Japan or Germany; the inside story of the struggle in Siberia

Preface

Should Japan go to Siberia? Before a single soldier of the Land of the Rising Sun crosses the frontier of the Russian Far East, and for many years after the Great War has ended, the pros and cons of that question will be debated.

What will the sending of the Japanese army to the Northland mean toward the development of the Far Eastern question and the struggle for the Mastery of the Pacific?

How will Japan emerge from the World War I

What effect will the participation of Japan in the solution of the Russian problem have on the Slav in Siberia and his ultimate destinies?

Some of these queries must needs be left to Time himself for answer. A study of conditions in the Russian Far East and in Japan, extending over the period immediately prefacing the date of the proposal that Japan should send troops to Russian territory, may assist to a better understanding of the situation, at least so far as it can develop until the march of events has carried it beyond its initial stages.

vii viii Preface

I have been in Japan several times at critical epochs in her history. I saw Japan and Siberia in 1916 and again in 1917. In writing this little book I have no other object in view than to place before those who are interested something of what I saw in the Orient and the Far Northeast. I am less of a prophet than a witness.

Should Japan go to Siberia?

By all means Yes, emphatically Yes, if she goes in the right spirit, and if when she goes a campaign of education and explanation goes with her. If Japan is merely to go to guard a pile of stores from the Huns, or even to prevent Bolsheviki disruption along the path of the Trans-Siberian, and the echo of the tramp of her legions bears no other significance than these, then No, a thousand times No.

If Japan goes with her eyes on the farther West, and with her goes a group of educators ; sympathetic, understanding, earnest men with hearts in their breasts and hands of fellowship outstretched to the Eussian in Siberia, who knows what may not come from such co-operation?

May the day not dawn when the Eussian who cares — and there are tens of thousands of him in Eussia and always will be — ^will look upon that army of the Island Empire of the East as

Preface

IX his own rallying-point, his own line of first defence? Head-work and heart-work might do wonders toward the bringing of that day.

We are in this war to a finish. We mean to stay in it mitil we down the Boche and all he stands for. Shall we forever blunder on in Russia with the English-speaking propensity for error! Shall the German be the only one who acts with wisdom — Machiavellian wisdom sometimes, but none the less far-seeing — as to the attributes of strange peoples? The German has made more mistakes as an international student of racial psychology than we. True. But in the instances where he has shown wisdom let us learn from him. Let us teach the Russian. He is eager to learn, really, and his only school is either dominated by or wholesomely tinctured with German propaganda. We do not need to stoop to methods of lying fraud to compete with the Boche in Russia. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is the finest basis in the world for international educational work.

Let Japan go to Siberia — and let something else go with her.

Let us not only save the stores in Vladivostok, the Trans-Siberian Railway Line, and the products and territory of that vast region from the

X Preface

Hun. Let us save the people of Siberia as well. Perhaps through that work we may gain ground further to the Westward, who knows?

Any work, however arduous, that bears even a remote promise of helping the Russian people to come into their own a little sooner, to check the disintegration of the vast land a moment earlier, to bring the dim light of the dawn of a newer, better day for Russia nearer, surer, is worth our every effort.

Let Japan go to Siberia. The ground is fallow. The seed of the righteousness of our cause will find sure root there. Let Japan go — and with her send the sowers.

Fbederic Coleman.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I The New Japan 15

II Japan and the War , 27

Chapter I

Ninety-nine per cent of the Englislimen and Americans in the Orient have strong suspicions that when Japan moves her troops to any particular locality in the Far East, Japanese soldiers, Japanese influence and, very probably, Japanese jurisdiction will be cemented to that locality so tightly that a temporary expedient will drift in time into a permanent occupation.

A study of conditions in the Orient in 1916 and 1917 shows ample reason for an abandonment of such theories or at least a very wholesale alteration of them.

The fact that the wars which Japan has waged with foreign powers have been for her national security rather than for territorial aggrandisement, or at least that national security has been the leading factor in Japan's war policy, is a conclusion which clever students of Oriental affairs are becoming daily more willing to accept.

Japan's continual encroachments on the sovereignty of China, particularly in Manchuria, have very naturally obscured the real issue at times. A man who has seen and studied Japan's efforts to get a commercial foothold in Eastern Inner Mongolia cannot be blamed if he fails to see wherein the security of the Japanese Empire has necessitated some of the measures which Japan has allowed her officials and her nationals to adopt.

Nevertheless the underlying motive of Japan's policy to-day is fear. Japan is afraid of isolation. A certain number of Japanese jingoes write and talk continuously about Japan's greatness and her ability to press military domination. In no country in the world is there a greater difference between the loud-mouthed jingo of the nation and the sober, responsible statesman. On frequent occasions a series of articles in some paper of the comparative standing of the Tokio Yamato talk brazenly about the abrogation of the Anglo-Japanese treaty, or the forcing by Japan of America and Australia to change their laws in accordance with Japanese wishes. One of Japan's publicists frequently contributes an article to some magazine or review in Japan which, if taken seriously, would lead the reader to believe that not only was Japan's security thoroughly established, but that she was in a position to dictate to the other great powers as to whatever policy she decided to follow in the Far East.

People who read these things and from them judge Japan make a woful mistake. The most long-headed among the Japanese have long seen that Japan 's position among the nations of the world required friendly co-operation and sympathy with some powers and actual alliance with others.

Russia's encroachments in the Far East prior to the Russo-Japanese war were actually a serious menace to Japan's security. Imperial Russia was a potential menace to Japan subsequent to the war which ended in 1905.

When, in the early part of this century, Count Hayashi in London brought off the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and made it the basis of Japan's foreign policy, he procured for Japan something that was so patent a necessity for the Island Empire of the East that it has been held by many students of Oriental affairs to have been, until the present war, a one-sided affair, very much to Japan's benefit.

l8 Japan or Germany

While Japan has so arranged her railways that they ring 'round her rocky island coasts and are planned with every eye to their strategic value in time of possible warfare, the vital defence of Japan rests in her ability to keep open the sea routes which allow her to keep touch mth the outside world. The fact that it is extremely unlikely, if ixot impossible, for any power to conduct a successful military operation on Japanese territory does not alter the fact that, should Japan be overwhelmed at sea and her islands surrounded by a. hostile cordoil of battleships and cruisers, her ultimate defeat would be certain.

In plain English, Japan's security has demanded for many years, and always will demand, an alliance with a power which is sufficiently strong at sea so that Japan will be freed from the danger of isolation.

A very brief study of Japan's history is required to show how gradually is coming the more general adoption in Japan — an adoption which is by no means general as yet — or the more statesmanlike and common-sense view of Japan's position internationally in contradistinction to the militarist and aggressive policy of those Japanese who have an inflated idea of Japan's importance and capacity.

The outcry of the Japanese press in 1915 against England and the almost universal criticism by Japan's newspapers of the Anglo- Japanese Alliance was promulgated and fostered by the extreme militarist group. It was one of the signs in 1915 of a last, dying effort on the part of the old militarist element to assert itself. Another of its expiring struggles to impose its policies on the country was the effort to force on to China the infamous Five Group Demands.

In those days Japan's foreign policy was in the hands of the Genro, or Elder Statesmen. The Premier, Count Okuma, was a mere tool in their hands. He and his Cabinet had no voice in the foreign policy of Japan. A better element in Japan was coming to the fore. The younger group of Japan's statesmen realised the weakness of Japan's position. The Genro were aged men; their lives were drawing to a close. An increasing number of the thinkers of Japan saw that when the Genro passed, a system and a policy would pass with them.

As the eyes of the Japanese began to open to that situation, two schools took definite form: one was the militarist school, which based its ideas and theories upon German thought and German teaching. As in Germany, the professor, scientist and publicist faction supplied many advocates to the point of view held by the militarists. The opposing school represented a more liberal line of thought. It realised Japan *s weakness if isolation should be its portion — whether that isolation would be military or economic. It saw that Japan's commercial future in China was of vital necessity to Japan's successful development. The raw materials of the Asiatic continent must be procured by Japan, as she has insufficient mines of her own. Japan's manufactured products must be marketed in China if she would continue the development of her industries and commerce. China became recognised as a necessity to Japan. Moreover, the new school of thought realised that the only possible method by which Japan's ideals could be attained was by gaining the friendship of China rather than its antagonism.

In October, 1916, when Count Terauchi became Premier, Japan was standing at the crossroads. Already those who had argued that Japan should follow the policy of Germany, were meeting more and more opposition. Terauchi, supposed to be militarist, pure and simple, showed that he held many liberal ideas. He declared at the outset that the policy of his Government would be to cooperate unequivocally with the Allies. He more than once displayed evidences that he conscientiously desired to live up to his obligations, so far as the war was concerned, and that so long as he was at the helm in Japan she could be depended upon to do so, at least to the extent of his power to guide his country and his countrymen.

Then came with 1917 the entrance of the United States into the war. America was no longer the great quiescent, dormant power on the other side of the Pacific, but was taking rapid steps toward becoming one of the strongest naval and military powers in the world. That change in Japan's great neighbour to the eastward put the final nails in the coffin of the policies of aggression advocated by Japan's extreme militarists. The only argument which they can bring to bear to-day against the liberal policies of New Japan is a croaking prophecy that Germany may be able to emerge victorious from the war. If Germany won, the element in Japan which has advocated that their country should follow in the footsteps of Germany would be undeniably strengthened. But even Japan, so far away from the conflict in Europe and so little informed as to the actual progress of events, is beginning to realise that Germany cannot win the war.

Japan is taking advantage, commercially and industrially, of the situation created in the Orient by the World War. She is leaving no stone unturned to gain a foothold wherever opportunity presents and is developing situations which she knows well may not exist for many years. This is particularly true of China. So long as Japan conducts her negotiations in the open, however, her crying need for Chinese raw material and her equal need of China as a market for her manufactured products give no little excuse to her efforts in that direction. She is again spurred by fear.

If she failed to take advantage of the absence of many of her competitors, she could never hope to successfully compete with them in certain lines and in certain localities. The desire on the part of Japan to push her commercial propaganda during the war almost assumes the character of a fevered rush for some newly discovered goldfield. She wants all the advantage she can get. She knows she is going to need it when the war is over and the great commercial and industrial nations turn their eyes to the Far East. She knows that she will need every advantage she has gained, and more, in the business war that is coming one day in the Orient. The advanced Japanese is under little hallucination as to the capability of most Japanese industrial concerns to hold their own on equal terms with the big manufacturers of America, England and Germany.

Just as her need for national security demands friendship and alliance with a group of great powers, so her ultimate industrial and economic welfare depends to a considerable extent on friendly relations with some of her most strenuous competitors.

CHAPTER 11 Japan and the War

When I go to Japan I talk to many Japanese from many walks of life.

A sojourn in Japan before I went to Siberia and a stay of some weeks in Tokyo on my return journey filled my ears with arguments from the Japanese standpoint on the question of whether or not Japan should send her troops to Harbin, to Vladivostok, along the Trans- Siberian Railway as far west as Irkutsk, or even farther to the westward.

As all the world has discussed what England, France, and America think of such action by eJapan, and the effect on the mind and temper of the Russian that would be the immediate result of a Japanese army on Siberian soil, the opinions and ideas of the Japanese themselves should not be left out of consideration.

I went to Siberia with the full knowledge that the Russians in the Pri-Amur country held very decided views about Japan. The Japanese were unpopular in the Russian Far East,

I discovered the extent of the feeling, iti causes and how it has been fostered.

When I returned to Japan I was an advocate of Japanese troops, under certain circumstances, being sent to Harbin.

I lost no opportunity to get the right perspective in Tokyo. I left Yokohama for Vancouver with the confirmed belief that before the smart little soldiers of Japan's army were landed in Vladivostok or placed in the towns along the Trans-Siberian Eailway the situation must be so serious that such action was recognised as inevitable. Conditions in Eussia must needs first be well-nigh hopeless.

Of that, however, more anon. First, what did my friends in Japan think of all these things!

To begin with, my friends in Japan, with rare exceptions, were somewhat less interested in the war than you might think.

Japan went into the war without any rush of fine, high enthusiasm. The man in the street in Japan knew little about the w^hole business. The Government did it all. All Japan knew that the country had gone into the war out of loyalty to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. But Japan was a long way from the fighting in Europe, and the fighting in the Orient, — the fight ing with which, the Japanese had to do, — was of little consequence, after all, and was soon over.

Japanese editors, of whom I know many, always reminded me of the restricted extent to which Japan had pledged her help. **Our war zone, it must be remembered,'* they would say, ^*is bounded on the west by the Indian Ocean. Read the terms of the Alliance and you will see that. Further to the west the British Government does not want us to go. We have always been told that our part in this war is to guard the Orient. We have done that. The sending of some of our fleet to the Mediterranean was an exception, and naturally was discussed as such by Japan. On all sides was criticism of the Government for taking such a step — every one wanted to know what reward Japan would get."

Sooner or later it comes to that in Japan, I'm afraid.

*^What will we get out of it?" That question is at the back of all the arguments about the war. And naturally so, perhaps, in Japan.

This is a war, we say, for democracy. Japan is not a democracy. Count Terauchi, the able Premier of Japan, said not long ago that democracy is one of the greatest dangers of the age. Terauchi, whom I admire sincerely and who has proved himself to be a strong man indeed during the past year and a half, is no democrat. He might be an even stronger man if he was a democrat, but he could not, then, be Premier of Japan.

Thus, if Japan is not a democracy and wants none of democracy, so far as its own Government is concerned, why should the Japanese not look carefully into the possible gain that may come to them before they take a further step toward war — real war, fighting and bloodshed and casualty and loss ? I

**We took Kiao-chow from the Germans, and our fleet not only convoyed the Australian troop-ships, but kept the Pacific clean of German raiders. Germany's islands in the Southem Seas, too, we occupied,'' said Mr. Tsushima to me one day. Mr. Tsushima is the editor of the Tokyo Nichi Nichi, which I have heard called the Daili/ Mail of Japan.

**You see, Japan has been doing everything in her power, seen and unseen, to assist the Allies," he continued. *^Yet the Japanese are called selfish by many of you, because Japan has made a great economic advancement."

I confess I had called the Japanese selfish. They may have no monopoly of that virtue, but they are selfish. I had told Mr. Tsushima, further, that I thought Japan too indifferent to the war — that Japan did not pay the sort of serious attention to the war she should do.

"What would you have Japan do!" queried Mr. Tsushima. **Are the Western Allies in a round-about way urging Japan to mobilise her soldiers and send them to Europe?''

I admitted I could not say that. Pichon in France had long wanted the army of Japan on the Western Front, but few supporters of such a policy stood with him.

**Only a small section of Japanese favoured M. Pichon 's proposal," continued Mr. Tsushima. **No general interest was aroused in Japan by it, but it always crops up when there is a reverse for the Entente in the war situation. I think no Japanese statesmen of common sense have considered the matter seriously. If the Entente armies reach a point where they really require reenforcement by the Japanese army, Japan may not shirk her duty, but before the Allies request Japan's mobilisation let them review the reasons why Japan joined in the war, and what material assistance she has rendered. Then let them make up their minds as to what Japan will gain. ' '

He had reached the moot point at last. Most of them come to it, in Japan, if you give tliem time.

One of the most astute of Japan's political leaders became very frank with me after dinner one evening. We were discussing the steel embargo. America was stopping the shipment of steel to Japan and Japan was very much upset in consequence.

I held that Japan was not pulling her fair share of the war-load. She could well release much of her shipping to assist the Atlantic freight fleets. She could, without entailing actual hardship in Japan, send ships where bottoms were badly needed by the Allies, — where the shortage of ships was the most vital point of weakness in the Allies' armour.

My Japanese friend commenced his argument in reply with the keynote — What would Japan gain? He asked me to put myself in the place of the average Japanese — the man of average intelligence. This is how he thought I would then view the proposal that Japan should make further sacrifice in the war: The Japanese are not a popular race. If they are to believe what they hear and what they read, Canadians, Americans of the Pacific Coast, Australians, and the English and Americans in the Far East : — in short, those of the English-speaking races with whom they are m a sense neighbours and with whom they sometimes come in touch, are not imbued with love for the Japanese. Quite the contrary. Russians do not love the Japanese.

When the war ends, all agree that a great commercial struggle will commence in the Orient. A combination of interests may or may not be made between nations, but who will look after the interests of Japan! Who beside herself? Will friendly hands be stretched out to her to assist her industrially and commercially? Never. If combinations are made, they will not include Japan. She will have to fight alone. She is less powerful financially than her big competitors, too. She has less wealth, less industrial capacity as yet, less commercial ability. She is a baby in business with few years of experience of organised business effort or combined commercial action behind her.

What is her wisest course ? To keep her ships and foster her growing industries ? To increase as best she may and while she may her growing hold on the commerce of China, taking advantage of the absence of her competitors from many a field in which she has none too much time to gain great advantage before they return to fight her with better weapons and undeniable inlierent advantages of more than one kind? Or should Japan give freely her help to the Allies, reduce her shipping fleets, hamper her export trade, cut down the raw material that is coming in to feed her mills and factories! For what? To beat Germany! Then what? What of the aftermath? Will her sacrifice be rewarded? How?

Do you catch the drift? Do you see the point of view from the Japanese side? I did. I not only saw it then, but I kept rubbing shoulders with it all the time I was in Japan. The Oriental is not usually so outspoken as my friend the political leader. He camouflages. But he is no more inscrutable than are many Western men. When he has an idea in the back of his head, a fundamental idea that sticks there and on which his theories are based and his house of argument and reasoning is built, it can be found, usually, if one gets under the surface.

The same thing applied with relation to talk about sending Japanese soldiers away from Japan to fight for the Allied Cause. Japan has had a habit of getting some quid pro quo when she fights. Her war with China in 1894 found her too young and weak to insist on the benefits she craved. In 1900 she lost nothing in the Peace Negotiations that followed the Boxer

Trouble in China. In 1904, when she defeated Eussia, her ambitions were clipped somewhat by watchful Powers. Still, Japan has been gaining, gaining gradually. Formosa, Korea, the railway zone in Manchuria, and now Kiao-chow (not to mention other parts of China where she is gaining gradually, too), have fallen under her protecting mantle.

There is another small prospective gain that comes to mind in these days of tortured, disintegrated, groaning Russia. Before the Great War, Manchuria, that province of China in which China has so little authority, was under a sort of dual protection. At the end of the Russo-Japanese war the Russians administered the Chinese Eastern Railway zone from Harbin south to Chang-chun. There Japanese administration commenced, and ran down the railway to Mukden, then south to Port Arthur and Dairen, as well as eastward to Antung, on the road to Korea. The Japanese had worked hard to make the district along the railway productive. From Mukden north to Chang-chun the soya bean was being grown in increasing quantities. On to the north, from Chang-chun to Harbin, lay the most fertile lands of all. Not only along the railway but beside the River Sungari was untouched, virgin soil that Russian supervision bade fair to leave untouched for all time. So Japan began negotiations with Russia to extend her sphere of influence to Harbin, and take over the administration of the railway zone from Harbin south. The rights of navigation on the upper reaches of the Sungari, hitherto exclusively Eussian, were also to go to Japan.

I was in Tokyo in 1916 when Viscount Motono, now Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Terauchi Government, came back from his position as Ambassador to Petrograd to take his new folio. Before he left Russia he had tried a diplomatic fall with his friends there. He had won out. The bit of railway south of Harbin was to go to Japan. It was settled. Just when the change was to be made I could not discover. After the war, surely, but possibly before. I imagined that the chaotic state of affairs in Russia toward the end of 1917 would shelve all such deals indefinitely, but not long ago in Peking, Baron Hayashi, Japan's able Minister to China, told me he hoped the final steps would shortly be taken whereby the transfer would be consummated.

Russian maladministration in Manchuria will bear one sure result. Wherever Japan may send her soldiers before the war is done, whatever reward she may expect or gain for the part she plays, her coveted line to Harbin will be hers inevitably and irrevocably. That will put her soldiers in Harbin, as railway guards, in such numbers as she deems necessary.

En passant, it won't be such a bad thing for the Manchurian farmer, after all. He will benefit all along that strip of railway from Harbin to Chang-chun, just as his brother agriculturalist has benefited further south. The Japanese farmer cannot compete with him. He is one of the best intensive farmers going, is the Manchurian. He can do more work and live more cheaply than any Japanese immigrant who may be induced to brave the rigours of the Manchurian climate. Few Japanese will come, and those who come will either drift back to the towns or go away. The Manchurian farmer is safe. It's disappointing in some ways, to some Japanese, but it can't be helped. The overflow population of Japan, if it finds it has to move out to make room for more overflow population some day, will not come to Manchuria — not in sufficient numbers to cut much figure.

Wliile on the subject of the way Japan looks upon rewards for effort, I frequently discussed the question of the future of Tsing-tau.

The rights Germany enjoyed in Shan-tung and her towns of Tsing-tau and Kiao-cliow were appropriated by the Japanese when they defeated the Boche in China in 1914. Japan made a sort of an agreement to evacuate Tsing-tau and go home one day, but the document is open to many an interpretation and the man who hopes to live until Shan-tung is free of Japanese control is planning a longevity which would be as extraordinary as the evacuation itself.

Not long ago I probed into this subject with a Japanese gentleman of sufficiently high official standing so that I was placed under a promise not to give his name. He said that the declaration of war by China against Germany and the cancellation of all the treaties and agreements with Germany left China and Japan free to discuss the disposition of the rights Germany had enjoyed in Shan-tung until Japan took them over.

After Japan had taken possession of Tsing-tau and ousted the Germans, she made a treaty with China in which she agreed to take the question up with Germany at the Peace Conference which would follow the Great War, and subsequently tell China all about it. That is not the phraseology used, but a study of the documents brings one to that sort of feeling. China's declaration of war against Germany, then, according to my official Japanese friend, rendered that Chino-Japanese agreement null and void.

*^Wliat is going to happen T' I asked.

^*We will make an altogether new treaty with China about Shan-tung, ' ' was the reply.