There was much irritation at different times in Washington because the Japanese delegation insisted on holding up the march of negotiations until it could hear from Tokyo, and between Tokyo and poor cable connections the answers were slow in coming. The delegation always insisted on waiting, however, and in this it was wise. It could go no further safely than the government at home would back it. If it attempted to do so, it would mean the final repudiation of the measures to which it had agreed. Certainly Americans should have understood this. It might take time for the Japanese to stop at every point in the negotiations to consult their government, but it was a much safer method in the long run than making such haste that a situation could arise such as that between our own delegation and the President of the United States—the difference in the interpretation of the Four Power Pact, a difference which no doubt arose from a failure to see that the busy President did have in his head just what the meaning of the short and simple document really was. It sometimes pays to make haste slowly.
If the Japanese were cautious in their dealings, haggled over details, were slow to make concessions which it was likely they intended all the time to make, gave up nothing until they were sure they would be backed by the home government, it might be exasperating but it was not necessarily a proof of intrigue or of a lack of sympathy with the larger purposes of the Conference. In spite of these methods so irritating to people whose only thought is to put things through in the shortest time possible, the Japanese made a better impression on the Conference than the Chinese, for the simple reason that the one were workers, the other talkers. More than once in the course of the negotiations it was necessary to recall the Chinese’s attention to the fact that what was under discussion was not theories, but conditions. All one’s sympathies were with the talkers, and all one’s practical sense with the workers.
The nations in adopting the principles that they did in regard to China, in insuring her a protecting ring within which they promise to see that she has the chance to develop and maintain effective and stable government, and to give all nations an equal opportunity of carrying on commerce and industry with her, are attempting something that has never before been done in this world—they are insuring a great weak, divided nation its chance. Never again under the protection adopted, if the promises made are kept, can anybody chip off a piece of Chinese territory, secure a monopoly of her resources; never again can there be in China a Shantung, a Twenty-one demands, a Port Arthur. The pacts and principles adopted establish over China that “moral trusteeship” of which Mr. Hughes talks. They put upon all nations agreeing and particularly upon this nation the obligation to see that this moral trusteeship is something more than a phrase.