in China, while Europe was engaged in war, cannot be reconciled with either the spirit or the letter of the Treaty of Alliance, but it is not so generally understood that the advantageous position which Japan has secured for herself since, in May, 1915, she abandoned Group V of the 'Twenty-one Demands,' in deference to the representations of the Powers, could never have been attained but for the unpatriotic venality of the officials who constitute and exploit the government of China. The Chinese themselves are under no illusions concerning this lamentable state of affairs; but public opinion abroad has been misled, and the truth concealed, as the result of the propaganda conducted by the politicians and publicists who habitually appeal to the sympathies of the civilized world, in the name of Democracy, on behalf of young China and its Republic, nobly struggling to be free. It is to be observed that, since the Revolution, most of China's diplomatic representatives abroad have been drawn from the class of young 'western-learning' officials, highly intelligent and adaptable products of European education, and that their activities at Versailles, Geneva, and elsewhere have contributed largely to the creation of a very erroneous impression as to the position and prospects of affairs in China. Thus, at the present time, when the Chinese Government is completely demoralized and faced with inevitable bankruptcy, when throughout the country the defenseless people are being mercilessly harassed and plundered by lawless soldiery and brigands, we find in several directions their influence at work, enlisting sentiment and sympathy in support of the alleged progress of liberal ideas and democratic institutions in China.

Financiers point to the recent growth of her foreign trade as proof of increasing prosperity (one might as well say

that a man who puts on weight must be healthy), while philanthropists and vocational idealists expatiate on the humanitarian and social reforms which the enlightened government of the Republic has so rapidly effected: for example, the abolition of torture in judicial proceedings, the freedom of the press, the advance of education, the emancipation of women, and the suppression of the opium traffic. The fact that these reforms have been accomplished only on paper, and that the unrelieved sufferings of the masses are greater today than they were under the Manchus, in no way detracts from the complacent satisfaction of China's diplomatic agents in partibus; nor does it give them pause in agitating for the abolition of extra-territorial rights and against the renewal of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance as derogatory to the dignity and distasteful to the sentiments of the Chinese people. Their attitude simply ignores all the realities of the situation.

They protest loudly, and with good cause, against the injustice done to China by Japan, and condoned by the Allies at Versailles, with regard to the Shantung question, but they say nothing of the lamentable fact that, before and after the Chinese Government's representatives at Versailles had declined to sign a treaty which recorded this violation of their country's sovereign rights, the Government itself was busily engaged in conceding to Japan, in return for subsidies and loans, many rights, privileges, and concessions calculated to prejudice their future independence. If Young China were sincere in seeking the true cause of the nation's political discontents and financial embarrassments, it would find it in the incorrigible money-lust of the mandarin class, which has always paved and still paves the way for alien policies of 'peaceful penetration.'

It is useless at this juncture to dis

guise the truth that China's weakness

more marked to-day than ever before -constitutes the pivotal fact of the Far Eastern problem. Moreover, because of the opportunities of aggression and exploitation which this weakness invites, it constitutes a constant source of dangerous rivalry. It is also evident that if this weakness is to be cured, the nation's independence preserved, and its resources developed to the general advantage of international trade, it will be necessary before long for the powers concerned to intervene, and to insist upon certain real reforms, namely, the disbandment of the Tuchuns' rabble armies, the reorganization of the administration, and the restoration of normal fiscal relations between Peking and the provinces. Great Britain and Japan, as the two countries possessing the largest vested interests and trade in China, are well within their rights in discussing these matters; to refrain from so doing for fear of hurting China's amour propre, would be a cruel kindness. The time has come for all concerned -America included to face facts, to cease from proclaiming the magical virtue of political phrases, and by full and frank consultation to devise means for putting an end to a state of affairs which cannot possibly confer credit on China's rulers, and which inflicts infinite suffering on her people. If, as I hope and believe, the Japanese Government is ready to coöperate loyally to the end, the renewal of the Alliance will be an event of good augury, and welcome to every true friend of China.

There are, of course, other aspects of the Alliance besides those which arise out of the situation in China. But when all is said and done, it was China's weakness which led to the Russo-Japanese struggle for Korea, and China's weakness must inevitably precipitate new wars, unless Great Britain and Japan, with the United States approv

ing, take such steps as may be necessary to encourage and maintain an effective Chinese Government at Peking.

Assuming the possibility of a renewal of the Alliance under such conditions as shall tend to preserve peace in the Orient, by means of a common policy of helpfulness and good-will toward China, the question naturally arises, what has Japan to offer, and what does she stand to gain, in making such an agreement? Also, wherein lies the community of interest, or the mutual recognition of restraining forces, whereby alone the Alliance can be made permanently beneficial? In suggesting answers to these questions, based on a recent study of present-day conditions and opinions in Japan, I would ask the reader to remember that international treaties are inspired not so much by sentiment as by economic necessity, and by the recognition of common dangers. The relations which are established from time to time between continents, races, and nations, their enmities and their friendships, are only changing phases in the world-wide struggle for survival, which, in this twentieth century, has become essentially a struggle for markets and for control of the supplies of raw materials required by our congested centres of industrialism. Even the dreams of a a race, such visions as 'Pan-Asia' or 'Pan-Islam,' have at their rainbows' ends some goodly place in the sun, where the hungry shall be filled with good things. Idealism in world-politics belongs generally to those nations which, by foresight or by favor of the gods, enjoy more than their fair share of this world's goods; you will not find it in the homes of the hungry.

Now not only is Japan, as a nation, afflicted with increasing hunger, but her people happen also to belong to what Mill calls the active, self-helping, as distinct from the passive, non-resisting

races. In other words, they, like the Anglo-Saxon race, are of the type, which, when confronted by the pains and penalties produced by acute pressure of population upon the means of subsistence, instinctively seeks the remedy for its necessities in forceful expansion. In considering the several problems which have to be faced in connection with the renewal of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, it is essential to bear these things in mind, and to remember, moreover, that the Anglo-Saxon race, on the American Continent and in the British Dominions overseas, impelled by an imperative instinct of self-preservation, is firmly united in a determination to deny to the Asiatic races all rights of expansion into the American, Australian, and African continents. Now this determination is not some would have us believe a matter of racial antagonism or moral prejudice. It is founded on sheer economic necessity, and its application is, and must always be, dependent in the last resort upon the law of the stronger; in other words, upon force. When, at the Versailles Peace Conference, Japan raised the question of racial equality, thereby, in effect, asserting her claim to equal opportunities of expansion overseas, even Mr. Wilson's lofty concep tion of the brotherhood of man could find no practical means to recognize that claim, so that eventually he was content to compromise with it, along the line of least resistance, at China's expense.

as

The victorious conclusion of the war by the Allies has left the Anglo-Saxon race in a position to defend its exclusion of Asiatic immigration, and the increasing economic pressure which afflicts civilization makes it certain that this exclusion policy will be maintained. The attitude of the Japanese Government toward this question, as manifested at and since the Versailles Conference, has

been one of tacit and dignified acquiescence in measures recognized to be based upon imperative economic necessity, so long as these measures involve no arbitrary racial discrimination. At the same time, the terms of the Lansing-Ishii agreement,negotiated by Japan with the United States in November, 1917, and the recently concluded 'Consortium' negotiations concerning Japan's 'special interests' in Manchuria and Mongolia, have made it unmistakably clear that Japan is not prepared to acquiesce in any deliberate attempt to debar her from expansion into the Asiatic mainland, or from economic exploitation of China's loosely held, undeveloped, and thinly populated dependencies to the north of the Great Wall. If, in agreeing to join the Four-Powers financial Consortium, the Japanese Government waived its specific claims to the independent construction of certain railways in that region, and subscribed to the principle of coöperation, it did so upon the understanding, expressed and recorded in Lord Curzon's dispatches, that the governments behind the financiers would refuse to countenance any operations of the Consortium 'inimical to the security of the economic life and the national defense of Japan,' a reservation evidently capable of the widest application, and one which leaves the matter of Japan's 'special interests' in much the same position in which it was left by Mr. Secretary Lansing in 1917.

Here we touch a crucial point of the Far Eastern question. For it cannot be denied that, just as the 'security of the economic life' of California, Canada, or Australia, compels them to exclude the competition of Asiatic immigrants, even so the security of the economic life of Japan compels her, either to seek new outlets for her surplus population overseas, or to endeavor to secure such a position of economic advantage in com

paratively undeveloped regions of the Asiatic mainland, as shall enable her to maintain and increase her industries, and thereby feed her people, at home. Common sense and common justice compel us to recognize this fundamental fact of the situation. Moreover, pace the Treaty of Portsmouth, the Japanese people regard their privileged position (not to say paramount influence) in the regions of the mainland to the north and west of Korea, as a matter of indisputable right, a right which they have won by two victorious wars, at great expense of blood and treasure. They have not forgotten that the purpose of the first Treaty of Alliance was to enable Japan to eject Russia from Korea and Manchuria while England kept the ring, and they know that, if they had not won that war, all the dependencies and territories of China to the north of the Wall would long since have passed into Russian hands. Moreover, they remember that, before and during the European war, both America and Great Britain had seen fit to recognize the existence of the 'special interests' which Japan had acquired in those regions, partly by force of arms and partly by means of 'concessions' bought from China's complaisant rulers. The development of a position of economic advantage by Japan in Manchuria became, in fact, inevitable from the day when, by the terms of the Treaty of Portsmouth, Russia handed over to the conqueror the South Manchurian Railway, with all its privileges and concessions. To expect the Japanese to abandon the position thus created, with all that it means to the economic life of the nation, is to ignore the basic realities of the situation.

What now, it may be asked, does Japan expect to gain by the renewal of the Alliance? It is evident, I think, that what her rulers expect from it is the moral support of Great Britain in a rea

sonable recognition of the necessities and difficulties of Japan's insular position; the help of England, as a friend, in the councils of nations, in reconciling what they regard as their legitimate aspirations with the interests and opinions of other nations. Everything in the actions and utterances of the rulers of Japan to-day warrants the belief that, while maintaining their right to safeguard the economic life and defenses of the nation, they are sincerely anxious to avoid, not only war, but the risk of national isolation. They believe that by coming to a good understanding with Great Britain, and, through her, with the United States, it should be possible to arrive at a solution of the Far Eastern question. They have come to regard the Alliance as an effective instrument for preventing the Red ruin of Bolshevism from overflowing into Eastern Asia; they see in it also the best means of arriving at an international agreement for the limitation of naval and other armaments. The prosperity of Japan, like that of Great Britain, depends upon a peaceful and progressive development of trade and industry, and upon a reduction of the grievous burden of taxation which now cripples enterprise at its source. If compelled to defend things essential to their national security, the Japanese will undoubtedly fight, as they have done before; but public opinion, on the whole, is convinced that, economically speaking, Japan has everything to lose and nothing to gain by war.

Under these circumstances, it is reasonable to expect that a full and frank discussion of the renewal of the Alliance, starting with reciprocal recognition of accomplished facts, should lead to a clear definition of Japan's position in Manchuria and Mongolia and to the relinquishing of such of her claims to 'special interests,' in Shantung and else where, as undeniably conflict with the

maintenance of China's independent sovereignty. Discussing these matters with politicians and publicists in Japan last year, I found them generally disposed to admit that many things done, and others attempted, by the Japanese Government between 1915 and 1918 were incompatible with the terms of the treaty as renewed in 1911. Without crying over spilled milk, it is permissible to recall the fact that in 1916 and 1917, when there seemed but little prospect of a decisive victory for the Allies, the Japanese Government and its agents in China hastened to peg out a number of valuable claims, with the obvious intention of confronting the Peace Conference with accomplished facts. It was also manifestly clear, from the utterances of many Japanese statesmen, that if Germany had proved victorious, the Alliance would have come to an end with the British navy.

But Germany having been defeated, and the wisdom of the Alliance thus vindicated, a natural reaction has taken place, and most Japanese are now free to confess that during the war England received more than her fair share of kicks, and Japan most of the ha'pence. And this being so, a disposition toward graceful concessions in subsidiary matters may fairly be expected when the renewal of the Alliance comes to be discussed on broad principles of reasonable reciprocity. Among business men in Tokyo I found evidence of a general recognition of the expediency of more give and less take in the future working of the Alliance; of a more liberal spirit of reciprocity in such matters as the protection of trade-marks, coast shipping facilities, etc. The unprecedented foreign tour of the Crown Prince of Japan, and the notable break with tradition involved in his betrothal, are new portents which justify the belief that the influence of the military party at Tokyo is really waning, and that gov

ernment by means of a responsible cabinet may before long replace the arbitrary authority of the clan system. Such a change would materially increase the power for good and promote the purposes of the Alliance, for there is no denying that the irresponsible activities of the Japanese military party in China, frequently in direct conflict with the published utterances of the Foreign Minister, must needs be checked, and their outposts withdrawn, if the Alliance is to preserve the unfettered independence of China and the open door.

Frank discussion of the existing situation should entail, pari passu with the reasonable recognition of Japan's position in Manchuria and Mongolia, the complete restoration of Shantung to China, and the abandonment by Japan of any claims to 'special interests' such as those created by the "Twenty-one Demands' and by the secret military agreement of March, 1918, throughout the eighteen provinces. It should also result in a self-denying agreement by all concerned to abstain from all encroachments upon China's sovereignty and to coöperate loyally in the difficult task of restoring her stability of government. This may be regarded by many as a counsel of perfection; but the fact remains that Premier Hara, with the Seiyukai party behind him, has publicly declared that Japan would welcome an Anglo-American-Japanese understanding having as its avowed object a common reconstructive policy in China. The Japanese Prime Minister, it will be observed, recognizes the fact that such a policy will require the cooperation, or at least the good-will, of the United States. Mr. Hughes, the Australian Premier, has definitely expressed the same opinion; and it may safely be asserted that the Dominions generally would be opposed to the renewal of the Alliance under conditions calculated to antagonize America.