In the case of Shantung and the twenty-one demands, the solution was going to depend upon how far Japan realized that these “valid” claims of hers—that is, valid under the old code—were handicaps and not advantages to her. How far she realized that by attempting to keep them in force she was going to cripple her own real advancement in China, increase and prolong the boycott of her goods, and incur the ill will of other nations, particularly of this nation.
It became clear early in the Washington Conference that we were not going to help China’s case, or encourage Japan in generous dealing by continuing to cultivate mistrust and hatred of the Japanese. A systematic effort to make one nation hate another belongs to the old way of doing things. Indeed, it has been one of the chief methods by which we have thought to progress in the world. You built up distrust, dislike, suspicion, until you had created an enemy in the minds of the mass of the people so hateful that it became an almost religious duty to overthrow it. We have had this sort of thing going on in this country in regard to Japan for years, a calculated, nation-wide, extremely able effort to make the American people fear and despise the Japanese, to bring them to a point where they would gladly, as a relief to their feelings, undertake a war against Japan. I do not know that a sterner rebuke to the American public—the sterner because unconscious—could have been given than the remarks of Prince Tokugawa in one of his little talks before he sailed for home. He was telling how surprised as well as grateful the Japanese had been at American hospitality, “Because,” he said, “when we came we feared that the Americans were so hostile to us that it might be impossible for us to go with safety on the streets.”
Those who know the Orient best all agree that its future peace, and therefore the future peace of the world, depends largely upon Japan. She is the one strong, stable, unified nation in the East. She has, it is true, a powerful militaristic party, but opposed to that is a great liberal group. Prince Tokugawa, who played so fine a part in his delegation during the Conference, is a man who has taken keen interest in labor questions, education of the people, the development of industry, and has thrown all his great interest against the military spirit. It is said by those who know much of Japan’s interior workings that the Empress herself is convinced that either the empire must have a democratic leadership, a constitutional monarchy with a responsible cabinet, an army and navy under civil control, or that it will be overthrown, and that the reason that the young Crown Prince was sent on his visit to England was that he might have a look at a democratic monarchy. There are many Japanese saying openly in the press and in public assemblies that the future of Japan depends upon an entire change of policy, that the hard dealings in Korea, the wresting of the twenty-one demands from Peking, the methods in Shantung have all been a mistake, that Japan must deny them, correct the wrongs done under them if she is to have the sympathy and enjoy the coöperation of the outside world. It is most important that the people of the United States particularly should understand these liberal leanings in Japan, should give them all the support within their power.