The ABC's of disarmament and the Pacific problems

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THE A B C'S OF DISARMAMENT
AND

THE PACIFIC PROBLEMS

By
ARTHUR BULLARD

The Stranger

A Man's World

The Barbary Coast

The Diplomacy of the Great War

Mobilizing America. Our National Prob-
lems

Panama, the Canal, the Country and the
People

The Russian Pendulum: Autocracy —
Democracy — Bolsuivism

The A B C'S of Disarmament

and

The Pacific Problems

BY

ARTHUR BULLARD

JOeto gotb

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
192 1

All rights reserved

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMEKICA

Copyright, 1921,
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and printed. Published October, 1921.

JX
'B7J'

Press of

J. J. Little & Ives Company

New York, U. S. A.

FOREWORD

THE COST OF ARMAMENTS

No two estimates agree on even the simplest
item in the expense of armament competition — the
direct governmental appropriations for military
purposes. Should the expenses of Cadet Corps in
the Public Schools be included? An exact calcula-
tion of the proportion of our National Income
which we are spending on the liquidation of past
wars and preparations for new ones is impossible;
the most impressive estimates vary from 80 to
more than 90 per cent.

However, the budget figures of the different na-
tions represent only the smallest element in the
Cost of Armaments. Our larger dictionaries give
a rare word '411th," which deserves more usage
than it gets, for in its contrast to the commoner
word "wealth" it aptly describes a large part of
the life about us. Of the commodities which we
produce on our intricate and marvelous machines,
not all can be called ''wealth." We make not only

Note. — Due acknowledgment should be made to The Times
for the courtesy of permission to reprint.

vi FOREWORD

such useless things as wooden nutmegs, but also
harmful drugs.

No better illustration of "illth" could be foimd
than munitions. The production of a high explo-
sive shell absorbs a great deal of inventive in-
genuity, working capital and skilled labor. Sup-
pose it rots in innocuous desuetude. All this
energy which might have produced "goods" of
value is sheer waste. But if the shell goes off,
as its designers planned, it destroys wealth much
greater than its cost. So with our battleships. If
they gradually rust into obsolescence, that is the
best we can hope. If they are ever used, the pro-
duction of illth will far outrun the original ex-'
pense.

There is still another and vaster indirect cost in
competitive armaments — the undermining of
credit. Any attempt to estimate the expense of
preparing for war, even if it starts out with deter-
mination to keep on a hard-headed dollar-and-
cent basis, forces a consideration of credit and
immediately you are in the deep waters of
psychology, beyond the bookkeeper's power of
appraisement.

More and more in the last few generations
"credit" has taken the place of "cash" in our busi-
ness transactions. The development of interna-
tional finance and world trade has brought us wool
from Australia, flax from Russia, silks from the

FOREWORD yii

Orient and has opened markets for our products
the world around. There was general confidence,
based on the assumption that all the great nations
were solvent. Who can say now what nation's
credit is good? Today the French Government's
formal ^'Promise to pay" twenty cents is worth
from five to ten cents. With the other nations it
is merely a question of more or less and none of
them can restore their credit to par so long as
their armament expenses outrun their income and
turn each year's budget into a deficit. We are
relatively fortunate, because we have ten to twenty
cents left out of every dollar to spend on health
and wealth and wisdom. But some of the nations
are spending more than their income on "illth."
The imminence of bankruptcy is so obvious that
credit transactions, without which production and
commerce is strangled, are impossible.

This psychological factor is of course the great-
est item in the cost of competitive armaments,
although it is harder to plot on a graphic chart.
During the War and immediately afterwards we
heard a great deal about ^'Reconstruction," but all
the fine plans were hampered, most of them en-
tirely thwarted, by the frame of mind which these
armaments typify. Progress? Human better-
ment? Increased production of wealth? Credit
is ruined. Capital is tied up — or lost. We count

viii FOREWORD

up the unemployed in millions. But throughout
the world the armament factories are busy.

The Medicos have discovered that Fear upsets
the balance of the stomach fluids and stops the
process of digestion. It is clear even to the lay-
man that Fear arrests the processes of production
and exchange. Everybody admits that another
Great War would be disastrous, but on all sides
we see and hear the preparations for it. It is
aside from the point to argue that war in the
Far East is not inevitable. Just the bare pos-
sibility of it, and the probability is frequently dis-
cussed in the press, blocks the development of a
profitable Oriental trade a great deal more seri-
ously than the burden of taxation to buy more
warships.

An accountant can put down figures and make
graphic charts to show how much of our National
Budget is turned into illth for war purposes. But
who can determine the percentage of enterprise
and energy that might be devoted to the increase
of our common wealth, which is paralyzed by
noisy preparations for war? The Fear of War
is infinitely more expensive than the cost of arma-
ments.

CONTENTS

VACM

Foreword v

CHAPTER

I. The Defense of Vital Interests . i

II. America's Vital Interests — Terri-
torial Defense and the Monroe
Doctrine lo

III. America's Vital Interests — ^The

Freedom of the Seas .... 19

IV. America's Vital Interests — The Open

Door 33

V. The Vital Interests of Britain . . 43

VI. The Vital Interests of Japan — Eco-
nomic 53

VII. The Vital Interests of Japan — Po-
litical 65

VIII. China's Vital Interests .... 74

IX. The Interests of the Other Powers 83

X. The Three Zones of Conflict . . 94

XI. What May Result 103

XII. Diplomacy and Public Opinion . . 113

THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

AND

THE PACIFIC PROBLEMS

THE A B CS
OF DISARMAMENT

CHAPTER I

THE DEFENSE OF VITAL INTERESTS

Men always strive to defend what seems to them
precious. This instinct of private life dominates
International Relations, but when diplomats talk
of the things which nations hold dear, they call
them "Vital Interests." This is an elastic phrase,
but, in spite of its frequent abuse, it has a real
meaning. The "vital interests" of a nation are
the things which its citizens are determined to
defend — even at the cost of war.

Civilized man is just as intent as the savage on
safeguarding his precious possessions; that he
more rarely resorts to brute force is not because
he is less intent, but because he has found methods
which are surer. Nations as well as individuals
have made some halting progress towards civi-
lization; they have invented certain methods of

2 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

agreement for the protection of their interests,
which are cheaper and more effective than war.

All will admit that the defense of its territory
from such devastation as overwhelmed Belgium
is a "vital interest'' for every country. The face
of the world is scarred with obsolete and aban-
doned frontier fortresses, which illustrate the
"natural" method of defending the homeland
from invasion. Humanity, from the days of the
Chinese Wall to our own times, when the suburbs
of Liege were disfigured by steel and concrete
bastions, has spent appalling sums on such de-
fenses. But we would not complain seriously of
the expense. No price is too high for protection.
The imbecility of these forts was not in their cost,
but in their futility.

It was the New World which set the example
in the "civilized" — as contrasted with the
"natural" — method of protection from invasion.
There are few frontiers in the world as long as
that which separates us from Canada or Argentine
from Chili. Neither is fortified. In both cases
the vital interest of security from hostile raids is
founded on agreement — much greater security
than any founded on armament.

The Agreement, which guards our Northern
Frontier, is more than a formal document — al-
though a Treaty was signed at Ghent — it is really
a habit of mind, a more civilized outlook on life.

THE DEFENSE OF VITAL INTERESTS 3

Back of it, giving it more vitality than the seals
and signatures, is the established conviction of
both peoples that war would be a shameful sur-
render to barbarism. We have our disputes over
wood-pulp and such like things but, although very-
few of us have read the Treaty of Ghent, we know
that we are not going to fight.

I remember my blank amazement, some years
before the War, when a German officer told me
that Britain would not dare to support France in
a continental war, because it would give us an
opportunity to grab Canada. In the same way,
some German propagandists in this country tried
to make us uneasy when the Canadians began
concentrating forces for service in France. How
did we know that they would not make a raid on
Boston or Chicago? But none of us ever turned
a hair over such scare stories. We trust each
other. It is not only the cheaper and more civi-
lized, but far and away the most effective method
of defense.

The Canadians, however, would not have de-
mobilized, after the War, if they had suspected
us of aggressive designs, and there is nothing in
our history to suggest that we are less ready to
defend our interests. This is the crux of the
whole problem of armaments. Men and nations
will defend whatever they consider their vital
interests. If they cannot do so by confident

4 THE A B as OF DISARMAMENT

agreement, they will arm. If they are afraid they
will spend their last cent buying guns. No seri-
ous reduction in armament can be expected unless,
and until, there is a reduction in distrust and fear.

The problem before the delegates at the Wash-
ington Conference on the Limitation of Arma-
ments will be to extend the zone of agreement
and decrease the sphere of distrust. It is a
matter of bringing larger areas into a "state of
civilization," the realm of voluntary accords, and
the reduction of those areas still in a "state of
nature," where every man's hand is against his
neighbor, where confidence is unknown and death
comes quickly to the weak and unarmed.

No one has seriously proposed a Superstate,
which could compel nations to disarm, nor is there
any hope of progress in guile. The Treaty of
Ghent would long ago have gone to the scrap
basket, if either party had suspected trickery or
bad faith. Whatever results come out of this
Conference will be based on voluntary, open-eyed
and loyal agreements.

Those who thought that the diplomats at Paris
might contrive a document which would usher in
— right after the War — a new era of peace and
prosperity, will probably be again disappointed
with the Conference at Washington. It is not a
matter of phraseology nor clever authorship.
Treaties are worthless unless they register an

THE DEFENSE OF VITAL INTERESTS 5

existing frame of mind. Pledges to reduce arma-
ments, no matter how bedecked with seals, are
valueless unless there is real confidence and satis-
faction back of them. If the Conference leaves
any nation feeling sore^ embittered, cheated out of
its legitimate interests, it will be a waste of time
to read the formal documents. It is altogether
too easy for a government to subsidize a mer-
cantile airplane service, capable of bombing a
neighboring capital, or to introduce into the
schools a course in calisthenics suspiciously like
the "goose-step." It is too easy for the private
citizen to erect a still under the kitchen stairs to
concoct a home-brew of poison gas or high ex-
plosive.

All projects for reducing armaments fall flat,
unless a basis is established for confidence and
good will. Unless a nation is convinced that its
vital interests are amply protected by agreement,
unless it has been brought voluntarily into such
agreement, it will arm.

First of all we must know what each nation
considers its "vital interests." Then the problem
will be to find out where they conflict and how
such conflicts can be accommodated. Each na-
tion must be shown that its own interests are
more surely protected by the civiHzed method of
agreement than by the old-fashioned "natural"
method of armament.

The fitting of the various interests of half a

6 THE A B C'S OF DISARMAMENT

dozen nations into a coherent design will prove

considerably more difficult than a jig-saw puzzle.

* * *

However, to say that the task before the Con-
ference at Washington is difficult is not to suggest
that it is impossible. There is ground for large
hopes of real achievements. Much progress has
already been made in the substituting of agree-
ment for armament — and not only on this hemi-
sphere.

Perhaps the change in the British attitude to-
wards their Navy is the most striking and hopeful
illustration. A few decades ago the English
relied solely on their own Fleet for the defense
of their large and vital interests at sea. They
built a Navy stronger than any possible hostile
combination. They changed this policy in sign-
ing an AUiance with Japan, whereby their mari-
time interests in the Pacific were safeguarded by
agreement and they could withdraw their naval
forces from that sea. The effectiveness of this
policy of agreement was proved in the War, when
Japanese and not British warships convoyed the
Anzac transports.

This example is of especial interest, as the
Washington Conference was called primarily to
consider naval armaments. Great Britain, the
principal sea-power, has shown the way. If
agreements can be reached which will convince

THE DEFENSE OF VITAL INTERESTS 7

the British, the Japanese and Americans that their
maritime interests are secure, a general cut in
naval programs will be immediately possible.

Next in importance to questions of naval riv-
alry, the Conference will be occupied with com-
mercial disputes. In this area of conflict, also,
Britain has set the example of composing disputes
by agreements. Since the days of the Norman
Conquest, England and France had been heredi-
tary enemies. The Napoleonic Wars had intensi-
fied the ancient hatred. When, after Bismarck had
smashed her dream of dominating the Continent,
France turned her attention to colonial enterprise,
the British resented what seemed like poaching
on their private preserves. Frictions and jeal-
ousies developed everywhere, from the New-
foundland Fisheries to the heart of Africa and
the borders of Siam. The Fashoda Incident
brought things to the verge of war. But wiser
councils at last prevailed and French and British
diplomats began to discuss these colonial wrangles
and traders' disputes. Obviously they were small
affairs compared to the risk of war, which, what-
ever its outcome, would leave them both weaker
in the face of the growing menace across the
Rhine. Once the statesmen realized the common-
sense gains of a cordial understanding, it was
easy to draw up the necessary documents.

8 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

What man has done, he can do again, and we
generally find it possible to improve on past per-
formances. Diplomatic history contains many
cases — of which these two examples are illustra-
tions— where nations have secured their vital
interests by agreement and have by so much
reduced the need of armaments. If there is suffi-
cient will, the diplomats at Washington will find
a way. That is the real problem — the question
of Will. Inertia, habit, all the old hostilities and
distrusts will work against the hoped-for accom-
plishments. Not much will be done unless a
force is developed to override obstacles. In the
two examples given above there was an obvious
motive — the increasing menace of German am-
bitions. Will there be so strong a motive at work
at Washington? There is today no hostile nation
growing so boisterously in power and preten-
sions.

It is rather the fashion nowadays to cry down
idealistic motives. We are told to rely on the
''hard head" rather than the "warm heart." If
we cannot reach agreements to reduce armaments
for better reasons, perhaps the fear of bankruptcy
will drive us to it.

The only force on which we can rely to over-
come suspicions and fears is Public Opinion. If
the people really want a reduction of armaments
and can make their wishes plain — whether they

THE DEFENSE OF VITAL INTERESTS 9

are inspired by a moral repugnance to war or a
thrifty dislike of taxation — they can dictate.

But the first step, before any agreements can
be drafted, is to get clear statements of what each
nation considers its "vital interests."

CHAPTER II

America's vital interests — territorial
defense and the monroe doctrine

One interest, which everybody admits is vital for
all nations, is the defense of the homeland from
hostile invaders. It is a cause for which men
have been ready to fight through all ages. It is,
with most nations, the principal reason for expen-
ditures on armaments.

We, of the United States, would be just as
quick as any other people to arm to the teeth —
if we feared attack. Fortunately we are not
threatened. Probably at no time in our history
have we had less reason to arm on this account.

There is much dispute as to the meaning of
some of the events in the late War, but there is
small chance of contradiction, if we accept the
following points as definitely established:

First, the people of the United States, while
slow to anger, will fight when roused with great
energy and remarkable unity of spirit. No one
is likely to pick a quarrel with us lightly.

10

AMERICA'S VITAL INTERESTS II

Second, the old military maxim, that difficulties
increase rapidly with every lengthening of the
lines of communication, has been greatly strength-
ened. As a general rule, the campaigns of the
War, which were conducted at a great distance
from the base, were fiascos. The decisive fighting
took place within a hundred miles of the main
depots. We are a long way off from any formi-
dable rival.

Third, no campaign succeeded which de-
pended on landing troops from ships on hostile
territory. The only serious attempt was at
Gallipoli and that example will not encourage
others. Our Expeditionary Force could not have
been effective if it had not been for the great
depots erected in France. We could not be suc-
cessfully attacked by an overseas enemy, unless
they established a base on this continent. The
railroads in Mexico are not adequate for large
scale campaigns and the climatic conditions are
even more unfavorable. Canada offers the only
possible base from which we could be attacked,
and we have no reason for fear from that quarter.

Fourth and most important, the War proved
that, unless a decision is won quickly, victory is
decided by endurance, man-power and material
resources. The first defeat of the Germans at
the Marne was the deciding factor of the War.
Once stopped on their first dash, their chance was

12 THE A B as OF DISARMAMENT

gone. (The only other chance they had was a
break-up of the alliance, and in any war of de-
fense we would not have to worry about the
defection of allies.) It is hard to imagine any
Expeditionary Force large enough, even if it
could use Canada as a base, to win a decisive
victory quickly. However unprepared we might
be at the moment of attack, we are long on en-
durance, man-power and material resources.
Without Canada as a base no serious attack is
possible, and even with her the chances of success
are too remote to make it attractive to the most
hungry coalition. The scare stories furnished us
by the advocates of "Preparedness" in the days
before 191 7 are rendered ridiculous by the experi-
ences of the War. But of course, when they were
talking to us about "defense" in those days, they
were really trying to prepare us to take part in
a great offensive overseas.

Today we are not threatened by any one. We
cannot claim that National Defense is the excuse

for our armaments.

* * *

Almost all of our statesmen and publicists have
agreed that the maintenance of the Monroe Doc-
trine was also a "vital interest." Unfortunately
we have allowed a great deal of imcertainty to
grow up and to persist about what we mean by
this Doctrine, an uncertainty which has always
worked out to our detriment. It has made Euro-

AMERICA'S VITAL INTERESTS I3

pean Powers unnecessarily jealous, it has made
the Latin-American Republics suspicious of our
intentions, and of late this same uncertainty has
allowed the more enterprising of the Japanese
Imperialists to pretend that their Twenty-one De-
mands on China — now happily repudiated by
more responsible opinion in Japan — were simply
an attempt to establish a Monroe Doctrine for
Asia. It is to be hoped that this Conference at
Washington will give our Government the occa-
sion to define, beyond any chance of misunder-
standing, just what we mean by this vital interest.
We have nothing to gain and much to lose by
vagueness.

Historically the matter is clear enough; any
one who will read the records can find out what
President Monroe had in mind. Successful revo-
lutions had driven Spain from the American main-
land. Her colonies had established independent
Republics. It was rumored that Spain was
appealing to the Holy Alliance for aid in the
reconquest of her former possessions. The
President in a Message to Congress stated that
any attempt of European Governments to extend
their political systems on this hemisphere would
be regarded by us as an unfriendly act. He did
not propose to drive the European Powers out of
their remaining colonies on this side of the world.
He said that we would resent and resist efforts on
their part to establish new colonies or to create

14 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

any new spheres of political influence. It is clear
that in his mind this question was closely asso-
ciated with the defense of our own territory.
He did not want to see Latin- America "Balkan-
ized." He did not think that it was safe for us
to allow states to grow up in the New World
which owed allegiance to Europe and whose
foreign policy would be dictated by European
Prime Ministers.

But Monroe did not declare a Protectorate over
the Latin-American Republics. He did not claim
for us any special political or economic privi-
leges, or any spheres of influence. He made no
suggestion that we would claim a right to close
the door of economic opportunity on our commer-
cial rivals.

If the Japanese today should make a declara-
tion that they would resent any attempt on the
part of a foreign Power to extend its political
control on the continent of Asia and made no
claim of special privileges for themselves, they
would be doing very much what Monroe did, and
for the life of me I cannot see any reason why
we should object. But until the Japanese show
more respect for their repeated pledges to main-
tain the Open Door in those parts of China where
they have already established themselves they will
not be suspected of much sincerity in their talk of
an Asiatic Monroe Doctrine.

AMERICA'S VITAL INTERESTS 1$

The meaning, which we put into the Doctrine,
has grown beyond Monroe's original intention.
When President Cleveland prevented the British
from forcibly collecting a debt in Venezuela, he
did something that Monroe never dreamed of.
And in taking this step, he greatly increased our
responsibilities. If we are not going to allow
the European Powers to protect their interests in
Latin-America in the usual way, we assume a
duty to see that their interests are not attacked.

There was also the unfortunate flurry about
Magdalena Bay. The excitement, which was
stirred up over the wild story that the Japanese
were planning to establish a Naval Base in this
unsuitable Mexican harbor, has given some
grounds for the popular belief, very prevalent in
Japan, that we intend to use the Monroe Doctrine
to thwart the peaceful enterprise of foreign com-
merce in Latin- America. There is of course
nothing in the recorded thought of Monroe to
warrant such action on our part and the Govern-
ment has never made any such pretension.

Also, there has been much discussion in our
papers of late as to whether the reference of a
dispute between South American Republics to
the arbitrament of a European Tribunal would
be an infringement of the famous Doctrine. Here
again we can say with certainty that President
Monroe never had such a problem in mind. He

1 6 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

was thinking about the preservation of peace in
the New World. He would have resented it if
some European Power, hoping to gain a political
foothold, had tried to mix into a South American
dispute uninvited. But he never said anything
to raise a doubt as to the full independence of
these southern Republics and their right to settle
their disputes in their own way. It is only in the
last half century that we have wounded the sus-
ceptibilities of these Republics by allowing it to
appear that we wanted to boss them. Monroe
never put forward any such claim.

The Monroe Doctrine — the real essence of
which is the prevention of foreign interference in
the free political development of Latin-America,
an interference which would inevitably trouble the
peace of the New World — is as much a vital
interest to us now as ever. But like the supreme
interest of territorial defense, it is, from the point
of view of armament, a dormant issue. Nobody
threatens it. And for this there are two reasons.

First of all, the South American Republics,
especially the ABC states, have developed suffi-
cient strength to defend their own independence.
We do not need to build battleships to keep any-
body from trying to make a colony of Argentine.
However much the Latin-Americans are inclined
to sputter at the overbearing way in which we
sometimes discourse on the Monroe Doctrine,

AMERICA'S VITAL INTERESTS 1 7

they would each start a Monroe Doctrine of their
own — under another name — if any foreign Power
attempted to subjugate one of their number.

Secondly, all the rest of the world has come
to realize that the results of the Monroe Doctrine
have been on the whole very good. It has been
generally beneficial that South America has been
preserved from the colonial scramble which has
made so much havoc in Africa and Asia. At the
Peace Conference at Paris, our representatives
found no serious opposition from any of the
Great Powers to the general acceptance of the
Monroe Doctrine. Our "vital interests" in this
matter are more securely guarded by such agree-
ments than they would be by any number of
battleships.

* * *

These two interests are none the less vital be-
cause they are for the moment dormant. We do
not vote Army and Navy appropriations to pro-
tect our territory from invasion nor to maintain
the Monroe Doctrine, because neither of them is
threatened. But if unfortunate circumstances
should arise, which made us lose confidence, we
would arm just as quickly as anybody else. We
are not particularly pacific; we are safer. But
if our occasional irritations with the British Em-
pire should turn into serious hostility, if Canada
showed signs of ill-will and began training large

1 8 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

armies, or if we should have plausible reason to
believe that some overseas Power was planning
a raid on Latin-America — as Napoleon III. did,
when we were utterly distracted by our Civil War
— we would not be discussing the limitation of
armaments. The price of plough-shares would
go up, so many people would be bidding for them,
to beat them into swords. If we really were
worried there is no reason why we should not
shoulder as heavy a military burden as Switzer-
land. They train all their young men and can
mobilize a tenth of their population in forty-eight
hours. For us that would mean a prepared army
of ten million men.

But we are not seriously worried about either
of these vital interests. They are amply pro-
tected, partly by distance, partly by such century-
old treaties as that of Ghent and by the more
recent general recognition of the validity of the
Monroe Doctrine, which was won at Paris. They
have been removed from the area of distrust into
the civilized zone of agreement.

So the problem before our delegates at the
Washington Conference will be to see if they can
bring our other vital interests into this same zone,
arrange agreements with the other Powers, which
will inspire such confidence that we will not feel
impelled to maintain expensive armaments in
their defense.

CHAPTER III

AMERICANS VITAL INTERESTS — THE FREEDOM
OF THE SEAS

Our century-old controversy with Great Britain,
about how the seas should be ruled, is a funda-
mental issue in any discussion of Naval Arma-
ments. If it does not figure on the Agenda at
the Washington Conference, it will be because
some agreement — tacit or formal — has been
reached before the Conference opens. Just as
the Japanese would prefer to settle the wrangle
over the Island of Yap by ''direct negotiations,'*
rather than in "full conference," so there would
be advantages, both to Britain and to us, if this
cause of irritation could be removed before the
questions, in which we hope to work together,
come before the delegates. Some sort of a modus
Vivendi may already have been reached, which
will avoid the embarrassment of a public discus-
sion of this family dispute.

But to ignore the issue would simply be hiding
our heads in the sand. Always our statesmen

19

20 THE A B as OF DISARMAMENT

have considered this matter a "vital interest," and
from time to time, when some incident has brought
it to the front page of our newspapers, public
opinion has rallied to their support. Like the
Monroe Doctrine, it is a subject we do not often
think about, but whenever events force it to our
attention, we think about it intensely and with
considerable heat. We broke off diplomatic re-
lations with France when Napoleon^s "continental
blockade" interfered with our rights at sea. We
fought the War of 1812 on the same issue. It
was in defense of these rights that we smashed
the Barbary Pirates. And it was what happened
to our citizens at sea in 1914-15-16 that brought
the Great War home to us and finally forced us
to take sides against Germany. The importance
of the matter has varied with us from decade to
decade. In our early days, when our clipper
ships traded in all the Seven Seas, the greatest
part of our wealth was ocean borne, but the
winning of the West distracted our attention from
the sea for several generations. Now we are once
more building up a merchant marine. We cannot
be indifferent to the law which rules the sea.

We had best give up the phrase: "The Freedom
of the Seas." The Germans ruined it by appro-
priating it during the War and using it in a sense
definitely hostile to the British. It is to be hoped
that our diplomats will find some other phrase,

THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 21

which will not sound as if it had been made in
Germany and which will make clear to our friends
in England just what we are driving at. If they
understand what we mean, it will no longer seem
dreadful to them.

What is the issue in this old controversy?
What do we want? Can it be reconciled with the
"vital interests" of Britain? It is of primary
importance that our Government should make
the American contention entirely plain — not only
plain, but also acceptable.

Much bitter opposition to the League of Na-
tions has been based on the erroneous idea that
it would be a Superstate, demanding a surrender
of sovereignty from its members. There is
nothing to warrant such a fear, but some of the
Republican Senators have been especially elo-
quent about this imaginary danger, so we may be
sure that no machinery will be established at
Washington which will have the power to compel
a sovereign nation to sacrifice what it considers
its "vital interests" on behalf of cosmopolitan
welfare. This Conference can accomplish nothing
except on the basis of voluntary agreement. If
we are not convinced that our interests on the
seas are adequately protected by agreement, we
must either give up going to sea or build war-
ships to defend our rights. On the other hand,
if our proposals seem to the British to endanger

22 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

their "vital interests" they will not accept them
and the competition in Naval Armaments will
continue.

A solution of this problem would be a tre-
mendous step towards general disarmament, a
necessary first step. If the Anglo-Saxon peoples,
speaking the same language, are so distrustful of
each other that they must arm to the teeth, there
is no ground for querulous surprise that the
Greeks and the Turks are in the market for more
guns.

Fortunately there is every reason to believe
that a mutually satisfactory arrangement can be
reached with Britain. In these days of aircraft,
the Atlantic is hardly wider than the Great Lakes
were in 1814, when we signed the Treaty of
Ghent and disarmed along the Canadian frontier.
We signed that treaty with Britain, immediately
after a bitter war, in which we had sunk a good
many of her ships and in which she had burned
our capital. Now we are to meet again to discuss
the reduction of armaments, but this time right
after a greater war, in which we have fought as
comrades. What was possible in a small way,
when we were angry, ought now to be feasible
on a larger scale. Surely there is nothing so
dreadful in salt water, that, while we need nothing
but police boats on the lakes, we must have war
fleets on the ocean.

THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 23

The dispute has to do with the rights of neu-
trals during naval warfare. Since Piracy was
abolished, the seas have been free in time of
peace. The citizen of any nation could go about
his business on the ocean, unarmed and without
fear of arbitrary interference. He could know
just what his rights were. But the outbreak of
war at sea immediately ends all that sense of
ordered security which is the essence of freedom.
Sailor folk, when they fight, do it in a ''natural"
and unrestrained way. They strike so hard at
their enemies that, quite as often as not, they
destroy people who have not the remotest interest
in their quarrel. It is this injury to innocent
neutrals which has caused protest.

No one has much sympathy for the non-com-
batant, who is not really neutral, who is helping
actively one belligerent against the other, but, due
allowance being made for this class of false neu-
trals, there is always a large bulk of sea commerce
which is in no way involved in the issues of the
war. History shows only too plainly that, in
the absence of any generally accepted Law of the
Seas, what the neutrals claim as their rights is
not worth writing down on paper.

The great loss to neutrals in a naval war is
not so much due to the confiscation of their car-
goes, nor the occasional sinking of their ships,
as it is to uncertainty. They do not know, from
day to day, what they can safely consider their

24 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

rights. That will be determined for them, with-
out consulting them, as the fighting develops.
The belligerent who comes out on top will — on
the basis of Might and his own convenience —
announce to the nations what he is pleased to
consider International Law. No neutral ship-
owner can accept a charter with any certainty,
because a cargo which is on the free list today
may be declared contraband after he puts to sea.
No neutral business man can rely on a contract
which involves an overseas transaction. Mari-
time insurance and freight rates soar to a point
of practical blockade, upsetting all the normal
processes of commerce.

It is this uncertainty against which we have
always protested. Once war is declared all idea
of freedom based on the stability of law disap-
pears. The billigerent who wins control of the
seas twists International Law to suit his purpose
and the neutral must bow to the Rule of Force.
During the Anglo-French Wars of 1793 to 1814,
each belligerent — just as our interests were
trampled on by both sides in the Great War —
issued edict after edict, destroying one after
another the time-honored and accustomed rights
of neutral commerce. To be sure each of these
edicts was justified as a "reprisal" against the
illegal actions of the other belligerent. But the
bizarre idea, that innocent neutrals should be

THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 2$

punished for the wrong-doings of an enemy, be-
came so vexatious that we broke off diplomatic
relations with France and declared war on Eng-
land.

This tendency to ignore the rights of others,
when yourself engaged in war, is not confined to
any one nation. We also have been offenders.
In the Civil War we invented innovations in the
Rules of Blockade — the Doctrine of Continuous
Voyage — just as recklessly denying what the
neutrals called their rights, as the British had
done with their ''Orders in Council," or Napoleon
with his "continental blockade."

In the Russo-Japanese War, for the first time
in history, Russia put foodstuff — rice — on her
contraband list. The United States and Great
Britain protested, and, as we had overpower-
ing navies, the Government of the Tsar thought
better of it and removed the ban from food-
stuff.

There is no generally accepted Law of Naval
Warfare; there are only a number of vague
precedents, of which the clearest is that the nation
which controls the sea can do just about what it
pleases. As there is no code which all nations
have voluntarily agreed to respect, each nation
when it becomes a belligerent interprets — or ig-
nores— the precedents as it sees fit. The result
is uncertainty and inevitable loss, that falls more

26 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

heavily on those who keep the peace than on
those who break it.

Although the British Government came very
near to agreeing with us on the advisabihty of
having a general agreement on the Law of the
Sea, in the years just before the War, in the
negotiations regarding the Declaration of London,
they at last refused to ratify it. Perhaps one
reason why we have never been able to make
the British quite see our point in this matter is
that they have suffered less than we or other
nations, when trying to maintain neutral rights
during a naval conflict. Always they have had
their great fleet, holding the balance of power,
and, no matter how desperately angry the bel-
ligerents might be at each other, they would take
care to fire in the other direction when a British
ship sailed by. During the Civil War, we
stretched the Law of the Sea to the detriment
of neutral shipping, not as far as we could but
as far as we dared. When one of our over-
zealous naval officers stopped the British ship
''Trent" and took off two agents of the Con-
federacy, Lincoln wisely decided that discretion
was the better part of valor and handed them
back to the British with due apologies. If the
British Navy had joined forces with the South,
as they threatened, the hopes of the Union would

THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 27

have been over. But there is small reason to
believe that we would have given up these two
gentlemen if the nation which was protesting on
their behalf had not had a navy.

In any sea war, neutral commerce is bound to
suffer, but the nation with the largest fleet suffers
least, and British merchantmen have on the whole
— notably in the Franco-Prussian War — been
treated with considerably more respect than those
of weaker nations. This makes it the more strik-
ing, that of all the international jurists who have
argued on behalf of the rights of neutral com-
merce. Englishmen have been the most eloquent.
Some of the best quotations in support of the
American contention are to be found in the official
British Blue Books.

Although this is striking, it is not surprising.
Great Britain has not only a great navy, but also
the largest mercantile marine afloat and, since
the fall of Napoleon, she has for more than a
century been neutral in all the great naval wars.
During this hundred years of neutrality, her main
interest was the protection of peaceful commerce
on the seas. In the long run, unless new wars
are to be frequent, British interests will inevitably
turn again in this direction.

However, in 19 14, the habit of British neu-
trality was broken, the policy which she had
developed in the long years of peace was forgotten

28 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

and she turned back to the Napoleonic Era for
precedents. His Majesty's Privy Council began
issuing Orders after the old manner, inventing
new forms of blockade under new names, adding
new items to the contraband list. It was rather
like a thrilling serial in a weekly publication, the
instalments came rapidly and each one had for
its climax some new interference with neutral
rights. Protests from Washington and other neu-
tral capitals were just as frequent. But from the
point of view of one who likes a good argument,
the correspondence was spoiled by Germany.
With amazing stupidity, she never allowed the
indignation of the neutrals against these British
innovations to boil over. Just as we were getting
very heated over some new ''Order in Council,"
Germany distracted our attention with a crime.
Controversies over commercial rights sank into
insignificance when the "Lusitania" went down.
If it were not all so tragic there would be an
element of slapstick farce in the record of our
effort to maintain an unbiased neutrahty during
the first years of the War. First Jack stepped on
our toes. As we demanded an apology, Johann
kicked us in the ribs. We were preparing to
challenge him to a duel, when Jack slapped us
in the face. And so it went. A few days after
the ''Sussex'' was torpedoed, when feeling was
running high against Germany, a Reply to one

THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 29

of our Notes arrived from London, which no one
can read today without the conviction that the
British Cabinet, by deliberate tactlessness, sought
to cool our growing ardor for the Cause of the
Entente. If we had been determined to defend
our rights at sea rigorously, we would have had

to declare war on both sides.

* * *

As all this controversy is caused by the distress
of neutrals in times of war, it is obvious that the
simplest way out of the difficulty would be some
scheme to insure peace. But it is because we
have refused to take part in the League of
Nations — the only scheme as yet suggested to
prevent war — that it has been necessary to sum-
mon this special Conference at Washington.
Until there is some organization of the nations,
which has gathered sufficient strength to give
general confidence in the stability of peace, all
maritime nations will consider the protection of
their rights at sea a "vital interest." Unless we
can safeguard them by agreement we will have
to depend for their defense on armament.

A reading of the arguments made by American
representatives at the various International Con-
ferences, where the Law of the Sea has been dis-
cussed, naturally shows considerable variation in
regard to detail, but a clear consistency on the
fundamental. We have always maintained that

30 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

the law of the seas, like our Anglo-Saxon law on
land, should be based on the consent of those to
be governed by it. That is the meaning we have
put in the phrase: the Freedom of the Seas.
Secure Freedom, based on an established Code of
Law, to which all maritime nations are bound by
voluntary agreement, a stable statute, which will
make clear to all their rights and duties — such
freedom from arbitrary interference as we are
accustomed to under the Law of the Land. At
present, we have a state of anarchy at sea as soon
as war is declared. We do not know what we
are free to do, until one belligerent has won con-
trol of the seas and has decreed, on the basis of
Might, what the ''law" shall be for the rest of us.

Any one, trained in legal lore, will find the
argument stated at length in the case of the steam-
ship "Zamora," in which a British Prize Court in
191 6 sustained our contention that the Privy
Council, which is a purely British body, could not
create International Law.

A better illustri^tion for the layman is found in
the controversy over ''bunker coal." We were
not a party to this dispute, as it lay between
Britain and the European neutrals. An old
maxim of International Law, accepted without
demur by the British Prize Courts, was that things
"needful for the working of the ship or the com-
fort of the crew" could not be treated as contra-

THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 3 1

band. But suddenly a British Order in Council
put "coal, of enemy origin," on the contraband
list. No ship, with German coal in its bunkers,
was safe from seizure outside of the Baltic.

From our, American, point of view, it is a mere
detail whether or not coal should be classed as
contraband, but we maintain that a well-estah*
lished rule of International Law cannot be changed
by any one nation to suit its convenience of the
moment. When all the text-books on Interna-
tional Law say that the nations have agreed that
things needful for the working of the ship are free
from suspicion of contraband, a sea captain has
a right to believe it. He has a right to take on
bunker coal wherever he wants to, and neither
Britain nor Germany nor we have a right to treat
it as prize. We are interested, not so much in
the contents of the Sea Code, as in its nature
and source. If everybody else thinks that
bunker coal should be on the contraband list, we
have no objection. Our main contention is that
the Sea Code — whatever is written into it, and
whatever amendments may from time to time be
necessary — should be based on conference and
agreement. The Rules of Sea Warfare must be
determined either by the nation with the strongest
navy, or, if it is to deserve the name of Inter-
national Law, it must be based on agreement
among the nations. In the first case we will have

32 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

to keep our navy polished. In the second case,

we have always been ready to pledge our honor

to observe the rules to which we have agreed with

scrupulous punctilio.

♦ * *

There is a possibility of making a "detour"
around this difficult problem, along some by-road
of temporary and makeshift compromise. There
has been some discussion, for instance, of equality
between the two navies. This would in theory
give us just as good a chance as the British to
tie knots in International Law. But the ingenuity
of Naval Constructors would always be tempted
to upset the balance. There will be no way of
getting around the difficulty, which will prove as
permanently satisfactory as facing it frankly and
removing it.

If the Conference at Washington reaches per-
manent and satisfying results, it will be by work-
ing out methods of friendly cooperation, which
will gradually allay distrusts and build up cordial
understandings, giving to each nation such con-
fidence in the other's spirit of fair play, such as-
surance that each will respect the other's "vital
interests" on the seas, that it becomes obviously
foolish to go on wasting money on Naval Com-
petition. If suspicion can be conquered, there
will be a race in disarmament.

If we and the British can trust each other on
Lake Erie, why not on the Atlantic?

CHAPTEk IV

-THE OPEN DOOR

When John Hay wrote his first Notes about The
Open Door Policy in the Far East, he did not
claim that this matter was for us at that time a
"vital interest," but he believed that inevitably
it would become one. Every year's statistics
brings new evidence of the growing importance of
Oriental trade. The present Administration is
insistent in protecting our commercial opportuni-
ties in all the former enemy territories, now held
under Mandate. It has made the security of
American investments the basis of its discussions
with Mexico. It has protested to the Netherlands
against discrimination in regard to oil in the
Dutch East Indies. It is not likely to weaken in
regard to the Open Door in China.

John Hay had other values in mind beside the
trade balance. He saw that the only hope for
China was to stop the scramble for spheres of
influence and concession, which was tearing the
Celestial Empire to pieces. The gains from this

33

34 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

scramble were loot, rather than profits. They
went, not to the most industrious, but to the least
scrupulous. They were secured by bribes and
bullying, not by service. Looting brings high
dividends while it lasts, but it is only another
name for killing the goose that lays the golden
eggs. What was going on in China was a dis-
grace to Western Civilization. And Hay's at-
tempt to establish the principle of the Open Door
was inspired by the hope of stopping a crime,
not by a desire to share in the spoils.

Besides our interest in foreign trade, there is
great sympathy for China in this country, a strong
desire to protect her from spoliation, so there is
little doubt that this Administration would be
supported by a united public opinion in insisting
that the maintenance of the Open Door is one
of our vital interests. It is striking that many
of those leaders of opinion — public speakers and
newspaper editors — who have been most vocifer-
ous in warning us against any Trans-Atlantic
commitments, think it quite natural that we should
take "a strong stand" in protecting China and the
Open Door in the Far East. The farther West
you go beyond the Mississippi, the more often
you encounter people, opposed to our taking any
risks on behalf of peace in Europe, who are quite
ready to rush — Quixotically — to arms on behalf
of China — and trade opportunities.

THE OPEN DOOR 35

It certainly would be fine, if we could secure
China against further encroachments and per-
suade everybody to live up to the pledges they
have given about preserving equality of trade
opportunities. But the hard thing is to do it.

Some wise man has said that the difference
between an expert and a layman, is that the
expert understands the difficulties. Almost every-
body in New York City has wished for a bridge
across the Hudson. But the experts talked about
the difficulties, cost, etc. Now we are told that
at last the bridge is to be built. The experts
have overcome the difficulties — the most impor-
tant of which we, laymen, never realized.

So it is with these thorny problems across the
Pacific. Those of us who have spent a few weeks
in the Orient as tourists have seen one of the
difficulties — the terrifying pressure of the birth
rate on the food supply. The more one studies
the problem, the more difficulties are discovered.

Like the Anglo-Irish situation, like our own
troubled relations with Mexico, like so discour-
agingly many international problems, it is easier
to assess past blame than to find a present solution.
We have to begin work in the middle of a mess.
Any lad can keep a new stable decent, but it took
Hercules to clean up those of Augeas.

The experts have not yet found a way to over-
come the difficulties in the Far East. That will

36 THE A B C'S OF DISARMAMENT

be the principal task of the Conference at Wash-
ington.

* * *

A letter came to hand the other day, from a
man who formerly had unusual opportunity for
studying the Diplomacy of the Far East. It was
very illuminating on some of these difficulties.

"I haven't any information on what the Jap-
anese are planning to do at this Conference," he
wrote, "but I am willing to risk a prophecy on
the line they will take. All they need, if they
want to raise a cloud of embarrassment, is a little
logic.

"Their enemies sometimes accuse them of being
merely imitators and certainly in their diplomacy
they are great on precedent. When they get in
bad, it is because they have followed a bad prece-
dent. And we have furnished them plenty of
bad ones. They will have learned from the his-
tory of former Conferences that the nation which
allows itself to be put on the defensive in such
discussions always comes off badly. They will
search for a precedent on how to take the offensive.

"They will find just what they want in the
Conference of Algeciras. You remember that
Germany insisted on that Conference to protect
the Sultan of Morocco from the aggressive designs
of France. Well, the French Delegation, at the
very first session, took the wind out of the German

Tm OPEN DOOR 37

sails 'by suggesting that all accept, as a basis for
the discussion, a pledge to maintain the political
sovereignty of the Sultan, the territorial integrity
of his realm and the principle of equal trade
opportunities. There was nothing left to discuss
but details. After the Conference disbanded,
France proceeded to depose the Sultan, divide up
his realm and close the door on competitive com-
merce— our own American commerce included.
Not a pretty precedent, you will say? No. But
it was effective and just the kind of precedent the
Japanese follow with such touching fidelity.

^'The Japanese will arrive at Washington with
their well-known and somewhat exaggerated smile,
and my bet is that, at the first opportunity, they
will ask permission to read a proposal for the
peaceful settlement of the Far Eastern problems.
In a very high moral tone, they will contend that
the security of China, freed from the exploitation
of foreign concessionaires, its independence and
territorial integrity guaranteed by international
pledges, is the dearest wish of Japan. Of next
importance, in their opinion, will be the rigorous
application of the policy of John Hay in regard
to the Open Door. Japan would be ready to
welcome any cooperation in such measures to
insure the peace and prosperity of the East. She
would be glad to abandon all her pretensions to
special interests within the historic frontiers of

38 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

China, as soon as the other Powers were ready-
to do likewise. Indeed, the value of Japan's con-
cessions are very modest compared to the colony
which France has cut out for herself in Indo-
China. She could well afford to cancel her
spheres of influence in Manchuria and Mongolia,
if the British would do the same in Hong Kong
and Thibet.

"As a further pledge of their sincerity, they
may propose to tear down the tariff barriers in
Formosa and Korea, if we will do the same in the
Philippines and Alaska. They could present quite
an argument about the injustice of our excluding
their trade from the Aleutian Islands, which are
so much nearer to their territory than to Seattle.

"Of course," he wrote, "I do not believe that
the Japanese Delegation will be quite as ironical
as this, but I do think that this will be their
general line of attack. Why shouldn't they?
They are coming here reluctantly. They do not
know how far they can trust the British. They
are mightily worried about an Anglo-Saxon trap.
And logic is their trump card.

"Anybody who thinks that a naughty Japan is
to be brought before the bar of a virtuous Chris-
tendom is counting without his — guest. What
do we accuse Japan of? Annexing Korea? We
annexed the Philippines. France carved a colony
out of China. The missionaries accuse Japan of

THE OPEN DOOR 39

drugging the Chinese, smuggling in cocaine. Is
cocaine so much worse than opium? Japan has
violated her pledges about the Open Door in
Manchuria? Guilty. But has France kept her
pledges in Morocco? No. The only charge you
can substantiate against the Japanese Foreign
Office is the consistency with which it always
follows the worst Christian precedent.

"It makes the Japanese mad to be called the
Prussians of the Orient, but there is much truth
in it. A good many of them are spiritually walk-
ing down Wilhelmstrasse — the road to destruction.
I think that the Japanese are in bad, have taken
the wrong trail and all that, but it would be
na'ive folly to pretend that they are the only
offenders.

"If there isn't a general change in direction out
there in the East, there will be a terrible smash.
Although I'm sure that the Conference will be
a bitter farce, if it is run on any holier-than-thou
basis, I have great hopes. Remember that the
Japanese are having a hard time, too; they are
just as much perplexed about the future as we.
If we really try to help them to firmer ground,
we have a wonderful opportunity to regain their
friendship."

This letter is typical, in its contrast between
the cynical despair of traditional diplomacy and
the growing hope for finer International Relations,

40 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

of all serious modern discussion of such matters.
If the Japanese open an attack along the lines
he suggests, it will be hard to answer them. But
it would be ill-advised for them to do so. It
would show that they have no share in the hope
for real settlements based on mutual satisfaction
and good will; that their object was to raise a
smoke screen behind which they might retreat
without loss of face. But all the world would
see through so retrogressive a manoeuvre and no
nation today can find a source of pride in having
blocked the progress towards peace, so ardently
desired by all the world. The nation which is
most modest in its claims, most sympathetic to the
interests of others — raises the fewest objections
and most frequently makes conciliatory sugges-
tions— will win the palms at this Conference.
* * *

The most delicate task before the American
Delegation will be the defining of what are our
"vital interests" in the Far East. Even if it is
not written down and given out to the newspapers,
the definition will have to be thought out. Cer-
tainly we would like to see all the foreign Powers
give up their oppressive and disruptive claims to
"spheres of influence" in China. Is it a vital
interest for the defense of which we must arm?
Are we prepared to be just as insistent in talking
to Great Britain and France as to Japan? Cer-

THE OPEN DOOR 41

tainly we would like to see the Open Door a
reality. Are we ready to apply the principle to
our own dependencies, or is it a rule which we
like when it favors us and which we refuse to
discuss when it works against us?

Necessarily the refrain of all these articles is
that the Conference on the Limitation of Arma-
ments will get us nowhere, unless it results in
voluntary agreements. It is not enough to formu-
late a policy of the Open Door in China which
seems just to us. We are not law-givers to the
world. Japan cannot be expected to agree whole-
heartedly to our proposals, unless she is convinced
that they protect her vital interests quite as much
as ours.

Our controversy with Britain over the Freedom
of the Seas seems much more easy of settlement
than the reconciling of the interests of Japan and
the United States in the Far East. In spite of
Messrs. Hearst and Bottomley, almost everybody
in England and America wants a settlement.
There has been more heated and more voluminous
efforts to make trouble on both sides of the
Pacific.

But those who talk glibly of inevitable conflict,
who quote Mr. Kipling about the East being East
and the West, West, should read the verse from
which they quote clear through. The East and
the West are going to meet at Washington. And

42 THE A B as OF DISARMAMENT

all those from all the ends of the earth, who pray
for Peace, will pray that they meet as brave men
should, fearlessly, earnestly and with clear speech.
We will not help along the cause of Peace if
we fall into the sins of vainglory and self-
righteousness. Japan will not help along, if she
comes in with some cunning insincerity — however
well precedented — to confuse the issues. But if
both nations are brave enough to be frank, confi-
dent enough to be conciliatory — not afraid of
seeming weak — there is room to hope that the
Pacific Ocean may continue to deserve its attrac-
tive name.

CHAPTER V

THE VITAL INTERESTS OF GREAT BRITAIN

It is always a delicate, thankless task to define
the interests of other people, but fortunately the
British can speak for themselves in our common
language. They have written an immense amount
on the subject of their vital interests. Also most
of us have the opportunity to talk it over with
English friends. Almost all that has been said
on this subject can be reduced to one word — Sea.

The irrefutable logic of geological formation
makes this inevitably the major interest of the
British. It is the heaving of volcanic forces, the
crumpling of the earth's crust, rather than any
choice on their part, which has determined this
matter. They are an Island folk.

Civilization came to Britain, with Caesar, from
overseas. Her prosperity has always come from
overseas trade. Her Empire is overseas.

England was the first country to get caught
in the industrial revolution. The application of
steam to manufacture, the development of the
factory system, immensely intensified production.

43

44 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

The effect was the same in England as that we are
now watching in Japan — an increase in popula-
tion, rapidly outrunning the native food supply.
Production in England, under this new system,
also quickly surpassed the consumptive power
of the home markets. So two necessities de-
veloped simultaneously, each one partly the cause
and partly the effect of the other. It was neces-
sary to find foreign markets to which the surplus
production of the factories could be exported.
It was equally necessary to find foreign markets
where food could be bought for import, and not
food only. It was just as important to feed the
maw of the machine as to find food for the people.
Raw material — cotton, metals, rubber — had to be
bought abroad and the only way to pay for them
was by exporting manufactured goods. And all
of these foreign markets lay across the seas.

It was fortunate for Britain that she was the
first of the nations to be caught by the Industrial
Revolution. There was still much room in the
world. She already had a large overseas domain,
built up on the colonial system of the i8th Cen-
tury. It was relatively easy for her to consolidate
her position in the most favorable foreign markets.

Her Empire also proved of value in another
way, perhaps equally important. It furnished a
reservoir into which she could pour her surplus
population. The colonies and especially the

THE VITAL INTERESTS OF GREAT BRITAIN 45

Dominions acted as a safety valve, automatically
establishing a minimum wage. If life became
too hard in the industrial centers, there was always
a chance to emigrate to some British land of more
promising opportunities. Just as the Winning of
the West has left deep imprints on our national
life, so the development of the Dominions has
played a role of great importance in the British
Empire.

For the nations, which became industrialized
later, it was much more difficult to find a place
in the sun. The forces urging to expansion were
just as powerful, but all the best fields for expan-
sion were already occupied. This presented a
problem to Germany that was too much for her
to solve. In impatience she tried to cut the
Gordian Knot — what she called "encirclement" —
by the sword. Japan is now faced by the same
problem. And this Conference on the Limitation
of Armaments will be meaningless, unless it suc-
ceeds in finding some peaceful way for Japan to
solve it.

Pastoral philosophers may argue that it would
have been better for the British if they had never
become industrialized. They might have been
happier if they had been content with the role of
an insignificant group of islands, where the people
plowed and sowed, shepherded flocks, clad them-
selves in the products of Arts-Craft looms, and

46 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

for recreation wrote immortal verse. But the
English never had the chance to make a choice
between such a William Morris Arcadia and the
grim unloveliness of the Five Towns. They were
in the grip of what the Germans call the "Zeit-
geist." Now they cannot turn back. And in
this kind of a civihzation, which the Spirit of our
Times has created, British interests at sea are not
a matter of more or less profits, but of Life or
Death.

It makes no difference what sort of a Britisher
you talk to, you will find the conviction bred in
his bones that the fate of the nation lies on the
sea, that Britons will very soon be slaves if any
other Power rules the waves. So long as they
have any energy left, of brain or muscle or purse,
they will use it to protect themselves from this
menace. They will buy security at whatever it
costs — but of course they want to get it as cheaply
as possible.

\]p till the turn of the century, Britain, in her
Splendid Isolation, relied solely on her own navy
for the protection of her interests on the seas.
She built fleets powerful enough to give her
mastery against any possible combination of
hostile nations. This arrangement had certain
obvious advantages, but its cost became more and
more oppressive. Among other things which the
progress of science has done for our generation

THE VITAL INTERESTS OF GREAT BRITAIN 47

has been to multiply and multiply the expensive-
ness of arms. The entire Spanish Armada, prob-
ably all the ships Nelson ever commanded, did
not cost so much as one modern Super-Dread-
naught.

As the tax burden incident to Ruling the Waves
increased beyond reason, British statesmen began
to look around for partners with whom to share
the responsibility. The Japanese Alliance was
the first step in this new policy. It protected, and
amply protected, British interests in the Pacific.
The next step was the Naval Agreement with
France, whereby they took over the protection of
British interests in the Mediterranean and allowed
the concentration of the Grand Fleet in the North
Seas.

During this period — 1 900-1 91 4 — the British
Government, more than once, sounded us out, to
see if we would come in on the combination. It
seems that we generally pretended not to under-
stand what they meant.

The War tested this new policy and proved
that it was good, for the French and Japanese
Navies cooperated with the British in accordance
with the agreement. But the War also proved
once more — and so vividly that no Englishman
who lived through the critical winter of 191 7-18
will ever forget — how utterly Britain could be
defeated if an enemy could close against her the

48 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

sea routes on which her life depends. German
submarines came within measurable distance of
doing it. Every Britisher knows that his Empire
cannot survive a war in which it is overpowered

at sea.

* * *

Our proposal for a generally accepted Sea
Code, which would assure the Freedom of the Sea,
has never been agreed to by the British. It has
not seemed to them to guarantee them sufficient
protection. Here as elsewhere, the great obstacle
is distrust. We have refused to give any formal
assurances that our fleet would not be used against
them. We have ignored several overtures. It
was our Senate, not Parliament, which refused to
ratify the General Arbitration Treaty.

Then there is the more generalized distrust that
comes from the realization that, when people are
fighting for their lives, it is hard for them to
remember the promises they have given in cool
blood. Of course, if there were some "organized
major force," ready to bring pressure to bear on
any nation which violated its International Agree-
ments, it would be easier — but this Conference at
Washington has been rendered necessary because
we were not willing to go into such an arrange-
ment.

So the British have some justification in being
shy of our proposed Freedom of the Seas. It

THE VITAL INTERESTS OF GREAT BRITAIN 49

demands a curtailment of their privileges and no
very definite assurances from us. They are ac-
customed to ruling the waves, and have found it
pleasant. When other people fell out, they could
cruise around the outskirts of the fray and pre-
vent any innovations in International Law which
threatened their commercial interests; and on the
rare occasions when they were drawn into the
conflict, the strength of their navy made the
weaker neutrals humble and respectful in talking
about their "rights" when the Privy Council in-
vented some new interpretation of old precedents.
Any one is naturally reluctant to abandon so
privileged a position. But the British, finding it
a terribly costly luxury, have discovered how to
reduce the expense by means of Agreements, first
with Japan in the Pacific and then with France
in regard to the Mediterranean. They are now
seeking an agreement with us.

For a while the British hoped that the League
of Nations would solve the whole difficulty. If a
more civilized method of protecting national in-
terests at sea should win general confidence, no-
body would waste money on battleships. But
what hope there was in the League, from the
point of view of ending naval competition, was
ruined by our refusal to participate. The one
nation which seriously threatened British safety
at sea stayed out of the general agreement to

50 THE A B as OF DISARMAMENT

prevent war and accepted a naval program which,
if it were not answered by intensified building in
England, would soon leave them a poor second.

We are all trying to get into the frame of mind
in which we will feel safe in reducing our arma-
ments, so it would be worse than useless to recount
the old irritations, the tactless threats, which
goaded the last Administration into laying the
foundation of our present building program. We
want to forget all that if we can. The disturbing
fact is that the British, feeling very intensely that
their safety depends on at least equality with any
other Naval Power, which might become hostile,
find our attempt to outbuild them inexplicable,
mysterious and therefore threatening. These
Dreadnaughts that we are building are not toy
ships; they are dangerous — to somebody — to
whom?

From the point of view of all the nations which
have entered into a Covenant to prevent Wars,
this navy of ours is outlaw. Not only the Eng-
lish but all the world is asking, "Against whom
are the Americans building?"

If we maliciously wanted to make the British
and Japanese nervous and suspicious we could not
find a better way to do it. If we are not spending
all this money for fun — just to hear it rattle as
it runs away — it must be against one or both of
them. Under the spell of the old traditions of

THE VITAL INTERESTS OF GREAT BRITAIN 5 1

diplomacy, there would be nothing for Britain to
do in the circumstance but to increase her own
expenditures to the limit and strengthen her
Alliances against us.

Fortunately, Lloyd George has been unwilling
to accept the idea that a quarrel is inevitable.
He has decided on at least one more try at an
agreement. As a result of the Conference of
Dominion Premiers, he has publicly proposed an
Anglo- American- Japanese Triple Alliance. It is
uncertain whether such an agreement is advisable,
it is uncertain whether our public opinion would
accept it. But the offer has been made this time
so earnestly, so publicly, that we cannot pretend
not to understand what it means.

If our refusal to join the League is final and if
we decide to reject this offer, we must present
some counter-proposal which will be acceptable
to the British and Japanese or there is no use
wasting time discussing the limitation of arma-
ments— nobody will believe that we want it. If
we cannot agree to anything, if we are going to
reject every proposal whether it is 'originated by
ourselves or by others, we had best settle down
at once without further palaver to outbuild the
Anglo-Japanese combination.

That is the serious phase of this Conference.
If it does not succeed, the failure will be appalling.
Once you begin to discuss mutual jealousies and

52 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

distrusts, you must allay them or they will become
more acute than ever.

Two proposals for the Limitation of Naval
Armaments have already been accepted in prin-
ciple by the British — the League of Nations and
a Triple Alliance of Britain, the United States
and Japan. If we really want to decrease this
hideous burden of armaments, we cannot reject
both of them unless we have an acceptable coun-
ter-proposal to offer. The British have shown
their willingness to meet us in some agreement.
So, if the Conference should break down on this
point, the world will put the responsibility on us.

CHAPTER VI

THE VITAL INTERESTS OF JAPAN — ECONOMIC

We are less familiar with the history and
current thought of Japan than we are in the case
of our Trans- Atlantic cousins. We cannot read
their newspapers and do not often have the oppor-
tunity to discuss the issues with them in friendly
conversation.

However, there are certain broad considera-
tions, governing their thinking about the vital
interests of their country, which all who wish can
understand. This is more especially true in
regard to their economic interests.

In so many ways their situation is similar to
that of the British. Geological evolution has
arranged for them an Island home. They are
a little better off in regard to food than the British
as a larger proportion of their people are still
engaged in agriculture. Their industrialism, with
its trend away from the farms to the factory sites,
is still young. But from the point of view of
raw material, they are much worse off than the

53

54 THE A B C'S OF DISARMAMENT

British. They have little coal, no fuel oil and very
little mineral. Their factories must be fed almost
entirely from overseas. Their Industrialism is
developing rapidly, producing much more com-
modities than can be consumed at home and
which must be sold abroad, drawing ever more
people into the towns and cities, who must be
fed with imported foodstuffs, making not only
the prosperity, but the very life of the nation,
more and more dependent on regular, uninter-
rupted overseas trade. When the War caused the
shortage of shipping and freight rates soared,
there were immediate and disastrous rice riots
in Japan. An effective blockade would starve
them into submission just as quickly as the
English.

Japan has less responsibilities in the way of
distant colonies than Britain, but, while this may
be considered as somewhat reducing her needs
in Naval Armaments, it is far from an unmixed
blessing, for it makes her foreign markets, both
for import and export, less secure, and she has
no sparsely settled dominions to absorb her sur-
plus population.

The most difficult problem to judge, which
faces Japan, is this matter of her rapidly in-
creasing population. There is no other important
phase of sociology, about which we know less, to

THE VITAL INTERESTS OF JAPAN— ECONOMIC SS

which we have devoted less study, than the birth
rate. Generally, but not always, the development
of an Industrial Epoch has stimulated popu-
lation. It did in England, it did in Germany.
But it has not done so in France. Italy is not
so highly industrialized as Belgium, but the exu-
berance of her birth rate causes her more worry.
The Russians, who are hardly industrialized at
all, have been increasing in numbers tremen-
dously. And as we do not know what causes
these periods of sudden increase in the birth
rate, we do not know how long they will last.
Almost every European nation, where statistics
are available, has gone through recurrent cycles
of great prolificness and relative sterility. Spain,
for instance, once had a period when her popula-
tion broke the bonds of her narrow frontiers and
surged out to the uttermost corners of the world.
Nobody pretends to know what stopped it. Per-
haps there is some "law" of population, but if
so we have not yet deciphered it. Hardly any
serious attention has been given to the subject,
since Malthus wrote his pessimistic essay on
Population so many years ago.

So we cannot be sure that the present excess
of births over deaths will continue indefinitely
in Japan, but the last fifty years has seen a very
rapid increase in the number of inhabitants.
From a Western point of view, the Islands are

56 THE A B C'S OF DISARMAMENT

already terribly over-populated. If this tendency
continues for a few decades, an explosive force
will be generated, which it is difficult to estimate
or overestimate. For the Japanese cannot emi-
grate.

Close at hand is the vast continent of Asia,
but it is already densely populated and its inhabi-
tants are habituated to a lower standard of liv-
ing than that of Japan. The movement of migra-
tions is always in the opposite direction — towards
opportunities of improving conditions. No one
wants to leave his familiar countryside and seek
his fortune in a foreign land, unless he has a
reasonable prospect of bettering himself. All the
Government-encouraged projects of Japanese
emigration to their colonies and spheres of in-
fluence in Asia have failed dismally. There has
been no large scale movement of Japanese settlers
to the colony of Formosa. The percentage of
Japanese residents in Korea has grown only very
slowly since the Annexation. And it appears that
the Japanese colonists in Manchuria are losing
ground before Chinese immigration. They can-
not compete successfully with native labor on
the continent.

If you reverse this proposition, you have the
explanation of why the Japanese cannot migrate
to the countries where the conditions are more
favorable.

THE VITAL INTERESTS OF JAPAN— ECONOMIC 57

There is so great a difference between the stand-
ards of the Orientals and the Anglo-Saxons that
Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United
States have been forced in self-defense to exclude
them. Just as the Japanese laborer cannot live
in competition with Chinese or Korean coolies,
so our labor cannot maintain its accustomed
standards in competition with them.

The Japanese, who would like to emigrate,
find that they cannot earn a decent living in
the countries to which they are free to go and
that they are excluded from the countries where
they could hope to better themselves. "The
number of Japanese abroad is far less than is the
net increase in population every six months."
This quotation from an essay by Walter Weyl,
"Japan's Thwarted Emigration," presents the
whole problem with great vividness. The only
way for the Japanese statesmen to care for this
rapidly growing population — these extra citizens
— is to create new jobs where they can earn
enough to pay for imported food. If they cannot
check the production of babies, they must inten-
sify the production of commodities and find mar-
kets for them abroad.

Taxation is another very serious problem for
Japan. As in many other phases of governmen-
tal organization, Japan was able to benefit by the

58 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

experience of others. Her Constitution is not a
growth like that of most of the Western countries.
Her break with her old traditions of feudalism
was sudden and sweeping, and the statesmen who
planned her present Constitution had studied all
our experiments in government. They did not
copy any one Western Government; they tried
to take the best from each and adopt it to their
own needs. Many students of economy have said
that they were especially successful in their tax
legislation, successful, that is, from the point
of view of raising the largest possible national
revenue. But on the whole her people are poor
and it seems that she has reached the limit of
taxation. The only way she can hope to increase
the income of the government — if indeed she is
able to maintain her present miUtary and naval
expenditures — is by profitable enterprises abroad,
by increasing her industrial wealth through build-
ing more factories or by the increased custom re-
ceipts from a growing import trade.
* * *

There is no possible way for Japan to take
care of her expanding population or to increase
her tax-yielding wealth unless she has large and
assured supplies of raw materials from abroad.
The industries for which she is traditionally fa-
mous do not lend themselves to large scale pro-
duction. Silk is almost the only specifically

THE VITAL INTERESTS OF JAPAN— ECONOMIC $9

Oriental product which Japan can largely in-
crease. Modern industry depends on the fabri-
cation of the products of fuel and minerals, and
of these basic materials she has almost none.

Just across narrow straits, hardly wider than
those which separate England from the Conti-
nent, is the mainland of Asia. Most of the pearls
and precious stones, the wrought gold and lacquer,
the perfumes and spices, which made the name of
"Cathay" alluring when Marco Polo was young,
have been already snatched up, but the ancient
realm of the Great Khan still holds wealth incal-
culable in such unromantic things as coal and oil
and mineral ores. The riches which were carried
away on camel caravans and in the sailing ships
of "the British Company, trading in the East
Indies" were only children's baubles compared to
the value of subsoil deposits which could be dug
up with steam shovels and moved in unlovely
trains of flat cars. And all this raw wealth,
which Japan needs so urgently to keep her
people alive, is ignored and neglected by those
who "own" it.

All the mining, railroad and industrial devel-
opment of China has been done neither by, nor
for the benefit of, the Chinese, but by foreign
"concessionaires" — more foreign and from more
distant homes than the Japanese.

Perhaps it would be the most enlightened and

6o THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

farsighted policy to allow all these deposits of
natural resources to lie fallow, until the Chinese
themselves awake to their value and begin to
work them. But no citizen of Japan, however
farsighted or enlightened, is going to accept this
point of view for his country, while he watches
the Great Powers of Christendom scrambling for
the loot. If Britain, with her vast Dominions,
if France, with her great North African Empire,
is justified in staking out claims in China, who
will expect the Japanese, needing these resources
so much more desperately, to be more self-deny-
ing? In the existing state of International Ethics,
even the most passionate friend of the Chinese
must admit that Japan has a right — at least as
good a right as anybody else — to secure for her-
self access to these undeveloped resources.

But even an ardent friend of the Japanese is
free to discuss the methods they have adopted
towards this end and to doubt if they have been
wise or effective.

First from a purely economic point of view,
Japanese methods are open to criticism. They
have too slavishly followed the example of their
Christian rivals. Like them they have bitten off
more than they can comfortably chew. In gen-
eral, the industrial enterprises of foreigners in
China have been unintelligently greedy. A group
of investors has acquired — too often by bribery

THE VITAL INTERESTS OF JAPAN— ECONOMIC 6 1

and intimidation — a rich concession. In the
normal process of development it would require
a capital outlay of a million dollars and ten
years' work before it would begin to give its
maximum returns. But after a few hundred
thousand dollars have been put into it and two
or three years' development work has been done,
attention is distracted by the chance of a new
concession — farther in. If the claim is not staked
out quickly, somebody else may jump it. And
so the first concession is neglected in the scramble
to obtain new ones. Very few such enterprises
in China are fully developed. Over-expansion has
been the rule. The map is all plastered over
with paper concessions of the dog-in-the-manger
type. The owners have not the capital to begin
work, but they can keep anybody else from
working.

The basic Japanese concession in China is the
South Manchurian Railway, with all its subsidi-
ary mining, agricultural and trading rights. If
the Japanese had concentrated all their energy
on this project, it would be largely prosperous.
But they have neglected it, in their eagerness to
establish themselves in Outer Mongolia. Now
the railway is in financial difficulties. The Japan-
ese banks find all their capital tied up in other
prospectively prosperous but still undeveloped
concessions, and can give no assistance. So the

62 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

Directors of the South Manchurian Railway had
to appeal to foreign bankers to help them out.

The collapse of the French Banque Industrielle
de Chine is another illustration of the general
situation. Foreigners hold concessions on paper
far in excess of the available capital for develop-
ment. The Japanese have copied the errors of
their competitors.

There is also a second sound criticism of
Japanese methods in China. Their economic
position has been weakened by their failure to
create ''good will." This is primarily a matter
of poHtics, but it has had a striking and imme-
diate effect on business. Their eagerness to se-
cure control of raw materials by methods of po-
litical bullying ruined for a time the principal
market for their manufactured products. The
Chinese boycott against Japanese goods, due to
political animosity aroused by the Twenty-one
Demands, was a severe blow. The banks, already
over-extended in the scramble for concessions and
the wild-cat finance of the war period, could not
carry the exporters, who were hit. The result
was the worst crash in the financial history of
Japan.

Her failure to reach a settlement of the Shan-
tung question keeps the boycott alive. Methods
of violence and intimidation may prevent rivals
from securing concessions which the Japanese

THE VITAL INTERESTS OF JAPAN— ECONOMIC 63

want, but although you can rob people by force
you cannot compel them to buy your products. A
long continued and systematic boycott in China
would surely ruin Japan.

The economic life of these two Oriental nations
is so inexorably interwoven, both for export and
import, that it seems obvious to the outsider that
Japan^s most vital interest is to secure the good
will of the Chinese. Her one excuse for not doing
so is the bad example set by her principal com-
petitors.

There is still another fair criticism of Japan-
ese commercial activity in China; it has not
tended to strengthen her credit in the foreign
markets where she must occasionally go for
loans. The psychology of credit is one of the
most subtle of unsolved problems. It costs the
Japanese people a great deal to pay higher inter-
est on their Imperial Bonds than some other
countries. The South Manchurian Railway does
not find ''money cheap." That the bankers of
Japan are fully alive to this problem is indicated
by the fact that they were on the whole more con-
ciliatory in the Consortium negotiations than
some of the Japanese politicians.

But the future welfare of the Japanese eco-
nomic life is more especially dependent on good
relations with China. If this Conference at
Washington can do something to civilize foreign

64 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

commercial enterprise in China — and the Western
Powers could do a great deal by example — it
would accomplish much for the Peace of the
Orient. A really cordial entente between Japan
and China, making possible friendly cooperation
in industrial development, would be mutually
advantageous and to the advantage of all the
world.

CHAPTER VII

THE VITAL INTERESTS OF JAPAN — POLITICAL

There is general sympathy in the Western
world for Japan's economic difficulties, but much
less for her political activities. They are harder
to understand.

Of late the Japanese have put in the forefront
of their claims the "Recognition of Racial
Equality." Very few students of international
relations have been inclined to consider this a
"vital interest" or even a serious issue of practical
politics.

The emphasis which the Japanese Delegation
at Paris put on Racial Equality has generally
been described as a "smoke screen," intended to
veil the affair of Shantung. It is a threadbare
trick of traditional diplomacy to ask very firmly
for something you do not expect to get, so that
finally you may accept as a compromise, and with
the appearance of gracious concession, the thing
you really wanted.

The world has recognized Japanese superiority
over most nations by giving them a seat among

65

66 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

the Great Powers on the Supreme Council. Their
capacity in military matters is admittedly equal
to any and superior to most. Although their
industrialism is barely fifty years old, their com-
merce is competing on equal terms in the world's
markets, and matches are not the only commodity
in which they are out-competing most of us. If
we consider the thrift and industry of their un-
skilled laborers, their superiority from a purely
economic point of view is obvious and appalling.
We pass Exclusion Acts against them, not because
we look down on them, but because we are afraid
of them. There is no occasion for any ''recogni-
tion" of equality in these matters. The Japanese
already have the rest of the world on a worried
defensive.

However, if they mean by the phrase that there
shall not be any discrimination against Asiatics
in the domestic legislation of other countries, they
are ignoring realities and asking for the moon. If
Mr. Wilson at Paris had been willing to play
unscrupulous politics, he might have supported
the Japanese contention — with perfect assurance
that the onus of refusing their request would fall
on Mr. Lloyd George. The race question is more
embarrassing for the British than for us. Their
empire is heterogeneous in the extreme. Besides
the stock of the United Kingdom, there are the
mixed races of India, the city dwelling Copts and

THE VITAL INTERESTS OF JAPAN-APOLITICAL 67

nomadic Bedawi of Egypt, the naked blacks of
Uganda and the primitive tribes of Australasia.
Britain has gone farther than any other nation
towards establishing equality before the law of all
sorts and conditions of men, but she cannot accept
any abstract civic and social equality for all this
motley assembly. She cannot even grant com-
plete freedom of migration within her own do-
mains. Austraha is just as intolerant of British
subjects from India and Africa as of aliens from
Japan.

Any nation, Japan just as quickly as we, will
protect itself by Exclusion Laws against a threat-
ened flood of alien immigrants which might under-
mine the standard of living to which its own
people were accustomed. The Japanese states-
men know that it has nothing to do with the rela-
tive merit of different races. They also know
that we are not inspired by any desire to affront
them. In the conversations which preceded the
Root-Takahira Agreement, in the more recent
discussions at Washington between Mr. Morris
and Baron Shidehara, they received every proof
of our desire to deal with the subject in a spirit
of courtesy and complete equality, as is right be-
tween one great nation and another.

The politicians could quiet the popular agita-
tion on the subject in Japan very quickly by a
clear statement of the remarkable cordiality

68 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

with which Japanese evolution from obscurity
to a favored place among the five Superior Powers
has been greeted by all the world.

The Japanese did not gain any new friends,
nor any added respect among their old friends,
by the use they made of this issue at Paris. They
will be ill-advised if they raise it at Washington.
Insistence on it will be generally interpreted as
an attempt to throw a wooden shoe into the
machinery. It might give them a chance to "save
face," in case they want to bolt the Conference,
but it certainly will not be a gesture of concili-
ation.

* * *

Most of all Japan has lost sympathy in Amer-
ica and Europe through her recent political activ-
ity in China. For many years Cassandras have
been "foretelling mischief," loud in their accusa-
tions of Japan's sinister plans in China. But just
as the Athenians shrugged their shoulders at the
Philippics of Demosthenes and believed that the
Macedonian Menace was grossly exaggerated, so
we have found it more comfortable to take these
charges with a grain of salt.

However, everybody who wanted to be com-
fortable was rudely jolted by the publication of
Japan's Twenty-one Demands on China. A good
many books have been printed about this famous
diplomatic document, and there is no need of

THE VITAL INTERESTS OF JAPAN— POLITICAL 69

going over all the unsavory details. The nub of
the matter was that this official act of the Japanese
Government demonstrated that the most extreme
jingoes were then in control of the Foreign Office.

Some of us had read von Bernhardi's book on
'The Next War," when it was first published, be-
fore the fatal August of 19 14. We comforted our-
selves with the belief that he was the spokesman
of only an uninfluential minority. But when the
Chancellor of the Empire announced in the Reich-
stag that Belgium was to be invaded, there could
not be any further illusion about the strength of
the Military Party in Germany.

This is the real import of the incident of the
Twenty-one Demands. They were unconscion-
ably bad in detail, but the fundamental signifi-
cance lay in the fact that those who believed in
such rank aggression could have their way with
the Government.

The Ministry which was responsible has fallen,
and its policy has been condemned on the floor
of the Diet in Tokio. But, despite fine words,
neither the Chinese nor the outside world has
been able to notice any marked change in Japan-
ese political methods, nor any such significant
transfers of personnel, as would be expected if
the resolution to pursue a new policy were sin-
cere.

Inevitably unpleasant questions arise. What is

70 THE A B as OF DISARMAMENT

Japan gunning for in China? What is the objec-
tive of all these corrupt intrigues and sword-
clankings? Japanese publicists and statesmen
have been reticent in explanation, or have con-
tented themselves with unsatisfying generali-
ties. It is therefore necessary to give attention
to the explanations offered by others. These
fall under two headings — Imperial Ambitions and
Fear.

Many Europeans and Americans have returned
from the Orient convinced, with a fanaticism past
argument, that Japan has matured and detailed
plans for the political subjugation of China, as
a first step in the regimenting of the Asiatic
hordes for a final assault on Western Civilization.
They claim that there is a semi-secret society in
Japan, called the Black Dragon, or the Scarlet
Python — or some such sinisterly colored reptile —
of which all prominent Japanese are members and
which is not only obsessed by this lurid dream,
but is working out the practical details. It is,
they insist, an imminent danger.

Now, although the number of Westerners who
believe all this is considerable, it is absurd. The
Japanese have not shown any marked genius for
colonial administration and we, Anglo-Saxons,
who consider ourselves rather better at it than
the average, always have to begin by disarming
our subject races. We could not start construe-

THE VITAL INTERESTS OF JAPAN— POLITICAL 7 1

tive work in the Philippines, until we had taken
their guns away from them. After more than
a hundred years in India, Britain was able to
bring only a very small contingent of native
troops into the Great War. I have not seen any
exact figures, but I doubt if the British find it
expedient to allow one in five thousand of their
subject peoples to bear arms. We will not have
to worry about a vast Chinese Army, under the
orders of the General Staff at Tokio, until we
hear that the Japanese have found themselves
able to arm and drill a noticeable contingent from
Korea.

There remains the other possible explanation.
It is generally agreed that quite as much turpi-
tude is caused by fear as by aggressive greed. Put
yourself in the position of a thoughtful, patri-
otic citizen of Japan, look about on the world of
today and try to peer out into the future. The
prospect is not reassuring. Japan is over-
crowded. Even with increased population she
cannot greatly — certainly not indefinitely — ex-
pand her Army and Navy. Across the narrow
seas there is this vast conglomeration of Chinese —
400 millions of them at least. Suppose that China,
moving more slowly because of her bulk, goes
through an evolution in the next hundred years
comparable to that of Japan in the last half cen-
tury. Suppose that the United States acts as

72 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

big brother and presides over this process of re-
juvenation. Japan will be a very small nut in
the jaws of an immense nut-cracker. I do not
see how any Japanese can think of the probable
development of China without grave misgivings
— without serious temptation to thwart it.

Turn for a moment from this little known and
unfamiliar East to the nearer lands across the
Atlantic. There is a striking analogy between
the Sino- Japanese situation and the conflicting
interests of Germany and France. There are
about 40 million French, with little hope of in-
crease, while across the Rhine there is a growing
population of Teutons already twice as numerous.
Can we expect France to have any honest desire
for the regeneration of Germany? Not unless
there is some organization of the nations which
effectively guarantees her from attack. Failing
such an assurance her only hope of safety lies in
keeping Germany weak, in stirring up enmities
among the nations of Europe. If the Teutons
and the Slavs should unite there would be short
shrift for the Latins.

So it is in the Far East. When we talk of
strengthening China, the Japanese suspect us of
trying to build up an ally for use against them.
Their vital interest of territorial security is at
stake. They certainly have more reason to be
jumpy on the subject than we have over "foreign

THE VITAL INTERESTS OF JAPAN— POLITICAL 73

influences" in Mexico. So far they have con-
trived no way to meet this menace, except by
intrigues in China to prevent her reorganization.

The Chinese have a fable which is apropos.
Once upon a time a half -grown Fox found a
baby Lion and adopted it as a playfellow. At
first the Fox, because of its superior age, could
have its own way. But as the Lion cub grew, and
it grew so much faster than the Fox, it gathered
strength, and the Fox began to worry about the
future. "Who can wonder" the fable ends, "that
the Fox lost its temper and snapped at the Lion?"

The Japanese are too proud to admit this as an
explanation of their activities in China. But we
may be sure that always in the back of the heads
of the members of the Japanese Delegation at
Washington will be the realization that it may
be very dangerous for their country if any un-
friendly nation develops the potential strength
of China.

CHAPTER VIII

china's vital interests

No amount of pomp and ceremony, no amiable
fictions, can disguise the fact that China will at-
tend the Washington Conference in the role of a
minor among its Guardians. An ancient Mon-
archy, too decrepit to defend its interests against
aggressive foreigners, has fallen before a very
juvenile Revolution, not yet grown up to dignity
and power. The Celestial Empire of the Manchus
was the Sick Man of Asia. The young Republic
is the enfant terrible. It has not yet struck its
pace nor found its place. Nobody knows how
fast it will go, nor the direction it will take. Any-
thing, so uncertain, is terrible in the staid society
of nations.

Mr. Bland has perhaps been too severely sar-
castic about Young China in his recent volume
on ''China, Korea and Japan," but even if exag-
gerated his bill of complaint shows the nature of
China's troubles. Two groups of not very ex-
perienced politicians — one in the North, the other

74

CHINA'S VITAL INTERESTS 75

in the South — claim each to be the Constitutional
Government of the Republic and carry on a Civil
War, which consists largely of mutual recrimina-
tions and attempts to undermine the loyalty of
the opposing troops — which do not very often
meet in battle. While this forensic conflict rages
between Pekin and Canton, the real powers of
government are wielded by local satraps — the
Provincial Tuchuns — who are frankly more inter-
ested in emoluments than in the Res Publica.
Neither the Government of the North nor that of
the South can give its edicts force through any
large territory. The strength which results from
National Unity — urged by the ancient sages as
well as by modern advisers — does not now exist
in China.

It was a wise move to invite China to send
representatives to join in the discussion of Far
Eastern Affairs, but it would be a grave mistake
to take them too seriously. It was wise because
it shows our good will towards China and we want
her good will. It was wise because of its edu-
cational value. But the Delegation will not in
any true sense represent the vast mass of Chi-
nese; they will be the agents of the clique now in
control at Pekin. We may be quite sure that at
least half of the Chinese will denounce them
as traitors, taking orders — and bribes — from
Tokio.

76 THE A B C'S OF DISARMAMENT

Their position will not be unlike that of the
Turks at the Congress of Berlin in 1879. Their
fate will be the principal subject of discussion,
but they will have to rely on others to defend
their interests. It is not even probable that they
will be able to define their interests convincingly.

They will arrive at the Conference with a thick
portfolio full of complaints — justified complaints
against the high-handed aggressions of more
powerful nations. But judging from past per-
formances, it is not probable that they will be
helpful in suggesting any practical and construc-
tive measures to improve the situation.

The Destiny of China, more strikingly than
with almost any other nation, will be determined
by her own people. Her undeveloped power
in men, in material and wealth is tremendous.
So is her present disorganization. There is very
little that outsiders can do to help her, unless she
learns to help herself. And when once she does
acquire cohesion she will not need any outside
help. But this internal weakness is the phase
of her troubles which her representatives are
least disposed to discuss; they are more likely
to demand a paper recognition of unreal "sov-
ereignty," than to seek the means to make the
sovereignty real; more likely to complain of the
abuses of extra- territoriality, than to improve the
administration of justice so that foreigners would

CHINA'S VITAL INTERESTS 77

have assurance of protection. They will prob-
ably demand that respect which other nations
have had to win.

It is difficult to define the real interests of
China, because in this matter, as in others, they
are a house divided. But there would be little
dispute that the problem which overshadows all
others for them is their relation to Japan. Is it
to be friendship and collaboration or hatred and
conflict?

Recently a young Chinese student told me that
he hoped the outcome of this Conference would
be the formal annexation by Japan of Manchuria
and Shantung. ^'That," he said, "would give us
just the Alsace-Lorraine we need to bring about
national unity. We could stimulate a hatred
of Japan, a desire for revenge which would bring
us together as one man — as surely as the German
menace has united France. And then," he ended
gleefully, "when the inevitable war breaks out
between you and Japan, you could be sure that
every Japanese in China would be killed within
three days." When I pointed out that this Con-
ference was called in the hope of avoiding war,
of reducing armaments, he lost all interest.
While his was a foolish and reckless proposal, it
is based on a theory held — in somewhat more
moderate terms — by many Chinese. It is rather
like the old Fenian slogan — "England's distress

78 THE A B as OF DISARMAMENT

is Ireland's opportunity." The Chinese of this
school advocate playing America off against
Japan, seeing nothing but gain for themselves in
the anticipated conflict. It is to be hoped that
the Chinese Delegation at Washington will not
act on this theory, intentionally troubling the
waters, in their eagerness to take home a great
fish.

But it is a serious error to think that "Young
China" is wholly an ti- Japanese. Many more
Chinese of "Foreign Learning" — the leaders of
the Student Movement — have been educated in
Japan than have gone to the schools of the West.
And even if Japan is today the worst offender
against China's interests, they realize that she is
only tardily following the example of the nations
which call themselves Christian.

Of course the great illiterate mass of Chinese
are utterly — if not blissfully — indifferent to the
rival claims of those who scramble for conces-
sions. Among the small minority, who are inter-
ested in their country's place in the world, those
who call themselves Pro- Japanese are quite as
numerous as those who are Anti. The frequency
with which some of the "leaders" switch from
one party to the other indicates that there is
a great deal to be said for each side and that
Public Opinion in China has not definitely de-
cided between them.

CHINA'S VITAL INTERESTS 79

One thing which generally surprises the West-
erner is to find that even the Chinese, who are
the most angry and bitter against their fellow
countrymen, whom they accuse of taking orders
from Tokio, are not really afraid of the Japanese.
The learning of their schools is primarily in the
Classics and History. They know how often they
have been conquered and how they have always
come out on top. Genghis Khan was not the first,
nor the last, invader who boasted of having sub-
dued China and in the end was taken captive
by her. They regard the Manchus, for instance,
not as alien masters, but as a barbarian people
to whom they taught civilization. And so the
Chinese of today are not really afraid of Japan —
knowledge of their past has given them faith in
the future.

A prominent Chinese official is quoted as having
said: "We ought to ask Japan to conquer us. She
would give us a good government, teach us all the
now learning which has made her strong, and
when the lesson is over, when Japan has taught
us all she can — we will be strong enough to brush
her aside."

Something like this is probably the natural
trend of events. It was the sword of Caesar that
brought civilization to Britain, and Bernard Shaw
used to say that it was a misfortune for England
that she had not been conquered by Napoleon.

80 THE A B as OF DISARMAMENT

Some one has spoken of the Czechs as "Prussian-
ized Slavs." And certainly a comparison of their
orderly and efficient Legions in Siberia with the
Russian Army of Kolchak indicated that they
had learned some valuable lessons in the long
years they suffered under Teuton oppression.
Perhaps, if Nature were left to herself the only
way she could think of to regenerate China would
be to let the Japanese rule her for a half century
or so.

But we are not content to let Nature take her
course. The one reason for this Conference at
Washington is to attempt to persuade "natural
man," with his instinctive love of arms, to be-
come more "civilized." We cannot be con-
tent to allow the civilization of the East to wait
on the crude old processes of war. We must
strive to arrange matters so that Japan and the
other nations can carry on their educational work
in China without shooting her up. We must try
to furnish China with what she needs without
making her pay too heavily.

The old maxim says that it takes two to make
a quarrel; it is even more true that it takes two
to make a friendship. And the latter is much
the more difficult. Sudden and shortlived anger
will start a fight, the establishment of cordial
cooperation is the work of slow reason. It re-
quires continuity of effort as well as good will.
But good will on both sides is the condition pre-

CHINA'S VITAL INTERESTS 8l

cedent. The Conference at Washington has a
large opportunity for beneficent activity in trying
to bring China and Japan towards the spirit of
Entente.

Once her relations with Japan were put on a
secure basis, China could proceed with her inter-
nal reorganization. First of all comes finance,
more of the money collected in taxes must be re-
turned to the people in public service, and less
of it go into the pockets of officials. The Repub-
lic will not deserve respect until it has disbanded
the irregular troops of the Provincial Tuchuns
and built up a loyal National Police Force ade-
quate for the task of restoring authority. Then
China needs all sorts of transportation facilities,
railroads, canals, highways. Also improved
mails and telegraphs. It is only with a good
network of communications that national unity
can be developed. Educational facilities demand
attention. The old classical examinations have
been abandoned and no new national system in-
stalled. China does not so much need foreign
schools, where Lincoln and Gladstone will be held
up as models, as her own native schools, where
the fine heritage of her antique culture will be
revered.

In such matters the foreigners can aid with
advice and in some cases with capital and trained
experts, but most of such work will have to be
done by the Chinese themselves.

82 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

The one most valuable thing that the foreign
nations could do to help China would be to invent
some way to restrain their own citizens from

corrupting Chinese officials with bribes.

* * *

This Conference at Washington will accom-
plish more for the cause of Peace, if it works out
plans of active cooperation, than if it contents
itself with pledges not to do this and not to do
that. Much can be accomplished along these
lines by the Consortium, if all the Four Powers
will get behind it heartily. But cooperation im-
plies a fair sharing of the profits and we cannot
expect any one to come into the Consortium
wholeheartedly unless it offers them quite as
much as they could expect to get by playing a
lone hand. But if the agreement can be made
mutually satisfactory, there is fair hope that
Japan will gradually, through such collaboration,
lose her suspicious fear of a China controlled by
hostile foreigners. There is very little that the
other nations can accomplish for the good of
China if the Japanese are working against them.

Here also a great deal depends on China. So
far the Consortium has marked time, because the
Chinese were suspicious. It is to be hoped that
their delegates will go home from the Conference
thoroughly convinced that this offer of assistance
is sincere and disposed to urge the cooperation
of their people.

CHAPTER IX

THE INTERESTS OF THE OTHER POWERS

Certain of the smaller nations have been invited
to send delegates to the Conference. They will
take part in the discussions when matters affect-
ing their interests are on the Agenda. Holland
is the country most concerned, because of her
large colonial holdings in the East Indies and
her profitable Oriental trade. She is also inter-
ested in the fate of the Island of Yap, as one of
her cables terminates there. Portugal controls
the Treaty Port of Macao and Belgium has some
industrial concessions in China. But the partici-
pation of these lesser Powers will probably be
limited to details and will have little influence
on the major questions of policy, on which the
fate of the Conference will hang.

The role which France and Italy will play
has excited much more speculation. The Sen-
ate Resolution proposed a Tripartite Conference
of Great Britain, Japan and the United States
to discuss the limitation of Naval Armaments.
Mr. Hughes sent invitations to "the Principal

83

84 THE A B C'S OF DISARMAMENT

Associated Powers" and expanded the scope of
the Conference to include discussion of the Paci-
fic Problems. In view of the limited interests of
France and Italy in Far Eastern affairs and their
lesser interest in naval rivalries, their invitation
caused some surprise. It has been suggested that
the Department of State, in reaffirming in this
manner a continued solidarity of interest with
the nations which had been associated with us
in the War, wished to counteract the contrary
impression which had been created by the Sep-
arate Peace with Germany.

France has more extensive interests in the
Far East than Italy. "Indo-Chine" is a large
and prosperous colony which she annexed after
a war with China. From it as a base she has
staked out a "sphere of influence" of ambitious
proportions in Southern China. The recent
crash of the Banque Industrielle de Chine indi-
cates that in the scramble for concessions, the
French have over-extended on their available
capital, even more than the Japanese. France
is also a member of the Four Power Chinese Con-
sortium. So her "interests" in the Orient, while
not so great as those of Britain and Japan, are
considerably larger than Italy's.

Both France and Italy are, like us, protection-
ist countries, and their attitude towards the Open
Door will probably be ambiguous. They would

THE INTERESTS OF THE OTHER POWERS 85

welcome equal opportunities for their trade in
all markets where they have not yet established
a favored position for themselves. But, just like
us, they would be inclined to think that any
proposal to apply the Open Door Policy in their
own dependencies was running a good idea into
the ground.

In regard to the Limitation of Naval Arma-
ments, France's interest, like that of most other
nations, is very close to ours. The Freedom of
the Seas, based on a generally accepted Code
of Sea Law, sanctioned by the consent of those
to be governed by it, inevitably seems more at-
tractive than the present uncertainty, to all coun-
tries that cannot hope for naval supremacy. We
are not the only country which believes in the
Freedom of the Seas. In most International Con-
ferences to discuss Sea Law, Britain has found
herself alone against all the other nations in
opposing our contention.

Italy's position in regard to Naval Disarma-
ment will not be quite the same as France's, for
her situation is different. With the great fleets
of Britain, America and Japan she has small
concern. Her problems are nearer home and on
a smaller scale. She is more interested in the
Greek Fleet and Naval Supremacy in the near
Eastern waters.

The problem of Armaments for both France

86 TEE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

and Italy is primarily a matter of land forces and
European issues. If we may judge from the
official statements of the pre-Conference period
there is no intention to discuss these questions at
Washington. They can hardly be touched upon
without going profoundly into the problems of
the League of Nations. If France is to be left
to face Germany single-handed, it is utterly
futile to propose disarmament to her. And Italy
also has a serious problem on her hands in the
unstable conditions across the Adriatic. None
of the Balkan States were contented with the
boundaries given them at Paris. If France has
the German Menace as an excuse for maintain-
ing heavy military expenditures, which she can-
not afford, Italy has the Slavs.
* * *

However, although their interests in the Far
East and in Naval Disarmaments are relatively
slight, the French and Italian Delegations may
play an important role at Washington.

First of all, despite the numerous irritations
between their people — similar to the occasional
frictions between us and our English cousins — the
Latin Sisters will act as a unit to prevent, if
possible, the formation of an Anglo-American
Alliance — even if Japan is included. When
Lloyd George proposes that we come in with
them in alliance with Japan, he always takes

THE INTERESTS OF THE OTHER POWERS 87

pains to insist that its object is altruistic, to pre-
serve the peace of the world. American propa-
gandists of the "English-Speaking-Union" also
talk as if all the world would benefit by such a
combination and that no one could take offense.
It has always been the custom to ''prepare" Pub-
lic Opinion with similar altruistic oratory for
every Alliance. Bismarck's Triple Alliance —
Germany, Austria, Italy — ^was announced as an
effort to preserve peace. The Entente, which
was formed to balance it, gave out similar ad-
vance notices. But Alliances, no matter how
bedecked with fine phrases, have always turned
out to be very selfish affairs. What we talk of as
Anglo-American cooperation is described by the
rest of the world as the ''Menace of Anglo-Saxon
Domination" — "The English-speaking Imperial-
ism." It is a favorite theme of present-day polit-
ical writers in Germany. It is the secret fear
of Latin and Slav.

France, having no faith in a League of Nations
from which we abstain, is today seeking Alliances
with the Slav nations, partly out of fear that
Germany may become dangerously strong again,
partly to find support to oppose British hegemony
in Europe. If we sign up with the British, the
Latins and Slavs will almost certainly form a
solid block and quickly compose their difficulties
with the Teutons. It may be unreasonable of

SS THE A B as OF DISARMAMENT

them to suspect our Anglo-Saxon motives, but
they do, and they do not want to be dominated
by us.

Naturally, when we try to balance the argu-
ments, pro and con, in regard to Lloyd George's
proposal of an Anglo- American- Japanese Alli-
ance, we are not frightened at the prospect of
being dominated. The problem appears to us
rather as a question of whether we could expect
sufficient gains to compensate for the responsi-
bility involved in helping to keep the British
Empire together, holding the lid on India and
Egypt, supporting Anglo- Japanese policies in
Asia in possible conflicts with a regenerated Rus-
sia, etc. But it does not look so simple to those
who have not been invited to join the combina-
tion.

It will be a great advantage to have at the
Council Table in Washington friends who will
be able to show us how this proposal looks from
the outside. Perhaps we will decide to give this
Triple Alliance a try — it certainly is a strong
combination, the dominant power in Europe,
America and Asia — but if we are to go in for it,
it will be well to have our eyes wide open. It
will not be popular outside its own member-
ship. A hostile block will certainly be formed
to restore the Balance of Power.

THE INTERESTS OF THE OTHER POWERS 89

If, on the whole, it is a very good thing to
have the non-Anglo-Saxon Powers well repre-
sented at this Conference, it also presents a
grave danger. The old traditional diplomacy of
bargaining and intrigue has a much more stub-
born hold on the Continental mind than it has
on us. A narrow Nationalism, running counter
not only to the idea of a League of Nations but
also to any international faith or cooperation, is
rampant. This is dishearteningly apparent in
the French press. It does not seem to have oc-
curred to their editors that our Government could
be moved by a sincere desire to find a basis for
conciliation in summoning this Conference. Their
general interpretation of our position is that, in
the face of an inevitable and imminent conflict
with Japan, we are in the market for alHes. An
article by a former Minister of Foreign Affairs
is amusingly frank in estimating what price
France should charge us for her vote against
Japan.

If the French or Italian Delegation should be
dominated by this point of view we will all wish
that they had stayed at home. Any one with
the laziness of mind to think that war is inevit-
able will be a dead weight at this Conference.

The sharp conflicts of interest, the crucial is-
sues before the Conference, are triangular. They
lie between Britain, America and Japan. In

90 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

most of the areas of danger, France and Italy
are relatively neutral. And therein lies their
opportunity to play a beneficent role at Washing-
ton. As conciliators, largely disinterested in the
detail frictions, by real cooperation in the cause
of Peace, they may justify Mr. Hughes in hav-
ing invited them. If they act in this spirit we
will all be glad they came.

There is one question of very vivid interest
to these European Powers, which, while it may
never get on the formal Agenda, is sure to be
discussed informally, and that is finance. There
was even some talk in Europe of an International
Financial Conference to sit at the same time as
the other one. But that suggestion was frowned
upon in Washington. The financial distress is,
however, so acute in Europe, and they are in the
habit of thinking us so prosperous, that it is al-
most certain that this will be a greater preoc-
cupation in the minds of most of the European
delegates than Naval Rivalry or Far Eastern
problems. They will be more interested in Mr.
Mellon's proposals for handling the Allied Debt

than in Mr. Hughes' plans for China.

* * *

The greatest impediment to the establishment
of an International Equilibrium today is the num-
ber of those who are absent at roll call. The
League of Nations limps, one can almost say

THE INTERESTS OF THE OTHER POWERS QI

staggers, because three great nations — Germany,
Russia and the United States — are not present.
Adjustment of differences in the Far East will
be rendered more difficult because of the weak-
ness of China. She will attend this Conference
as a Minor. But Russians chair will be vacant.

Who can pretend to say what are vital inter-
ests for Russia in the Pacific? Besides all the
inevitable uncertainties of the future there are
the manifold uncertainties of the present.

Russia's hold on Siberia has never been truly
consolidated. Nuclei of Russian colonists on the
river routes of Central and Western Siberia have,
in the last generation, grown into great cities.
But the population everywhere is sparse and the
indigenous tribes are not Slav. East of Lake
Baikal there has never been any large Russian
civilian settlements. Vladivostok was a great
fortress, in the days before the War it had a large
garrison, but most of the civiHans were railroad
officials or parasitic on the troops.

Not long ago, before the Japanese War, Russia
had a similar position in Manchuria. They had
built the railroads, garrisoned the large towns
and begun the development of industrial enter-
prise. But you have to strain your eyes today,
along the South Manchurian Railway, in Dairen
or Port Arthur, to see any signs of this Russian
control. It had no deep roots.

When Russia begins her convalescence, it will

92 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

Start in all probability in the old centers of
national life — in European Muscovy. No one
knows how long it will take the forces of reor-
ganization to reach out to the periphery. If, as
has been promised, Russia is to find more easy
outlets to the warm seas of the West through
the Dardanelles and the ports of the Baltic, the
basic motive for her push towards the East will
be lacking. It is a reckless prophet who will pre-
tend to say when Russia will again be a Great
Power with "vital interests" on the Pacific. But
it is just as foolhardy to prophesy that she will
not soon appear as a factor of importance in the
Far East. Her frontier with China is the longest
in the world. The problems of the present are
hard enough to solve, those of the future are des-
perately complicated by this vacant chair.

At the Inter-Communications Conference in
Washington last year, the center of the stage
was held by the controversy over the disposition
of the German cables, but all the while the ex-
perts were at work on technical problems. One
of them was the allocation of the different wave
lengths for radio communications. In the present
state of the science there are not enough wave
lengths to satisfy all the governments, so there
was a strong temptation to divide them all up
among the five Powers represented at the Con-
ference— America, Britain, France, Italy and

THE INTERESTS OF THE OTHER POWERS 93

Japan. It took a deal of argument to persuade
all the Powers, none of whom were getting all
they wanted, to scale down their claims so as
to leave a margin for the use of the unrepre-
sented, Germany and Russia. But that was the
only possible way to deal with the problem, un-
less we wanted all the schedules upset in a few
years.

It is the same in the case of the Far Eastern
Problems. Unless Russia's eventual interests in
the Pacific are safeguarded, all the nice plans
the Conference may make are very likely to be
upset.

CHAPTER X

THE THREE ZONES OF CONFLICT

A SURVEY of what the various nations are accus-
tomed to call their "vital interests" shows three
danger zones, where these interests are at odds:
(i) Anglo-American Naval Competition, (2)
Trade Rivalries in the Far East and (3) the
Fate of China. There will doubtless be other
disagreements on details, but if the Conference
at Washington can reach agreements, composing
these major conflicts, the main motives for Naval
Competitions will fall to the ground.

Terrible as is the tax on this now poverty-
stricken world of the preparations for war, the
expense is small indeed to the cost of actual war
— or even to the economic loss from the fear of
war. The depressing thing about competition
in armaments is that it indicates the frame of
mind which makes war probable, and what the
shaken fabric of our civilization needs today
is the assurance of peace. Without it there can
be no rebirth of credit, no rejuvenating flow of
commerce along the old trade routes, no prosper-

94

THE THREE ZONES OF CONFLICT 95

ity. All agree that another great war would
wreck us. The maintenance of threatening
armaments, postponing any reestablishment of
confidence, will be just as disastrous. If the
Great Powers which have been called to this
Conference at Washington cannot compose
their differences and begin to disarm, the stock
of our civilization, already rather below par, will
slump appallingly. Failure would mean not only
increased budgets for armaments, but the
strangling of all enterprise through the fear of
new wars.

No one of these major problems is new; they
have been discussed for years. So it is not prob-
able that any strikingly new ideas will develop
at Washington. The Conference will choose be-
tween proposals already familiar.

The first Zone of Conflict is the oldest. For
a hundred years there has been dispute between
this country and Britain about the control of
the seas. The British have in general maintained
that, due to their unique island position, it was
a vital interest to them to hold in their own hands
undisputed naval supremacy. We have main-
tained that the seas are a common heritage of
all the world and that their control should be
based on common consent. This is what we
have meant by "The Freedom of the Seas," a

g6 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

freedom under Laws, like those of the land, de-
riving their authority from the consent of the
governed.

The British came very close to our point of
view in the years immediately preceding the War.
The Declaration of London was the first serious
attempt to draft a Code of Sea Law, which would
be agreed to by the Maritime Nations. The
experience of the War has intensified the feel-
ing on both sides of the argument. If the Declar-
ation of London had been generally accepted, it
would to a certain extent have hampered the
British Navy in its blockade of Germany, on
the other hand it would also have hampered
Germany in her submarine attack on the British
mercantile marine. And merchantmen are just
as important to Britain in time of war as battle-
cruisers.

We have no authoritative statement of the
British attitude today towards this old contro-
versy. But Sir Edward Grey, while he was still
Minister of Foreign Affairs, promised that Great
Britain would take the initiative in summoning
a Conference of Maritime Nations to discuss the
Law of the Seas as soon as the War was over.
Perhaps an agreement along these lines will put
an end to this over-old dispute.

During the Peace Negotiations at Paris this
question of the Freedom of the Seas was put on
the shelf, because it would be solved automati-

THE THREE ZONES OF CONFLICT 97

cally if all the principal maritime nations cooper-
ated in the League of Nations.

There is also another solution of the problem
proposed by Lloyd George, an Anglo-American-
Japanese Alliance. An alliance in which the two
fleets were pledged to act as a unit would obvi-
ously do away with any competition.
* * *

The Trade Rivalry in the Far East, which has
taken the form of a scramble for concessions in
China, is a special phase of a larger problem
which the Professors of Economics call "The
Export of Capital" and Lenin calls "Capitalistic
Imperialism."

In its most general terms the problem can be
stated very simply. The development of indus-
trialism results not only in the production of
commodities in surplus over the consumptive
power of the home market and so pushes com-
merce out into an export trade; it also produces
a surplus of capital over the needs of the domes-
tic investment market. As the rate of interest
falls at home, when supply of money exceeds de-
mands, the people with savings begin to look
abroad for investments. The highly developed
industrial community must find not only foreign
markets in which to sell its commodities, but also
foreign investments for its surplus savings.

A classic example is furnished by the finan-
cial relations of the Old World and the New. We

98 THE A B as OF DISARMAMENT

held a land of vast potentialities. But we were
poor and needed capital to develop our resources.
Our railroad expansion, after the Civil War, was
rendered possible by the surplus savings of
Europe. As our wealth developed we were pay-
ing off this debt easily. The War hastened the
process tremendously, but even if it had not been
for the War we would probably have cleared our
books within this decade or the next.

But the Exportation of Capital from the more
to the less developed countries has not always
had so beneficent a result. Borrowing is very
dangerous if you are weak or foolish. The for-
eign capital invested in America went into wealth
producing enterprises, which were more than able
to pay regular interest and sinking fund. Europe
lent money to the Sultans of Turkey and Mo-
rocco, to the Khedive of Egypt, the Shah of Per-
sia, most of which was thrown away on the
ladies of the Court.

Perhaps the first European bankers who lent
money to irresponsible little potentates were dis-
appointed when they could not get their money
back. But very quickly the governments which
wished to extend their influence over backward
native states began to encourage such reckless
loans. A bad debt could easily be turned into a
political lien, a good pretext for annexation — or
at least a Protectorate.

THE THREE ZONES OF CONFLICT 99

That is the danger in China. Some of the for-
eign loans have been sound economic investments.
They have been profitable to the lenders and
have largely increased the wealth of China. Some
loans, made in good faith, have been grossly mis-
used by corrupt Chinese officials. And some of
the loans have been made with bad faith — in the
hope of political rather than financial profit.

The object of the present Four Power Con-
sortium is to safeguard both China and the
investors from unsound — politically motived —
finance. Through their central office in Pekin the
consolidated bankers of the Four Powers with
Capital to export will be able to study every pro-
posal for a loan on its financial merits and super-
vise its investment. The danger of corruption
and waste — even more dangerous to China than
to the lenders — is greatly reduced.

Perhaps of even more importance than the
safeguarding of China from the menace of politi-
cally-minded high finance, the Consortium pro-
posal is worthy of note as a means of associating
together in a large cooperation the Four Powers
who hitherto have done business in China on the
basis of cut- throat competition. It is by the de-
velopment of such associated endeavors, far more
than by passing Self-Denying Acts, that the hos-
tilities of trade rivalry may be reduced.

100 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

There remains the third and perhaps the most
difficult question for the Conference to solve —
The Preservation or Partition of China. It is of
course closely interwoven with the issue of trade
rivalries, but there is a political phase of the
matter, quite distinct from economic considera-
tions.

The history of the Sick Man of Europe gives
us a good example of how not to treat China. For
a hundred years the Concert of European Powers
tried to keep Turkey intact, not because of any
care for the interests of Turkey, but because
there was such acute hostility between the pos-
sible heirs that war was almost certain when the
inheritance came to be divided. No one wanted
to keep the Turk alive indefinitely; they simply
wanted to defer his death till circumstances
would assure them a larger share of the estate.
The result of this policy was only increasing
jealousies and hate. Any attempt to preserve the
territorial integrity of China in a similar spirit
will be a bitter farce. Formal homage to an un-
real sovereignty, as a cover to such political and
financial chicanery and intrigue as that of the
Great Powers in Constantinople, would be little
better than a frank partition.

The fundamental question of course is whether
or not the Chinese have the energy and aptitude
for real national unity. If they have they will

THE THREE ZONES OF CONFLICT lOI

rise triumphant over any bad decision this Con-
ference at Washington may make. If they have
not, good resolutions passed at Washington will
be scraps of paper.

Britain and France, while not announcing any
intentions of abandoning their present estab-
lishments on Chinese soil, are prepared to call a
halt, and give China not only a fair chance, but
also a helping hand. Japan's attitude is more
uncertain; probably because her national mind
is not made up one way or the other. There is
one group which holds that relations between
nations must be those of the hammer and the
anvil, and is grimly resolved to give blows rather
than to receive them. It is the habit of thought
which ruled at Potsdam. It regards every pro-
posal of cooperation as a crafty trap. It cannot
imagine that other nations can embark on any
enterprise in China without ulterior and sinister
designs against the prestige and power of Japan.
It is quite as jumpy about missionaries as about
traders. The prospects of Peace in the Orient
are very meager if this clique wins to power —
and they were undisputably in power when the
Twenty-one Demands were made on China.

But there is in Japan another element, also
sometimes in power, which sees that nothing
could be more valuable for Japan than real
friendship with China and collaboration with the

102 THE A B C'S OF DISARMAMENT

Western Powers. Much depends on the outcome
of the struggle for power in Japanese politics be-
tween these two factions.

It would seem therefore that the wise strategy
of all who desire peace in the Far East, is to
strengthen the hands of the Japanese Liberals.
In order to win and hold a following at home,
they must be in a position to prove that Japan's
interests both in commerce and politics are safe-
guarded in their hands. Any attempt to drive
a hard bargain with Japan at Washington, to
push her into an uncomfortable dilemma between
''isolation" and accepting unfavorable conditions,
will merely cause resentment and suspicion. If
the Western Powers attempt to 'isolate" or "en-
circle" Japan they will only succeed in Prussian-
izing her.

By generous dealings we can increase the num-
ber of Japanese who are willing to cooperate in
the Consortium, and who see in international as-
sociation for the upbuilding of China a prospect
of enlarged prosperity, instead of a menace.

CHAPTER XI

WHAT MAY RESULT

"Prophecy is the least excusable form of human
error" and any attempt at precise forecasts
about this Conference at Washington would be
absurd. There are, however, three main possi-
bilities which — judging from the pre-Conference
discussion — may result. The League of Nations.
An Anglo-American- Japanese Alliance. Failure.

As soon as any one of these possibilities is
stated clearly and simply it becomes improbable,
for as a rule such Conferences do not arrive at
sharp and well-defined conclusions. The great
decisions of Politics are not simple enough to
happen all at once.

The growing realization of this complexity in
the relations of mankind is reflected in the more
modern histories. They are less occupied with
dates than with drifts. It is possible to fix the
day on which Charles I. lost his head, but every
advance in modern research makes it more dif-
cult to set a date for the Fall of Rome — the
Eternal City crumbled through so many decades.

103

104 '^^^ ^ ^ ^'^ ^P DISARMAMENT

When did the Reformation begin or the French
Revolution end?

Some formal documents, which we all can read
and which will bear dates, will doubtless be signed
by this Conference, but they will not be nearly
so important as the frame of mind in which the
delegates will go home and report to their people.
Will it be with new and pro founder understand-
ing of each other^s motives and interests — or with
deeper and more dangerous misunderstandings?

The future historian, looking back on this pe-
riod, will pay small heed to the formal documents.
He will write that, in the second decade of the
20th Century, a trend developed becoming more
and more noticeable after the Conference at
Washington, which brought the United States
into the League of Nations, or perhaps that a drift
set strongly against any universal covenant and
that a struggle for power developed between the
Anglo-American- Japanese group on the one hand,
and on the other a combination of Latin and
Slav and Teuton. There is also the third pos-
sibility. He may write that, disappointed by the
failure of the Washington Conference to reach
any reassuring results, the American people lost
all confidence in International Cooperation and
withdrew into an Isolation, which they could only
maintain by increased armament.

Recognizing that no such clear-cut choice of

WHAT MAY RESULT 105

policy is likely to result immediately from the
Conference, but that the trend of the next few
years may be in one of these three directions, it
will make the issues somewhat clearer to con-
sider them in greater detail.

* * *

First of all, it is a matter of record that the
American Delegates have favored the League
of Nations. Mr. Lodge, as Chairman of the
Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, was re-
sponsible for drawing up the Resolution for the
Ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, with a
group of reservations, which bear his name.
Evidently he was not at that time opposed to the
League in principle. Senator Underwood voted
for the ratification, without reservations. Mr.
Root has long supported the idea of the League,
giving especial attention to the International
Court. Mr. Hughes signed the Manifesto of the
Pro-League Repubhcans, advising the electorate
to vote for Mr. Harding, as the surest way of
getting the United States into the League.

It is not impossible that this Conference, meet-
ing in Washington, may furnish an elementary
demonstration of the benefits we would derive
from membership in the League. It may edu-
cate the Senate. For the major problems, to be
threshed out before the Conference, with the Sen-
ate leaders of the two great parties sitting at the

I06 THE A B C'S OF DISARMAMENT

Council Table, could be more readily and more
satisfactorily settled by the League, under uni-
versal sanction, than by agreements between a
few nations. If we are to make pledges for the
preservation of peace and the reduction of arma-
ments in the Pacific, we will have to ''limit the
national sovereignty" and "tie the hands of
Congress," just as much as if the subject of the
accord was Trans- Atlantic. If we can safely
enter into "entanglements" to preserve "the ter-
ritorial integrity" of China, the teeth are pulled
from all the arguments against Article X.

It is an innovation in the practice of diplo-
macy to summon a great International Confer-
ence in order to educate our own Senators, but
the Premiers, who are expected to attend, would
consider their time well spent if this result were
attained. Even without our collaboration, the
rest of the world is struggling to keep the League
alive. There is some doubt whether it can ever
function adequately without us, but in spite of
this handicap it has proved its usefulness to
Europe — especially to the smaller nations — and
our entrance would strengthen it greatly and give

it a new hope.

* * *

An influence, urging the American Delegation
to consider the League, stronger than any argu-
ment by its supporters at home or from abroad,

WHAT MAY RESULT IO7

is that the only other alternative, so far sug-
gested, which offers any hope of a noticeable re-
duction in armaments, is the proposal of Lloyd
George for an Anglo-American- Japanese Alli-
ance.

This offer would not have been made, if the
British Government had not been compelled to
conclude that our rejection of the League is final.
The British Commonwealth would prefer the
League to this Triple Alliance. They sent Lord
Grey, an ardent supporter of the League, to us
as Ambassador in the hope that he might over-
come our objections. They have made every
effort in their power to meet our wishes in the
matter. But after the speech of the American
Ambassador at the dinner of the Pilgrim Society
in London, the British cannot, without direct in-
sult to him, make any further overtures in this
sense. They, therefore, must seek to contrive
some other method of meeting the manifold and
vexatious problems with which our weary, per-
plexed and impoverished generation is con-
fronted. From this point of view — if we have
definitely made up our minds to scrap the League
— this British proposal has much to commend it.
It is admirably thought out to cover all the ob-
jects set forth in Mr. Hughes' invitation to this
Conference. At one stroke of the pen, it would
remove the cause for all naval rivalry between

I08 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

the contracting parties. With assured command
of the sea, all three partners would be safe from
invasion and the defensive land armies could be
reduced to a police minimum. There would be
no call for large armaments, unless the Alliance
embarked on a policy of aggression. In the Far
East, the Alliance would probably recognize the
preponderant special interests of Japan in East-
ern Asia, but maintain the present frontiers of
China and Siberia. Large economic opportuni-
ties would be assured to all three. Such an Al-
liance, grouping the dominant Powers in the three
Continents, would probably assure the peace of
the world for a generation or more. The war-
wrecked countries of Europe could not hope to
muster strength for effective opposition for many
years.

There is also no certainty that such a combi-
nation would prove as malevolent as those coun-
tries, which were not included, would expect. Per-
haps a generation of stabihty is all the race needs
to conquer its more greedy and arrogant instincts.
The Peace of Rome, in spite of its tyrannies and
extortions, did push forward the cause of civi-
lization. And such an Alliance might develop a
more enlightened policy than that of the Roman
Caesars. It might on the whole deal justly with
the weak — the Chinese and Siberians, as well as
Europeans. It might from time to time admit

WHAT MAY RESULT IO9

into its ranks other, equally enlightened, nations
and in the end prove to have been the first stage
in the development of a Universal Brotherhood
of Peace.

However, nobody but Britishers, Americans
and Japanese will expect it to. To everybody
else it will look like a new scheme for world dom-
ination. Human nature in the past — even in the
most recent past — has never been able to resist
the intoxication of such power.

But quite aside from consideration of the de-
sirability of such an Alliance, our Delegation at
Washington will be preoccupied with the question
of practical Politics. Could they put it across?

We have quite recently given the world a sharp
lesson in our Constitutional practice. No engage-
ments signed by our Plenipotentiaries — even the
most august — are worth the paper they are writ-
ten on, unless they are ratified by the Senate.
Other nations are not likely to take so important
a step as the reduction of their armaments on the
mere word of American diplomats. They will
want to see the bond signed and sealed by our
Elder Statesmen.

Even if Mr. Hughes decides that our interests
would be best safeguarded by such an Alliance,
there is large doubt of his ability to get two-
thirds of the Senate to ratify it. Some of them
would oppose a treaty with Britain or Japan if

no THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

its purpose was to protect the Law of Gravitation
from the wanton aggressions of Mr. Einstein. It
is not difficult to imagine the roars of outraged
traditionalism which would resound in the Hall
of the Senate, if a Secretary of State should pre-
sent such a proposal. Are ''Our Boys," yet
unborn, to be snatched from their eventual cradles
to fight the battles of Perfidious Albion or the
Oriental Despot of Japan?

Unless our Delegation at Washington can think
out some new combination which will bring about
a reduction of armaments, they will have to take
this proposal or the Treaty of Versailles to the
Senate. Of the two difficulties, the League seems
the lesser. The people are favorable and most
of the Senators have already, with some qualifi-
cations, voted for it.

* * *

The only other alternative, which appears from
the Pre-Conference discussion, is blank and dis-
mal failure. To consider such an outcome is to
reject it as impossible. It would be too great a
disaster to accept. It would mean frank and
open hostility with the British Empire and an
inevitable intensification of naval rivalry. They
have urged — almost begged — us to come into the
League. They have held out to us a very elabo-
rate olive branch in this proposal for an equal
share in the profits of ruling the world. If we

WHAT MA Y RESULT III

reject both of their offers of friendly cooperation,
making no satisfactory counter-proposal, they can-
not attribute our attitude to anything but ill-will.
If we fail to reach an agreement with Japan, it is
equally certain that intensified jealousies and an-
tagonisms will result. Failure means sullen and
suspected Isolation for us — and more armaments.
There is no doubt that the country demands
results. Even if we did not have confidence in
the sincerity of Mr. Hughes' desire to have our
country lead in the cause of peace and civiliza-
tion, we can find some comfort in the fact that
from even the pettiest of partisan motives this
Administration will use all ingenuity to achieve
a resounding success. But if they fail what
course is left open to them except an appeal to
the grossest passions? If they fail, they will in
self-justification put the blame on the others. We
will be told that their noble intentions were
thwarted by the evil ambitions of these foreign-
ers, that while we are an enlightened, sensible
people, who desire only peace, the others cannot
understand any argument but force and that we
must arm to the teeth. I cannot see anything
but despair if this Conference should break up
in discord.

But Conferences rarely reach such clear-cut
decisions. The League, The Alliance, Failure —

112 THE A B as OF DISARMAMENT

all three are possibilities. But nothing is more
improbable than that the choice between these
possibilities will be immediately obvious.

We are much more likely to straddle and post-
pone. We may make a few uncertain steps in
the direction of the League; arrange for an In-
ternational Naval Conference to codify the Law
of the Seas; give new encouragement to the Con-
sortium; reaffirm the policy of the Open Door
in China, with some reference to the special soli-
darity of interests of Britain, Japan and America
in the Far East — with the question of Japan's
policy towards China postponed for future con-
sideration— and some not very sweeping arrange-
ment for the gradual reduction of Naval Arma-
ments. Even if no more than this is recorded
in the documents signed and published, we may
hope for a real and more important gain in mu-
tual confidence — a result which may not be im-
mediately visible, but which, from year to year,
will bear fruit in smaller military appropriations.

The Conference, with the best will in the
world, can do little more than register the
present sentiment of the participating nations.
Its main importance will be the indications it gives
of the trend of our Times.

CHAPTER XII

DIPLOMACY AND PUBLIC OPINION

A BLACK shadow sometimes falls on discussions
of this Conference at Washington — as the shadow
of a soaring hawk disturbs the farmyard. It is
the fear that some of the diplomats, in spite of
their public assurances, may be secretly harboring
aggressive designs. All talk of the reduction of
armaments is futile if any nation is suspected of
planning foreign conquests, for the people who
think themselves threatened will arm. And the
life of the world is now so inexorably interwoven
that a menace to one is a menace — and an excuse
for armaments — to all.

In the general collapse of our hopes for a re-
generated world after the War, we run the risk
of exaggerated discouragement and a failure to
realize the progress the world has in fact made.
A century ago such a conference as this would
have been dominated by le secret du rot. Kings,
big and httle, were not in any degree responsible
to the people; they could play with their little
family combinations and personal ambitions and

113

114 THE A B C'S OF DISARMAMENT

no one could call them to account. Today, no
diplomat dares to take a strong stand on any
point, unless he is convinced that he will have
popular support at home. And public opinion
can be formulated only by public discussion.
Everybody knows that our Government can count
on united approval in insisting on respect for the
Monroe Doctrine, so we all know that Public
Opinion in Japan is very jealous of anything
which looks like an attempt of a foreign Power
to establish itself close at hand on the Asiatic
mainland, and that the British people are alert
to protect their vital interests on the seas. But
these things are not secret.
- Secrecy in diplomacy is being overcome, not by
the pious wishes of reformers but by the steady
shift of power from the small governing cliques
of the last century to ever wider circles of citizens.
Democracy is not discreet; it has to talk over
its vital affairs in public. Every Foreign Office
today exerts considerable influence on the press
of its country and plays an important role in
forming — sometimes in perverting — Public Opin-
ion, but no Foreign Office can any longer ignore
the will of the people and — at worst they can out-
wit it — therein lies a great revolution. The
democratization of Foreign Affairs is still far
from complete, for some old-fashioned diplomats
are still recalcitrant. But the catalogue of Foreign

DIPLOMACY AND PUBLIC OPINION II 5

Ministers, who have fallen from power in the last
dozen years because they refused to heed the vox
populi, is impressive. Diplomacy becomes more
and more the servant of democracy and thereby
loses its secrecy.

In the "Diplomatic Correspondence" of a half
century ago, it is common to find the phrase:
"My Sovereign insists"; today it is more common
to read: "Public opinion in my country is dis-
turbed." The final argument between Mr. Lloyd
George and M. Briand is: "My government would
fall." Opinion in our modern democracies is
often divided and rarely entirely clear, but a
politician's tenure of office depends on his ability
to appraise it correctly.

So there is somewhat less danger than formerly
that the Washington Conference will be disturbed
by the secret designs of any of the participants.
No Delegation would dare to wreck the Con-
ference on an issue which was not popular at
home, and popularity is the antithesis of secrecy.
The delegates will keep in close touch with the
homeland, their actions will always be influenced,
often entirely controlled, by the reports which
the telegraph brings them of the movements of
public opinion in their own country.
* * *

However, Public Opinion is not always right —
nor is it always pacific. While it would be hard

Il6 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

in any modern country to work up sentiment in
favor of frankly aggressive policy, the Demos is
easily frightened and can be stampeded into almost
any folly in the name of self-defense. Reports
from Europe indicate that there is a large measure
of popular support for military programs, which
are at present as ruinous as they are fashionable.
The citizens of these new democracies find it
quite as hard to sleep soundly, if their armies are
not as large as their neighbor's, as was the case
with the uneasy heads that used to wear crowns.

Fortunately the tranquillity of our American
nights is not troubled by the fear of our neighbors.
We are not as likely to wreck the chances of the
Conference from fear as we are from bumptious-
ness.

Not long ago, an eminent Englishman, who is
interested in an Anglo-American rapprochement,
met one of our prominent officials. The formali-
ties of introduction were hardly over when the
American said: ''You Englishmen must make up
your minds to it. We are going to build the
biggest Navy in the world." The Britisher, try-
ing to be conciliatory, asked: "Wouldn't you be
content with a Navy as big as any other?"

"No," the American replied. "We must have
the biggest. We can afford it and we're going to
have it."

Now, this American did not have any aggres-

DIPLOMACY AND PUBLIC OPINION II7

sive intentions against Great Britain — he was just
feeling his oats. Unfortunately a great many
of his fellow citizens also enjoy the feeling of
oats; they are amused by reckless talk — very
many more than would follow him into any policy
of adventure. But bumptiousness can play just
as much havoc with the work of conciliation as
plans of aggression.

If we, Americans, wish to think honestly about
this problem of reducing armaments, we must
always remember that we are setting the pace.
As far as Naval Construction goes, Britain and
Japan are tagging along, trying — rather breath-
lessly— to keep up with us.

Is there any reason for us to build so big a
Navy, except that — by skimping on schools and
sanitation and other civilized things — we can
afford it?

Our vital interests in regard to territorial
defense and the Monroe Doctrine are not even
threatened. The lessons of this last War are too
clear to be misunderstood. No nation or group
of nations is going to attack us on this hemi-
sphere. We are too numerous; our land is too
full of resources. A war which does not finish
quickly is as disastrous to the victor as to the
vanquished, and no one could hope to finish us
quickly. Those of our interests which lie on

Il8 THE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

this side of the world are unassailable. Our
homeland is not vulnerable to any known weapon,
and as for the hypothetical weapons of a vague
future, the only thing certain about them is that
they would render the ponderous battleships we
are now building obsolete junk.

The only rational explanation of our present
Naval Program is that we intend to insist on our
rights upon the seas and over-seas. It is in
defense of our more remote interests that we are
maintaining so costly and formidable a military
establishment, scaring other people into equally

L absurd extravagance.
3(C 3|C S»!

Increasing our Navy does not decrease the
danger of unpleasant friction with Great Britain
on the seas; it only accentuates the difficulties in
the way of settling this old dispute by friendly
negotiations. We are more likely to gain our
point in regard to the Freedom of the Seas if we
do not incite general suspicion that we ourselves
are ambitious to rule the waves. It was that
suspicion which vitiated all the eloquence of
Germany on the subject.

Perhaps we could outbuild the British if we
set ourselves to it, but that is the opposite direc-
tion from the reduction of armaments. If we can-
not at once get general agreement to our Code of
Sea Law, to insure the Freedom of the Seas, we

DIPLOMACY AND PUBLIC OPINION II9

can settle the whole controversy by accepting the
invitation of Lloyd George to come into an Anglo-
American- Japanese Alliance. The most direct
way to end rivalry in armaments is to go into
the League of Nations. Meanwhile every ship we
lay down means intensification of Naval Com-
petition.

The defense of our immediate — and even pros-
pective— trade interests in the Far East do not
warrant the appalling naval appropriations we
are now making. The hangovers from past wars
and the preparations for future wars are now
costing us considerably more than 80% of our
National Income. The profits on our Oriental
trade are certainly never going to approximate
that figure. This British proposal of a Triple
Alliance would offer better protection to our trade
than battleships, and would also be very much
cheaper.

But commerce is not our sole interest in the
Far East, and if we have any obligation to help
China through this distressful period of reorgan-
ization, we must admit that this Triple Alliance
would be generally considered a betrayal. It is
rather too much to assume, in the way of political
self-denial, that such a combination would benefit
China. If we feel that we should protect "tiie
territorial integrity and the political sovereignty
of China," there is no argument left against the

120 TEE A B as OF DISARMAMENT

much discussed Article X of the Covenant of
the League. If our duty towards China is really
our prime interest in the Far East, we could
achieve our purpose much more surely — and at
infinitely less expense — by joining and strengthen-
ing the League, which has already given China
ample guarantees, than by taking on the job
single-handed.

There is a large possibiUty — I, personally,
beheve a probability — that our Delegation at the
Washington Conference will be able to bring about
a notable reduction of armaments by purely diplo-
matic negotiations. But the process could be
speeded up and extended, if the public opinion of
the nations involved is outspoken in its insistence.
The Negotiators will have their ears on the tele-
phone. If the people of the various lands raise
their voices they will be heard.
* - A very special responsibility rests on us in this
i country. We are at present setting the pace in
Naval construction. If we are really in earnest
in our wish to reduce Armaments, the obvious
course for us is to do it. The House of Repre-
sentatives is more immediately amenable to pubUc
opinion than the Senate and it is the House that
votes appropriations and has the power to cut
them. In no other way could we do more to
encourage the democracies of the other countries

DIPLOMACY AND PUBLIC OPINION 121

to bring pressure on their delegates than if we
do it ourselves. If, in the midst of the Negotia-
tions at Washington, Congress, under the push
of the people at home, should cut the Naval
Appropriation, the Negotiations would proceed
much more rapidly and successfully.

Few Congressmen would be adverse to making
a reputation for economy these days, if they were
encouraged by the unmistakable urging of their
constituencies. Unfortunately, the taxpayers,
who suffer under the burden of armaments, are
not so articulate as the small minority who like
them. On the one hand, most Congressmen want
to be reelected. On the other hand, most electors
are too indifferent to write their wishes down on
a telegram blank.

If the good old English word "wicked" means
anything at all, it applies to those influences which
in the present tragic situation stand in the way
of disarmament. There was a famous Divine,
who used often to quote the passage from the
Scriptures: "The wicked flee when no man pur-
sueth." "But," he would always add, "they run
much faster when somebody's after them."

If we leave this matter to our diplomats, they
will do their utmost to bring about a limitation
of armaments. The country rightly has confi-
dence in the integrity, energy and ability of Mr.
Hughes. If we slip off all the responsibilities on

122 TEE A B CS OF DISARMAMENT

him and his associates, he will probably be atle
to work through the tangle of jealousies and dis-
trusts to an increased and increasing confidence
which will make possible some steps towards
reducing armaments. If the people of the United
States really have the Will to Peace, if they will
work together and concentrate their energies on
this, they can force Congress this fall to make
the gesture of conciliation by cutting the Naval
Appropriations — and the Conference will be a
\ sure and huge success.

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY

JX Bullard, Arthiir

1974 The ABC^s of diarmament

B75 and the Pacific problems

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