Democracy and the Eastern question

Contents

CHAPTEB PAGE

I The Issue 3

The problem as posed in the East — The issue the same as in Europe —Militarism versus democracy — Hopes of the democratic peoples of Asia — Causes of war in the far East — Dr. Charles Eliot's report — Dangerous tendencies — Protagonists of the new order — Viscount Grey on a league of nations — Relation of the Eastern question to a league — The opposing theory — Marquis Okuma on diplomacy — Craft and secrecyits requisites — Okuma and Bernhardi — Japan and the question of alliances — Japan and the spoils of war — Dr. Nitobe's opinions — The Anglo- Japanese Alliance — Its relation to a league of nations — Proposed by Germany — Reasons for the alliance analyzed — Alliances and the causes of war-^The war cloud in the far East — Need for measures to prevent war — The problem and the United States — Essence of the problem.

Foreword

This work is not presented as a non-partizan or an impartial discussion of the subject. It could not be that, for it embodies the deep convictions formed and accumulated in the course of years of close contact with the matters at issue, and the opinions which, I hope, shine through the presentation of the material were born in the process of "living with" the problem. Few foreigners that is, few Westerners could live in the far East during the last twenty years and still be impartial on the questions included in the position of China and her contacts with Japan.

Some of the facts and much of the criticism presented in the following pages were suppressed or repressed during the Great War for reasons at times connected with the war politics of nations, and at times because of legal restraints upon their publication. That time of restricted publicity has passed with the need, or the fancied need for it, and foreign residents of China and Japan now feel that the truth, and nothing less than the whole truth, about these matters should be known to Western peoples. The design of this work, therefore, is to present the case as it appears to an overwhelming majority of foreign residents of the East. I have not encumbered the book by giving much of the contrary side of events and of the contrary arguments. As in the case of Germany and the responsibility of the German military party for the Great War, the evidence is decisively preponderating, although in this case Japan, like Germany, can put in a more or less plausible defense. I leave that defense to the extensive Japanese propaganda in America and elsewhere.

I have, whenever it served the subject and argument, chosen

FOREWORD

to include comments of my own that were published previously rather than to state the same matters again in slightly different language; and I also have preferred, when that has been germane, to quote from other writers, from official reports and documents, and from the columns of newspapers, rather than to give my own views of the topics under discussion. In choosing the newspapers to quote I have whenever possible given preference to those of British nationality, because the British press in the far East scarcely can be accused of being incurably anti- Japan or of being under the influence of ' ' German propaganda." About Japanese affairs I have quoted from the two leading foreign papers published there — the "Japan Advertiser," an American owned and edited paper, and the ' ' Japan Chronicle, ' ' recognized as the principal British organ. The ' ' Japan Chronicle ' ' especially, because of the long residence there of its editor and publisher, is recognized as carrying almost an authoritative weight ; and it, moreover, is pertinent that it is published under the severe regulations of the Japanese Government press censorship.

The sources usually are given in conjunction with the quotations except in case of private reports and secret documents, when I have withheld names of the authors and where I obtained them. They are in all cases, however, authentic. I should like to recommend to those who may desire additional light on this subject the several books of the well-known English writer, Lenox Simpson ("Putnam-Weale"), and the works of Professor Hornbeck, as giving recent accounts and criticisms of value.

Thomas F. Millard

New York, March 20, 1919.

Chapter I

The problem as posed in the East — ^The issue the same as in Europe — Militarism versus democracy — Hopes of the democratic peoples of Asia — Causes of war in the far East — Dr. Charles Eliot's report — Dangerous tendencies — Protagonists of the new order — Viscoimt Grey on a league of nations — Relation of the Eastern question to a league — The opposing theory — Marquis Okuma on diplomacy — Craft and secrecy its requisites — Okuma and Bernhardi — Japan and the question of alliances — Japan and the spoils of war — Dr. Nitobe's opinions — The Anglo- Japanese Alliance — Its relation to a league of nations — Proposed by Germany — Reasons for the alliance analyzed — Alliances and the causes of war — The war cloud in the far East — Need for measures to prevent war — The problem and the United States — Essence of the problem,

THE problem of the Great War and its aftermath as posed in the far East is identical in principle with the same problem elsewhere in the world. In Europe the issue is seen distinctly as a conflict of opposing theories of international polity, termed concisely militarism and democracy.

In Europe Germany is taken as the apotheosis of autocratic militarism, and contrasted with her, with a feeling of being marked for her impending assault or aggression, were nations that were weaker in the sense of being less readj'' and efficient for war because they are more democratic. In the far East Japan stands for autocracy and militarism, and China has the position of the weak and apprehensive democracy. As the issue of militarism in Europe is not confined to Europe and cannot be confined there, but embraces the whole of civilization, so is the issue as posed in the far East equally embracing.

This issue of militarism vers^ls democracy in recent times has been so extensively analyzed and commented on that all intelligent persons have some understanding of it and of its terminology. The discussion has resolved itself into terms and phrases standing for the opposing theories. Certain things are associated with certain other things, certain conditions are accompanied by certain other conditions, certain causes lead to certain effects. It is understood that the autocratic forms of government and militarism conform with and are indispensable to each other. Predatory imperialism also is indissolubly connected with autocracy and militarism. We have become familiar with the euphemisms which imperialistic diplomacy has coined to describe its processes: "special position," "peaceful penetration," "paramount interests," "strategical requirements," "spheres of influence," "defensive frontiers," "buffer states," "strategical railways," "secret diplomacy," "economic nationalism," all these are from the lexicon of predatory imperialism, and have covered the earth.

Opposed to the policies which these phrases express, a new lot of phrases have been coined: "rights of weaker nations," ' ' self-determination of peoples, " " autonomy of races, " " open diplomacy. ' '

All of the old-school methods of world politics, and the practical applications of them, have been worked in the far East until the democratic and weaker nations there are sick nigh unto death of them, until the democratic peoples of the Asiatic world, comprising nearly half of the earth's population, are now listening with strained and painful expectation to the voices of the new day as expressed in the new slogans.

Although the principles and the general conditions of the issue of militarism versus democracy in the far East are the same as to type as the issue in Western countries, I shall, in trying to demonstrate Oriental aspects of the question, confine the discussion largely to utterances and examples originating or applying specially to the East. Just before the outbreak of the Great War, Dr. Charles W. Eliot, president emeritus of Harvard University, made a visit to the far East to investigate and to report on conditions there as they effect peace and war. Dr. Eliot made an exhaustive report, from which I will quote :

The Causes of War Have Changed

Advocacy of these slow-acting means of preventing wars in the East implies that within the superintended areas the probable causes of international war have changed within fifty years. Dynastic and religious wars, and wars in support of despotic government are no longer probable; and racial antipathies are held in check by the superintending European powers in all the countries to which that superintendence extends. Thus, the Pax Britannica has practically put an end to the racial and religious warfare which from time to time dislocated the Asiatic countries over which British influence now extends. Small outbreaks of racial antipathy or religious fanaticism occur locally; but these are insignificant exceptions to the prevailing tranquillity. The fighting Great Britain has done to establish and maintain this quieting influence has been fighting on a small scale compared with that which went on among European nations during the nineteenth century, or among Oriental peoples in many earlier centuries, and the Pax Britannica has therefore been a great contribution to the peace of the world.

It is not only in the East that the probable causes of international war have lately changed. All over the world, it is reasonable to suppose that wars for dynastic motives will occur no more, and that religious motives for warfare will hereafter be incidental or secondary instead of primary. It is also reasonable to believe that wars in support of absolute monarehs and despotic government will henceforth be unknown, so general is the worldwide movement towards constitutional government and free institutions — a movement from fifty to three hundred and fifty years old among the different nations of the West, but comparatively recent in the East.

The Future Causes of War

What, then, will be the probable causes of international war in the future?

The causes of war in the future are likely to be national distrusts, dislikes, and apprehensions, which have been nursed in ignorance, and fed on rumors, suspicions, and conjectures propagated byunscrupulous newsmongers, until suddenly developed by some untoward event into active hatred, or widespread alarm which easily passes into panic. While the Eastern peoples — far and near — will have some causes of their own for war, because in some instances neither their geographical limits nor their governmental institutions are as yet settled, among the Western peoples the most probable future causes of war, in addition to national antipathies, will be clashing commercial or industrial interests, contests for new markets and fresh opportunities for profitable investments of capital, and possibly, extensive migrations of laborers. All modern governments, in which life, liberty, and property are secured by public law, desire to extend the commerce and trade of their people, to develop their home industries by procuring markets for their products in foreign lands, to obtain in comparatively unoccupied or undeveloped parts of the earth opportunities for the profitable employment of their accumulated capital, and to gain room for a possible surplus of population in the future. Eastern and Western peoples alike feel the desire for a large, strong governmental unit, too formidable to be attacked from Avitliout, too cohesive to be disintegrated from within. Both East and West exhibit the modern irrepressible objection to alien rule, especially when such rule, like that of the Manchus or the Turks, produces poverty and desolation, denies liberty, and prevents progress.

Several Western nations which have the saving, or accumulating habit, are eager to make loans to remote and comparatively poor nations which are in great need of money to pay for costly public works of transportation, conservancy, public health, and public security. In making such loans the bankers of each Western nation expect the support and protection of their own government. As security for such loans the borrowing government, national, provincial or municipal, pledges some of its resources; and if the expected interest or dividend is not paid, the lender forecloses. Hence serious international complications. In this lending business the Western powers come into competition with each other, and stimulated by mutual jealousies, engage in aggressive operations against the Oriental peoples, who have been as a rule helpless in their hands, until Japan adopted and improved on the Western military organization and methods of fighting, and succeeded for a short time in borrowing the money needed to pay the heavy costs of a modern warfare.

Dr. Eliot 's conclusions, which since then have received much confirmation from events of the Great War, were that among the principal causes for wars thereafter in the far East would be, (a) frictions among Oriental nations due to clashes of interest and ambitions, and possible aggressions one upon another, and (b) antagonisms developing from commercial and financial competitions there of foreign nations.

The principal protagonists of the new order for world politics have been President Wilson, Viscount Grey, Lord Bryce, William H. Taft, and a few statesmen in Europe. Those men all speak out of ample experience in political finesse and administration. Certainly no higher authority on modern diplomacy and international policy lives than Lord Grey. In his noteworthy brochure on the proposed league of nations as a substitute for former methods of handling international affairs he wrote [the italics are mine] :

The second condition essential to the foundation of the League of Nations is that the Governments and peoples of the States willing to found it understand clearly that it will impose some limitations upon the national action of each, and may entail some inconvenient obligations.

Smaller and weaker nations will have rights that must he respected and upheld by the league. Stronger nations must forego the right to make their interests prevail against the weaker hy force, and all States must forego the right in any dispute to resort to force before other methods of settlement by conference, conciliation, or if need he arbitration, have been tried.

This is the limitation. The obligation is that if any nation will not observe this limitation upon its national actions, if it breaks the agreement which is the basis of the league, rejects all peaceful methods of settlement and resorts to force against another nation, they must one and all use their combined force against it.

The economic pressure that such a league could use would in itself be very powerful, and the action of some of the smaller States composing the league could^not perhaps go beyond the economic pressure, but those States that have the power must be ready to use all the force, economic, military, or naval, they possess. It must be clearly understood and accepted that deflection from or violation of the agreement by one or more States does not absolve all or any of the others from the obligation to enforce the agreement. Anything less than this is of no value.

It is not my purpose to bring a discussion of the lea^e of nations into the scope of this work except to show how the conditions which it aims to eradicate are bound up as importantly in the far Eastern question as they are in the situation of Europe. There is general agreement in the democratic countries that something must be devised that will be a great improvement over the old-school diplomacy to prevent or to deter ambitious and predatory nations from disturbing continually the peace of the world; and it will be of little use to invent and organize a plan to do this if there is no adequate comprehension of the work which it has to do. A solution of the Eastern question is a part, and a very important part, of the work a league or its substitute has before it.

It is an open secret that some eminent statesmen in Europe and a few in America are not favorably disposed to the idea of a league of nations. Mr. Arthur Balfour, Lord Lansdowne, Georges Clemenceau, Baron Sonnino, are some statesmen who have revealed that they have slight faith in the ability of such a league to function in place of the former system of alliances between powers. In the East, also, there are dissenters, especially in Japan, from the league idea. It is interesting to note the views of Marquis Okuma, the ' ' Sage of Japan, ' ' who was Japanese prime minister when the Great War started and for two years afterwards, who was responsible for Japan's war policy in its inception, and since the death of Marquis Yamagata is Senior Elder Statesman. Marquis Okuma left office in 1916, but he speaks with as much authority as any Japanese living. He occasionally warns and admonishes his countrymen about questions of domestic and world politics, and recently he made some oracular comments on

V. THE ISSUE 9

diplomacy. On his views the "Japan Chronicle" of May 9, 1918, said editorially:

Marquis Okuma has a remarkable faculty of being all things to all men. He is President of the Japan Peace Society, and has expounded with fluency the benefits of arbitration and the necessity of the limitation of armaments in the case of all countries save Japan. On the other hand, he can contribute to a militarist organ like the "Kokumin" an article which is the negation of all that he has advanced when habited as an apostle of peace. He is jingo and pacifist by turns. To a deputation of American publicists he will orate on the bonds uniting Japan and America and condemn the journalism which sows discord, while in the columns of his magazine he will write of America and American policy in the most provocative manner.

But the veteran statesman always appears more natural in the guise of jingo than in that of pacifist, as might be expected from the author of the Twenty-one Demands on China, In view of that episode some of the observations which he makes in the article appearing in the "Kokumin" (translated in yesterday's issue) are 3f much interest. "International relations," he says, "are quite unlike the relations subsisting between individuals. Morality and sincerity do not govern a country's diplomacy, which is guided by selfishness, pure and simple. It is considered the secret of diplomacy to forestall rivals by every crafty means available." Finally, he lays 3own the proposition that a nation must possess both wealth and military force to make its authority felt.

It will be noted that there is a great similarity in the point of view of Bernhardi and Okuma. "Might," says the former, "is at once the supreme right, and the dispute as to what is right is settled by the arbitrament of war." Again, "A most difficult problem is raised by the question how far, for political objects moral in themselves, means may be employed which must be regarded as reprehensible in the life of the individual." Or still again, "The relations between two States must often be termed a latent war, which is provisionally being waged in peaceful rivalry. Such a position justifies the employment of hostile methods, cunning, and deception, just as war itself does, since in such a ease both parties are determined to employ them."

It cannot be said, therefore, that the veteran statesman has justified the policy which he-expounds in the "Kokumin" by the results accompUshed, and we are glad to find a Japanese journal like the

"Asahi" condemning on moral grounds his advocacy of national egoism. Marquis Okuma's disparagement of the unmilitary Allies and appreciation of the military Teuton may therefore be discounted. The end is not yet.

The trend of Japanese intellectual reactions from the war is displayed more fully in later chapters of this work, but as showing how some Japanese thinkers are trying to adapt the national point of view to the lessons of the war may be taken the opinions of Dr. Inazo Nitobe, who has taken occasion to warn his countrymen that too frank a spirit of acquisition and selfishness may react on Japan. Dr. Nitobe, it may be recalled, is well known as the inventor, or the protagonist and interpreter, of "Bushido." He is a professor at the Imperial University at Tokio and formerly was a student at Johns Hopkins University. I again quote the "Japan Chronicle," of July 11, 1918:

Reprimands like that which Dr. Nitobe has recently administered to his countrymen are rather rare in Japan, where national selfsatisfaction is generally very much in evidence. Nothing is more common in Japanese writings on the war than to dwell upon the immense sacrifices which Japan has made, and to hint at the rewards that she therefore has a right to expect. Dr. Nitobe compares Japan's gains with the other Allies' losses, and predicts that there will be a bad reaction of feeling when, on the settlement, Japan's share in the spoils of war is found to be very small. In making these criticisms Dr. Nitobe goes much further than would be becoming in a foreign critic. Some time ago, when the "Chronicle" suggested that the furnishing of supplies for handsome pa;sTnent hardly came within the definition of self-sacrifice, a Japanese publicist replied that such a remark was more outrageous than anathema. The critic would probably have had an apoplexy if the "Chronicle" had gone only half as far as Dr. Nitobe. It is quite natural, of course, that native criticism should be more patiently borne than foreign.

Dr. Nitobe, even for a purveyor of home truths, is almost unduly severe. We have frequently pointed out in these columns that to Japan the war is not the same thing that it is to France and England, or even to America. The mischief that Dr. Nitobe foresees arises from the adulation of Japan and all her works in which Mr,

Balfour takes such a leading part, and which creates a false impression among the Japanese of the part that this country plays in the war and leads in the direction of the disappointment predicted.

Dr. Nitobe takes it for granted that at the peace conference something approximating to the settlement talked of among the Allies since the beginning of the war will be eli'ected, and that everything will be settled on a general consideration of the public good, while if any compensation, territorial or monetary, can be secured from the aggressors, it will be divided among the Allies according to their sufferings, sacrifices, and needs. Together with this is blended an idea of the resumption of the old relations between Japan and the powers, which means that the powers will "advise" Japan not to make too great a profit at the expense of her weaker neighbours.

How far such relations will be resumed remains to be seen. Japan will be, by that time, in a position, commercially and financially, much more comparable with that of the powers, but will be incalculably behind them in the matter of armaments, which give special point to advice. Dr. Nitobe takes a mucli higher view of international polities than Marquis Okuma. The late Premier was instrumental in bringing Japan into the war, and conceived that as soon as Japan's power in the far East was demonstrated, and the value of her allegiance established, the European Powers would consider it best to refrain from protest whatever Japan might do in China. In his very first essay, however, he overreached himself, and discovered that, preoccupied as the powers were with their more immediate affairs, they were not resigned to the prospect of standing by while Japan made China a tributary State. Dr. Nitobe remembers that it was nothing but the diplomatic protests which prevented the Twenty-one Demands from complete enforcement, and as a political idealist he feels the discredit accruing from this situation far more than he would ever exult in an increase of political domination over neighbouring countries.

Dr. Nitobe goes to the trouble of confuting the Japanese idea that a war "to make the world safe for democracy" is not a desirable one. It is not probable that any Japanese ever seriously believed that the objects of the war are inimical to the polity of Japan, though some may have made this an excuse for their perverse passion for depreciating the Allies. The common idea of those who profess such concern for Japan's peculiar system is that, bound up with the devotion of all Japanese to the Imperial House, is the preservation of the privileges of the persons who happen now to be in advantageous position.^. Their narrowness of view is the natural

12 DEMOCEACY AND THE EASTERN QUESTION

complement of the sort of patriotism which looks only to spoils in a war which is, to a degree uncommon in international struggles, a moral issue.

In the far East the question of the basis for international politics after the war inevitably, at some point of a discussion, comes to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. This alliance, except the secret treaty made between Japan and imperial Russia during the war, is the only offensive and defensive alliance between powers having the far East as their special field. Later in this work I mention the disposition of the Japanese at one stage of the war to throw the alliance with Great Britain overboard; but that sentiment was frankly based on calculated self-interest. It is interesting, therefore, to obtain a glimpse of Japanese conception of the alliance in juxtaposition with the idea of a league of nations. Discussions of the alliance in Japan, and especially suggestions Eind proposals that it be abrogated, naturally received the close attention of British who live there, and the "Japan Chronicle," the leading British organ in Japan, makes this comment editorially in its issue of January 28, 1919:

In the article on alliances which Dr. Sawayanagi, the well-known educationist and for a time Vice-Minister of Education, has contributed to the "Taiyo," he puts his finger on one of the root causes of the war which has destroyed the flower of European youth and threatened the fabric of civilisation itself. As will have been seen by the translation of the article appearing in Sunday's issue, Dr. Sawayanagi raises the question whether the time has not come for the abrogation of the Anglo- Japanese Alliance. Hitherto this suggestion has been made by Japanese who regarded the revision of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1911, removing all danger of Britain being compelled by the terms of the compact to participate in war against America, as destrojang the value of the agreement, which, with Russia no longer a foe to be feared, simply acted as a cheek on Japan's diplomatic activity in the far East without conferring any proportionate advantage.

Dr. Sawayanagi takes up a different attitude. He points out that Russia is now in such a disorganised state that her assumption of an aggressive policy in the East has removed the raison d'etre of thq

Alliance, but his chief reason for suggesting its termination is that it is clearly out of harmony with the League of Nations which it is assumed the Peace Conference will in some form or other bring into being. There is ample justification for the view taken by Dr. Sawayanagi. President Wilson holds very strongly not only that a League of Nations should be open to all and common to all, but that a partial League of States, such as the present Allies, might be used for selfish purposes, and would destroy the very objects for which the League of Nations was framed. Indeed it was one of the President's five conditions of a satisfactory peace that ''no special interest of any nation can be made the basis of any settlement which is not consistent with the common interest of all." This evidently rules out alliances for special objects between two or more nations, as such a policy would tend to set up groups within the League, creating all the old animosities and constituting a serious danger to the peace of the world.

The Anglo-Japanese Alliance must go with the other compacts, as being against the general interest. It has been asserted that the conversion of the Anglo-Japanese agreement of 1902 into an offensive and defensive alliance in 1905 maintained peace, but it may with equal truth be contended that the Alliance narrowly escaped plunging Europe prematurely into the war of mutual destruction that actually began ten years later. For the Alliance came about not so much from a desire to maintain peace in the far East as because of hostility to Russia, which was then pursuing an aggressive policy in Central Asia and the far East, and the more definite character given the agreement in 1905 was clearly with the object of preventing France from going to the assistance of her Russian ally. There were occasions during the progress of Rodjestvensky's squadron towards the far East w^hen the relations between Japan and France were strained almost to the breaking point, owing to the aid given the Russian squadron in French ports. Had the two powers come into armed conflict all Europe would have been ablaze. Britain would have come in on the side of Japan against France and Russia, and, despite the Kaiser's letters to the Tsar during the crisis, it is not impossible that when the rupture came Germany would have found her interest in siding with Britain rather than with her traditional enemies on the east and west.

Looking back upon the history of the last forty years with the experience of the last five years as a guide, it becomes clearly evident that it was the groups of alliances which kept Europe in a perpetual ferment during^that time, and altogether, with what Bright called the "bloody fetish" of the balance of power, encouraged all the nations in that mad race of armaments which in due course ended in an explosion.