482 PROSPECTS OF THE WESTERN CIVILIZATION
Naval Conference of A.D. 1921-2 between the Western naval Powers of
the one part and Japan of the other.1

The basis of these agreements had been a reciprocal undertaking,2 as
between the United States, the British Empire, and Japan, to maintain
the status quo with regard to fortifications and naval bases in certain
specified territories and possessions of theirs in the Pacific area; for the
effect of this reciprocal self-denying ordinance had been to insure Japan
against the risk of seeing any potentially hostile foreign naval bases con-
structed within a closer range of her own home bases than the range of
Pearl Harbour and Singapore; under the technical conditions of the
moment, this provision had assured to the Japanese Navy the ability to
maintain an unchallengeable regional supremacy in the Western Pacific;
and, in return for the English-speaking naval Powers' consent to her
thus preserving the security of her home territory through the retention
of her command over the surrounding seas, Japan, for her part, had been
willing to make a pair of counter-concessions without which the English-
speaking Powers would not have been willing to make their own crucial
concession to her.

In the first place, Japan had resigned herself to remaining markedly
inferior to her two English-speaking competitors in absolute naval
strength by agreeing3 to maxima in the ratio of 525,000 tons each for
them, as against 315,000 tons for herself, as the figures for the replace-
ment of capital ship tonnage. In the second place, she had bound herself
not to abuse her now virtually guaranteed naval supremacy in the
Western Pacific by misusing it for the purpose of committing aggression
either against the now defenceless West Pacific possessions of the
English-speaking naval Powers (for instance, the Philippines and Hong
Kong) or against a likewise defenceless China. Japan had entered into an
agreement with the United States, the British Empire, and France in
which the four parties had undertaken to respect one another's rights in
relation to their insular possessions and dominions in the region of the
Pacific Ocean,4 and into an agreement with the same three parties,
together with Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and China, to
respect China's sovereignty, independence, and territorial and adminis-
trative integrity and to refrain from taking advantage of anarchic con-
ditions in China in order to take action there inimical to the security of
the other contracting parties or damaging to the rights of their subjects
or citizens.3

Twenty years after the date of the Washington Naval Conference the
same assumption that the Pacific Ocean was still a strategically impas-
sable gulf had nerved the Japanese Government to launch an attack on
possessions of the United States, the British Commonwealth, and the

1 SeeToynbee, A. J.: Survey of International Affairs 11920-3 (London 1925, Milford),
pp. 489-90.

2 In Article 19 of the Treaty of the 6th February, 19*2, for the Limitation of Naval
Armament, between the United States, the British Empire, Japan, France, and Italy.

s In Article 4 of the Five-Power Treaty of the 6th February, 1922.

* In Article i of the Washington Treaty of the isth December, 1921, between the
United States, the British Empire, Japan, and France.

s The Washington Nine-Power Treaty of the 6th February, 1922, 'relating to the
principles and poEcies to be followed in matters concerning China'.