China and the West

Dewey, John. Angles of Shantung question [ID D28497].
Mathematicians sometimes treat a circle as a series of a great number of straight lines. As the angles increase, you get a circular effect. When they are infinite you get it all rounded off. So with a sphere. You start with a solid having many projecting angles, and finally get a ball which will roll. This is one way to see the Shantung question. There are plenty of angles. Can they be smoothed down till you get a smooth surface? If so, which way will the ball roll, toward China or toward Japan?
The number of projecting angles make the issue thorny to the touch. They also make it difficult to judge the meaning and outcome of the discussions going on. They make it hard to tell what the object was in referring the matter to conversations between China and Japan, and who is to profit thereby. Only the insiders know, and it may be doubted whether they are any too sure, although they have their hopes. It is worth while, however, to point out some of the angles.
Supposing the Senate had ratified the Versailles treaty. Our State Department would then hardly be in a position to request the Conference to take up the Chinese side of the Shantung question. Great Britain and France ratified, and, previous to ratification, had secret treaties with Japan operating adversely to China's claims. They must both be anxious to leave the trouble which they have had a share in creating to be settled between Japan and China. They don't want to admit they were wrong, and in view of the attitude of China and the United States they would be embarrassed at having openly to defend their past actions.
Moreover, Great Britain has an alliance with Japan. She is hardly likely to go into a general conference and back China against her own ally. But, on the other hand, Great Britain wants to assure Americans that she is on the side of the United States and that the alliance was and never could be used against American policies.
The obvious moral is to sidestep the issue. Let the Chinese and Japanese settle their own little family dispute between themselves. France is in even a more delicate position to question the Shantung clause of the Versailles treaty which would open the way to question other clauses. Any one who has read anything from French sources knows just how likely the French are to do anything which would create a precedent for opening up the Versailles treaty.
One can guess what the United States angle is. The State Department knows the positions of France and Great Britain. It can use its friendly offices with China to suggest that under the circumstances China may well consider whether she is not likely to get more by direct negotiations with Japan than by bringing up the matter where she is likely to meet with additional opposition. Also the Administration wants the Conference to succeed. The Shantung question might wreck the Conference. It might displace the naval question in importance. Again the same lesson. Try a little direct talk between China and Japan with Balfour present as the official friend of Japan and Hughes as the unofficial friend of China.
Where is the Chinese angle? China is anxious to recover Shantung. Japan has repeatedly asserted her desire to return Shantung in full political sovereignty, 'retaining only those economic privileges granted to Germany'. Japan has several times offered to enter into direct negotiations with China, in order, so she explains, that she may carry her promise into effect. But China obstinately declines. A remarkable situation to all appearances! China refuses to accept what she most wants when her neighbor self-sacrificingly offers it to her.
It is so remarkable that there is clearly something below the surface. The Chinese hold that there is nothing to negotiate about, any more than Great Britain and France needed to negotiate with Belgium about the return of Belgium to Belgium when the Germans were expelled.
They point out that the original treaty with Germany expressly disclaimed any political rights for Germany, as well as forbade any alienation of her concessions to another power. What, then, does Japan mean by offering to return political rights which
she has not got, retaining 'only' everything she has got? Again, past experience has taught the Chinese that in China economic rights, when they include mines, railways and a port, become in practice something that looks and acts astonishingly like political control. And they know that during and after the war Japan carried this transformation scene much beyond anything which Germany had ever attempted.
There is another Chinese angle. The Chinese are shrewd diplomats and the world's best bargainers. But in large matters they trust to the working of moral forces rather than to legal and formal arrangements based on a bargain. The educated liberals of China looked forward to the Conference mainly as an opportunity for China to make known to the world her national sentiments, aspirations and wrongs. This purpose can be realized only by a submission of the Shantung question to the entire Conference with a maximum of open diplomacy.
Their desire is shocked by the arrangement which has been entered into. The shock accounts for the active opposition of non-official Chinese in Washington and elsewhere to direct conversations between China and Japan. They feel they are being cheated of their greatest opportunity. Probably they would prefer to let the Shantung question stay just as it is for a time, if their position could be made known to the whole world, rather than to get three-quarters of what they want, leaving Japan in control of the other quarter, especially if the settlement were made on the side.
Meantime, there is the probability that the angles won't be smoothed off It is well to scrutinize and remember the exact language officially used. There are no negotiations, there are 'conversations'. The Chinese at least are quite a conversational people. There is nothing said about a settlement, but only about 'looking to a settlement'. There is no harm in looking.
The Chinese will probably have their chance at publicity later, and then others will also have a chance to look and see what there is to see.