JAPAN SHOWS HER TEETH
Mr. Obata had succeeded Baron Hayashi as Japanese minister in December. He was a dour, silent man who had been much in China, as consular officer and in the Legation. He had sat with Mr. Hioki in the conferences in which the twenty-one demands were pressed on China. He was known to be a very direct representative, in the diplomatic service, of the militarist masters of Japan. His appointment was to the Chinese ominous of a continuance of aggressive tactics. A wail of indignation went up from the Chinese press, but Mr. Obata remained. In my personal relations with this secretive man I thought I saw gradually emerging a broader and more humane outlook.
The new Japanese minister called on the 2nd of February, 1919, at the Foreign Office and expressed resentment at the attitude of the Chinese delegation at Paris. The Chinese representatives had said they were willing to publish all the secret agreements which the diplomacy of Nippon had been weaving around China. Japan objected. The sacred treaties between China and Japan were not to be divulged without the consent of both parties. If China was so anxious to purge herself of secret diplomacy, let her publish first the agreement of September 24, 1918, which gave the special privileges of Germany in Shantung to Japan. The displeasure of the Japanese in Paris was reënforced by Mr. Obata in Peking by what the Chinese took to be a veiled threat. "Great Britain," said he, "is preoccupied with internal disorders. She cannot assist China. But Japan is fully able to assist, as she has a navy of 500,000 tons, and an army of more than a million men ready for action."
The Shantung agreement had been the consummation of the Japanese-controlled Minister of Communications. The Chinese Foreign Office was not consulted when the Chinese minister at Tokyo signed it, and it had not been ratified by the Chinese Government. The Chinese people viewed it merely as a draft, and demanded its cancellation with the return to Japan of the moneys received under it by the politicians.
Mr. Obata's threat, which the Chinese took to be an attempt to intimidate the Chinese delegation at Paris, evoked a deluge of telegraphic messages urging the President and the Government by all possible means to back their delegates. These expressions came from men of all parties. Chen Lu, Acting Foreign Minister, tried in vain to minimize the effect of the interview. Called before the Chamber of Representatives in secret session, he said that the newspaper reports had been "somewhat exaggerated," and added: "In this time when the right and justice of the Allied Powers have definitely destroyed militarism and despotism, we Chinese, although as yet a weak country, may consider every menace of foreign aggression as a thing of the past, and accept it with a smile."
The Government at first cabled the Paris delegation not to make the secret treaties public; they were not held to be valid by the Chinese Government, and publication might lend them force. Later, the Government cabled, leaving it entirely to the discretion of the delegates. The diplomatic commission of the Chin Pu Tang recommended this. Meanwhile, Mr. Liang Chi-chao had gone to France. He meant to go by way of the United States, where I had prepared for him an itinerary and letters of introduction. Then his intimate associate, Tang Hua-lung, was assassinated in Vancouver. Liang, fearful of a similar fate, went straight to France, evading the Kuo Min Tang sympathizers in America. Ex-Premier Hsiung Hsi-ling told me that Liang was to inform the Chinese delegates unofficially about the state of things in China.
This was so bad that the American recommendation that the powers keep their money away from either party until China was reunited looked more and more desirable. An influential and responsible Chinese, who talked with me about the clique that ran the War Participation Bureau, made this statement: "The danger to China is in the efforts of Tuan's militarists. Japan is giving them money to build up an army. With this they will try to overawe the President and force him to fall in with their aims. The negotiations for peace with the south will cease; the war with the south will go on."
One of the most burning questions both to private individuals and the press was how to oblige Japan and her officials to cease their support of the northern militarists by the sending of money and arms. Certainly a fire was built under them. The Japanese minister called on me on the 9th of January to say that his government would now join in a declaration on financial assistance to China. He had to make reservations about the loan of 20,000,000 yen, pledged in connection with the secret military agreement, also as to the so-called "industrial" loans. The secret loan arrangement had been made with three Japanese banks: the Bank of Chosen, the Industrial Bank of Japan, and the Bank of Formosa, by the War Participation Bureau. With this, the minister said, he could not interfere. Also, his government was in principle favouring a restriction of the sale of arms, as America recommended; but it would be best for the powers to say nothing about it, as their joint statement would be taken as an attempt to restrain Japan, which was the only country able to furnish arms to China. Besides, the War Participation Bureau had a troublesome private contract for arms with the Tayeh Company, which the Government felt it couldn't interfere with. So there you are, as Henry James would put it.