China and the West

Dewey, John. Three results of treaty [ID D28611].
Senator Lodge's speech is the high-water mark of genuine eloquence in the Conference. While under its spell one is likely to read its glow and felicity into the agreement and find more in it than is actually there. The islands are not, of course, the danger point in the Pacific, but Asia.
Nevertheless, the four-power treaty accomplishes three results. It sets a precedent of consultation among great powers. This goes further than two-powers' agreement to arbitrate. It puts an end to the Anglo-Japanese alliance. This is a great gain to better relations between the United States and Great Britain. Indirectly it renders war less likely between Japan and the United States. Indirectly it affords promise to China. She may be disappointed in other respects, but she has obtained from the Conference one great result.
The chief object of the present pact in the mind of those who drew it was probably to afford a graceful means of ending the alliance. In the third place it ought to stop the American talk of a naval base at Guam. The Philippines would not, I think, ever have become a source of trouble between Japan and the United States. But a fortified naval base is a provocation to Japan. We Americans may not intend it as such, but if we were in the place of the Japanese we should feel about it as they do.
Since the Philippines are now protected by the treaty, it is to be hoped that the Guam project will be abandoned. If it is, Japan's assent to the 5-5-3 naval ratio will probably soon follow. Negatively at least, the terms of the treaty are ground for congratulation. Our State Department has probably been subject to pressure to make an agreement which would include China in an agree¬ment of the powers. The islands are a safe place to attempt a diplomatic guarantee of the status quo. To have joined in guaranteeing it in China would have been a fatal blunder. That we are saved from.