“Take them Japs and Chinamen,” he said, “they’re coming with bags of problems, and they’re going to dump them on us to sort and solve! And to think we brought it on ourselves!”
There were people nearer to the administration than this anxious observer who said the same thing. “The Far East is a veritable Pandora’s box, and why did we open it?”
I don’t remember ever to have seen in Washington, even in war times, so many responsible people who gave me the impression of wanting to hold their heads to keep them from splitting.
Of one thing there was no doubt—if the troubles that were to be loosed on the Conference were as serious as these serious observers feared, it was better that they be _out_ than _in_ the box, for they were of a nature that, confined, would be sure to explode, but give them time and they might dissolve under the healing touch of light, sun and air.
But why were there people close to things in Washington aghast at the program of the Conference, people who two months before had looked forward to it with confidence and even exultation? No doubt this was explained partly by the realization that cutting down armaments did not necessarily mean long-continued peace; that there must be settlements. When they looked over the problems to be settled, attempted to put themselves in the place of the people concerned, find solutions through agreements which did not require force behind them, they were appalled at the difficulties in the way.
Put the problems which disturbed them into their simplest terms:—Japan could not get enough food on her six big and her 600 little islands for her 60,000,000 people. She was spilling over into China and its dependencies—not merely as a settler, content to till the soil, to work the mines, to sell in the market place, but as an aggressive conqueror, aspiring to military and political control as well as economic opportunity.
China—that is, Young China, the founder of the Republic—said she would not have it, that she must govern and administer her own, and we, China’s friend, were backing the integrity she demanded. But Japan was “in China”—“in” as was Great Britain and France. She had an army and navy to back her pretensions and she could very well say—and did—“Why should Great Britain and France be allowed to hold their political and military control in Hongkong and in Tonkin, raise and train troops, not of their own people but of natives, collect taxes, run post offices, and we be forbidden? If they do these things, and they do, why should Japan not have equal privileges?”