collect no more on her goods than she is allowed to collect on theirs.

When you come to the question of extra-territoriality, by which is meant the establishment and conduct of judicial courts by foreigners in China, a humiliating condition that dates back almost to the beginning of her treaty relations with other countries, you find her own delegates asking no more than that the powers coöperate with China in taking initial steps toward improving and eventually abolishing the existing system.

There is no real solution of most of the problems which the Chinese delegation pleaded so eloquently and persistently in Washington to have solved, except the establishment within the country of a stable, representative government. That is, if the fine young Chinese that represented their country want to see their program carried out, they must go back to China and work within the country to secure order, education, development of their people along modern lines. There were too many Chinese at the Washington Conference who had spent the greater part of their lives in Europe and America and who were actually unfamiliar with home conditions.

A stable Chinese Republic depends, then, upon long, faithful efforts at reconstruction as well as upon freeing China from foreign encroachments. Not a few people came to the Conference believing that the only problem was to expel the Japanese from Shantung and force her to withdraw her twenty-one demands. If China had had a strong, united government in the past there would have been no Japanese now in Shantung, and no twenty-one demands. Shantung is a spoil of war and under the old code by which the world has acquired power and possessions “belonged” to Japan. That is, her claim to it was as valid as the claim of many nations, ourselves included, to certain territories which we hold without dispute. Japan pointed out that she had spent blood and treasure for Shantung, and this is true. And always when in the past men spent blood and treasure, the world has sanctioned their performance. Japan’s right to Shantung was questioned now because of the new code we are trying to put in force. That is, men are trying to prove that it shall be no longer by blood and treasure that we progress, but by good will, fair dealing, superior efficiency of mind and hand. The practical question now seems to be, When is this new code to begin to operate? In 1922, as Japan wished, or with the first entrance of the foreigner into China, as radical Chinese wished? And if it is to be adopted, is it to apply only to China? The code that would sweep Japan entirely out of China would also sweep us out of the Philippines and Haiti; England out of India and Egypt. There are strong young nationalist parties to-day in the Philippines and in Haiti, in India and in Egypt, using the same arguments that the Chinese delegation used in Washington, that the foreigners shall go; and in all of these countries as in China to-day, the reason given by the protecting or invading power, as you choose to regard it, that they stay, is that their going would be the worst thing in the world that could happen to the country.

In the case of Shantung and the twenty-one demands, the solution was going to depend upon how far Japan realized that these “valid” claims of hers—that is, valid under the old code—were handicaps and not advantages to her. How far she realized that by attempting to keep them in force she was going to cripple her own real advancement in China, increase and prolong the boycott of her goods, and incur the ill will of other nations, particularly of this nation.