China and the West

John Dewey speaks to the Chinese students clubs of Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and to the Columbia University, New York, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of China.

Dewey, John. Federalism in China [ID D28491].
The newcomer in China in observing and judging events usually makes the mistake of attaching too much significance to current happenings. Occurrences take place which in the western world would portend important changes—and nothing important results. It is not easy to loosen the habit of years; and so the visitor assumes that an event which is striking to the point of sensationalism must surely be part of a train of events having a definite trend; some deep-laid plan must be behind it. It takes a degree of intellectual patience added to time and experience to make one realize that even when there is a rhythm in events the tempo is so retarded that one must wait a long time to judge what is really going on. Most political events are like daily changes in the weather, fluctuations back and forth which may seriously affect individuals but which taken one by one tell little about the movement of the seasons. Even the occurrences which are due to human intention are usually sporadic and casual, and the observer errs by reading into them too much plot, too comprehensive a scheme, too far-sighted a plan. The aim behind the event is likely to be only some immediate advantage, some direct increase of power, the overthrow of a rival, the grasping at greater wealth by an isolated act, without any consecutive or systematic looking ahead.
Foreigners are not the only ones who have erred, however, in judging the Chinese political situation of the last few years. Beginning two years ago, one heard experienced Chinese with political affiliations saying that it was impossible for things to go on as they were for more than three months longer. Some decisive change must occur. Yet outwardly the situation has remained much the same not only for three months but for two years, the exception being the overthrow of the Anfu faction a year ago. And this occurrence hardly marked a definite turn in events, as it was, to a considerable extent, only a shifting of power from the hands of one set of tuchuns to another set. Nevertheless at the risk of becoming a victim of the fallacy which I have been setting forth, I will hazard the remark that the last few months have revealed a definite and enduring trend—that through the diurnal fluctuations of the strife for personal power and wealth a seasonal political change in society is now showing itself. Certain lines of cleavage seem to show themselves, so that through the welter of striking, picturesque, sensational but meaningless events, a definite pattern is revealed.
This pattern is indicated by the title of this article—a movement toward the development of a federal form of government. In calling the movement one toward federalism, there is, however, more of a jump into the remote future than circumstances justify. It would be more accurate, as well as more modest, to say that there is a well defined and seemingly permanent trend toward provincial autonomy and local self-government accompanied by a hope and a vague plan that in the future the more or less independent units will recombine into the United or Federated States of China. Some who look far into the future anticipate three stages; the first being the completion of the present secessionist movement; the second the formation of northern and southern confederations respectively; the third a reunion into a single state.
To go into the detailed evidence for the existence of a definite and lasting movement of this sort would presume too much on the reader's knowledge of Chinese geography and his acquaintance with specific recent events. I shall confine myself to quite general features of the situation. The first feature is the new phase which has been assumed by the long historic antagonism of the north and the south. Roughly speaking, the revolution which established the republic and overthrew the Manchus represented a victory for the south. But the transformation during the last five years of the nominal republic into a corrupt oligarchy of satraps or military governors or feudal lords has represented a victory for the north. It is a significant fact, symbolically at least, that the most powerful remaining tuchun or military governor in China—in some respects the only powerful one who has survived the vicissitudes of the last few years—namely Chang Tso Lin, is the uncrowned king of the three Manchurian provinces. The so-called civil war of the north and south is not, however, to be understood as a conflict of republicanism located in the south and militarism in the north. Such a notion is directly contrary to facts. The 'civil war' till six or eight months ago was mainly a conflict of military governors and factions, part of that struggle for personal power and wealth which has been going on all over China.
But recently events have taken a different course. In four of the southern provinces, tuchuns who seemed all powerful have toppled over, and the provinces have proclaimed or tacitly assumed their independence of both the Peking and the former military Canton governments—the province in which Canton is situated being one of the four. I happened to be in Hunan, the first of the southerly provinces to get comparative independence, last fall, not long after the overthrow of the vicious despot who had ruled the province with the aid of northern troops. For a week a series of meetings were held in Changsha, the capital of the province. The burden of every speech was 'Hunan for the Hunanese'. The slogan embodies the spirit of two powers each aiming at becoming the central authority; it is a conflict of the principle of provincial autonomy, represented by the politically more mature south, with that of militaristic centralization, represented by Peking.
As I write, in early September, the immediate issue is obscured by the fight which Wu Pei Fu is waging with the Hunanese who with nominal independence are in aim and interest allied with the south. If, as is likely, Wu Pei Fu wins, he may take one of two courses. He may use his added power to turn against Chang Tso Lin and the northern militarists which will bring him into virtual alliance with the southerners and establish him as the antagonist of the federal principle. This is the course which his earlier record would call for. Or he may yield to the usual official lust for power and money and try once more the Yuan Shih-kai policy of military centralization with himself as head, after trying out conclusions with Chang Tso Lin as his rival. This is the course which the past record of military leaders indicates. But even if Wu Pei Fu follows precedent and goes bad, he will only hasten his own final end. This is not prophecy. It is only a statement of what has uniformly happened in China just at the moment a military leader seemed to have complete power in his grasp. In other words, a victory for Wu Pei Fu may either accelerate or may retard the development of provincial autonomy according to the course he pursues. It cannot permanently prevent or deflect it.
The basic factor that makes one sure that this trend toward local autonomy is a reality and not merely one of those meaningless shiftings of power which confuse the observer, is that it is in accord with Chinese temperament, tradition and circumstance. Feudalism is past and gone two thousand years ago, and at no period since has China possessed a working centralized government. The absolute empires which have come and gone in the last two millenniums existed by virtue of non-interference and a religious aura. The latter can never be restored; and every episode of the republic demonstrates that China with its vast and diversified territories, its population of between three hundred and fifty and four hundred million, its multitude of languages and lack of communications, its enormous local attachments sanctified by the family system and ancestral worship, cannot be managed from a single and remote centre. China rests upon a network of local and voluntary associations cemented by custom. This fact has given it its unparalleled stability and its power to progress even under the disturbed political conditions of the past ten years. I sometimes think that Americans with their own traditional contempt for politics and their spontaneous reliance upon self-help and local organization are the only ones who are naturally fitted to understand China's course. The Japanese with their ingrained reliance upon the state have continually misjudged and misacted. The British understand better than we do the significance of local self-government; but they are misled by their reverence for politics so that they cannot readily find or see government when it does not take political form.
It is not too much to say that one great cause for the overthrow of the Manchus was the fact that because of the pressure of international relations they attempted to force, especially in fiscal matters, a centralization upon the provinces wholly foreign to the spirit of the people. This created hostility where before there had been indifference. China may possibly not emerge from her troubles a unified nation, any more than a much smaller and less populous Europe emerged from the breakup of the Holy Roman Empire, a single state. Indeed one often wonders, not that China is divided, but that she is not much more broken up than she is. But one thing is certain. Whatever progress China finally succeeds in making will come from a variety of local centres, not from Peking or Canton. It will be effected by means of associations and organizations which even though they assume a political form are not primarily political in nature.
Criticisms are passed, especially by foreigners, upon the present trend of events. The criticisms are more than plausible. It is evident that the present weakness of China is due to her divided condition. Hence it is natural to argue that the present movement being one of secession and general disintegration will increase the weakness of the country. It is also evident that many of China's troubles are due to the absence of any efficient administrative system; it is reasonable to argue that China cannot get even railways and universal education without a strong and stable central government. There is no doubt about the facts. It is not surprising that many friends of China deeply deplore the present tendency while some regard it as the final accomplishment of the long predicted breakup of China. But remedies for China's ills based upon ignoring history, psychology and actual conditions are so utopian that it is not worth while to argue whether or not they are theoretically desirable. The remedy of China’s troubles by a strong, centralized government is on a par with curing disease by the expulsion of a devil. The evil is real, but since it is real it cannot be dealt with by trying a method which implies its non-existence. If the devil is really there, he will not be exorcized by a formula. If the trouble is internal, not due to an external demon, the disease can be cured only by using the factors of health and vigor which the patient already possesses. And in China while these factors of recuperation and growth are numerous, they all exist in connection with local organizations and voluntary associations. The increasing volume of the cry that the 'tuchuns must go' comes from the provincial and local interests which have been insulted and violated by a nominally centralized but actually chaotic situation. After this negative work is completed, the constructive rebuilding of China can proceed only by utilizing local interests and abilities. In China the movement will be the opposite of that which occurred in Japan. It will be from the periphery to the centre.
Another objection to the present tendency has force especially from the foreign standpoint. As already stated, the efforts of the Manchu dynasty in its latter days to enhance central power were due to international pressure. Foreign nations treated Peking as if it were a capital like London, Paris or Berlin, and in its efforts to meet foreign demands it had to try to become such a centre. The result was disaster. But foreign nations still want to have a single centre which may be held responsible. And subconsciously, if not consciously, this desire is responsible for much of the objection of foreign nationals to the local autonomy movement. They well know that it is going to take a long time to realize the ideal of federation, and meantime where and what is to be the agency responsible for diplomatic relations, the enforcing of in-demnities and the securing of concessions?
In one respect the secessionist tendency is dangerous to China herself as well as inconvenient to the powers. It will readily stimulate the desire and ability of foreign nations to interfere in China's domestic affairs. There will be many centres at which to carry on intrigues and from which to get concessions instead of one or two. There is also danger that one foreign nation may line up with one group of provinces, and another foreign nation with another group, so that international friction will increase. Even now some Japanese sources and even such an independent liberal paper as Robert Young's Japan Chronicle are starting or reporting the rumor that the Cantonese experiment is supported by subsidies supplied by American capitalists in the hope of economic concessions. The rumor was invented for a sinister purpose and is persisted in through jealousy. But it illustrates the sort of situation that may come into existence if there are several political centres in China and one foreign nation backs one and another nation, another.
The danger is real enough. But it cannot be dealt with by attempting the impossible—namely checking the movement toward local autonomy, even though disintegration may temporarily accompany it. The danger only emphasizes the fundamental fact of the whole Chinese situation; that its essence is time. The evils and troubles of China are real enough, and there is no blinking the fact that they are largely of her own making, due to corruption, inefficiency and absence of popular education. But no one who knows the common people doubts that they will win through if they are given time. And in the concrete this means that they be left alone to work out their own destiny. There will doubtless be proposals at the Pacific Conference to place China under some kind of international tutelage. This article and the events connected with the tendency which it reports will be cited as showing this need. Some of the schemes will spring from motives that are hostile to China. Some will be benevolently conceived in a desire to save China from herself and shorten her period of chaos and confusion. But the hope of the world's peace, as well as of China’s freedom, lies in adhering to a policy of Hands Off. Give China a chance. Give her time. The danger lies in being in a hurry, in impatience, possibly in the desire of America to show that we are a power in international affairs and that we too have a positive foreign policy. And a benevolent policy of supporting China from without, instead of promoting her aspirations from within, may in the end do China about as much harm as a policy conceived in malevolence.

Letter from Xu Zhimo to Bertrand Russell. 18.10.1921.
Xu Zhimo obtained the London address of Russell from his Cambridge friend C[harles] K[ay] Ogden. He wrote : "Indeed I have been longing for an occasion to be with you since I came to England." Through this self-introduction, Xu became a friend of the Russells and commuted frequently between Cambridge and London in order to attend the lecture meetings given by Russell.

Dewey, John. China and disarmament [ID D28493].
In cordially acceding to the request of the editor of the Chinese Students' Monthly to say a few words about the coming Pacific Conference, I do so more because I am glad of an opportunity to give expression to my interest in China than because I feel I have anything to add to what is already matter of general discussion and knowledge. It is quite clear that the difficulties which will face the Conference are enormous. In the United States as well as in Great Britain and Japan there are those who feel that the limitation of armaments is the most important matter, and that it was an unwise move to complicate that difficulty by introducing the discussion of such a vexed problem as the conflict of international policies in the Far East. There are others (with whom I find myself in sympathy) who regard the adjustment of policies as the fundamental issue, who feel that even a sweeping reduction of armaments will not of itself materially improve international relations although it may relieve the burden of taxation; who feel that if a settlement of policies is attained, the causes of competition in armament will be largely eliminated; and that the growth of peaceful domestic sentiment and opinion in each country will compel retrenchment, when once the grounds for mutual suspicion and fear are done away with. Then there is a large number in every country which looks upon the whole matter with what President Hibben of Princeton has well termed 'cynical pessimism'. Some are influenced by the disillusionment which followed the Versailles peace treaties. They believe that each country is going in to get what it can for itself in the way of aggrandizement, and they have no faith that diplomatists who represent the present political order will accomplish anything constructive. Then there are the economic radicals who believe that the rivalry of powers is the necessary expression of the existing capitalistic system, and that it is absurd to look for any real amelioration as long as capitalism is powerful.
This division of public sentiment creates an atmosphere which adds to the difficulties of a successful outcome. I am not writing in this vein, however, to encourage despair, but to suggest one direction in which the Conference may be a success, a direction which it seems to me is of chief importance for China. It is possible that a by-product of the Conference may be more valuable than any direct results which will be obtained. I mean by this a better understanding, a greater knowledge of the conditions which obtain in the Far East. In spite of the fact that the world seems to be suffering from a kind of moral fatigue as a result of the overstrain of the war, I believe that a new social consciousness is gradually forming in every country, a new type of liberal and international thought, and that this new consciousness is going to have more and more influence in shaping the international conduct of every nation.
It is not necessary to point out how awakened American public opinion is regarding everything which concerns China as compared with a few years ago. I am not enough of an inflamed patriot to assume that all of this awakening takes a form which is good for my own country or in the long run for China. Some of it, unfortunately, is mainly negative, an accompaniment of rivalry with and fear and suspicion of Japan as a potential rival, economic and naval. But with the mass of the American people, it is the product I think of real interest in the Chinese people, sympathy for them, and a wish that they have an opportunity to work out their own destiny free from that external interference which in the past has been such an unhappy feature of the intercourse of the world's great powers with China. Now this more sensitive feeling about justice for China is not confined to the United States. I believe that it is rapidly growing in England and will become more articulate as soon as the subsidence of war passions permits a revival of political liberalism in Great Britain. In Japan there is a growing section of the population which is uneasy about the past policy of Japan toward China and who wish to bring about its revision. It is still comparatively unorganized and almost impotent against the power of the forces represented by the Imperial General Staff. But the feeling is there and is constantly growing in strength especially in the younger generation.
Now one great opportunity presented by the Conference is that of enlightening and to some extent crystallizing this sentiment and opinion in all countries. Even in Japan a favorite phrase in connection with the Conference is the need of laying all the cards on the table. What we may call the educative effect of the Conference, the indirect effect of its discussions in bringing conditions and issues to light, may in the long run outweigh the actual success of the Conference with respect to its direct and avowed aims. I do not say this to minimize the importance of the direct aims nor because I believe that failure is inevitable with respect to them. There are rather two motives for emphasizing this phase of the matter. Other more competent persons will deal with the direct military, naval and political issues, and this educative aspect of the matter may easily be slurred over. And also this phase of the matter is the one, it seems to me, which is the most natural concern of the body of Chinese students and shows where their influence can be most useful in connection with the Conference. The world has had altogether too much propaganda of late, and I should be sorry to write anything which would encourage more of a bad thing. But there is an opportunity for Chinese students to help the world, at least the American part of it, understand better the difficulties and problems of China, internal and foreign, and in a truthful way to develop intelligent sympathy with an international policy of justice toward weak nations in general and China in particular. There are some who think that our new interest in China is because Americans want to displace other nations in order to play a greater part there itself. I hope this isn't true; I do not believe it is true. But if there is any such danger, the Conference provides an opportunity for Chinese students to present the rights of China to its own independent development and self-determination, free from intervention and tutelage which is professedly benevolent as well as free from interference which is openly hostile.

Dewey, John. A parting of the ways for America [ID D28492].
I
The realities of American policy in China and toward China are going to be more seriously tested in the future than they ever have been in the past. Japanese papers have been full of protests against any attempt by the Pacific Conference to place Japan on trial. Would that American journals were full of warnings that America is on trial at the Conference as to the sincerity and intelligent goodwill behind her amicable professions. The world will not stop with the Pacific Conference; the latter, however important, will not arrest future developments, and the United States will continue to be on trial till she has established by her acts a permanent and definite attitude. For the realities of the situation cannot be exhausted in any formula or in any set of diplomatic agreements, even if the Conference confounds the fears of pessimists and results in a harmonious union of the powers in support of China’s legitimate aspirations for free political and economic growth.
The Conference, however, stands as a symbol of the larger situation; and its decisions or lack of them will be a considerable factor in the determination of subsequent events. Sometimes one is obliged to fall back on a trite phrase. We are genuinely at a parting of the ways. Even if we should follow in our old path, there would none the less be a parting of the ways, for we cannot consistently tread the old path unless we are animated by a much more conscious purpose and a more general and intelligent knowledge of affairs than have controlled our activities in the past.
The ideas expressed by an English correspondent about the fear that America is soon to be an active source of danger in the Far East are not confined to persons on foreign shores. The prevailing attitude in some circles of American opinion is that called by President Hibben cynical pessimism. All professed radicals and many liberals believe that if our course has been better in the past it has been due to geographical accidents combined with indifference and with our undeveloped economic status. Consequently they believe that since we have now become what is called a world-power and a nation which exports instead of importing capital, our course will soon be as bad as that of any of the rest of them. In some quarters this opinion is clearly an emotional reaction following the disillusionments of Versailles. In others, it is due to adherence to a formula: nothing in international affairs can come out of capitalism and America is emphatically a capitalistic country. Whether or not these feelings are correct, they are not discussable; neither an emotion nor an absolute formula is subject to analysis.
But there are specific elements in the situation which give grounds for apprehension as to the future. These specific elements are capable of detection and analysis. An adequate realization of their nature will be a large factor in preventing cynical apprehensions from becoming actual. This article is an attempt at a preliminary listing, inadequate, of course, as any preliminary examination must be. While an a priori argument based on a fatalistic formula as to how a “capitalistic nation” must conduct itself does not appeal to me, there are nevertheless concrete facts which are suggested by that formula. Part of our comparatively better course in China in the past is due to the fact that we have not had the continuous and close alliance between the State Department and big banking interests which is found in the case of foreign powers. No honest well-informed history of developments in China could be written in which the Russian Asiatic Bank, the Foreign Bank of Belgium, the French Indo-China Bank and Banque Industrielle, the Yokohama Specie Bank, the Hongkong-Shanghai Bank, etc., did not figure prominently. These banks work in the closest harmony, not only with railway and construction syndicates and big manufacturing interests at home, but also with their respective foreign offices. It is hardly too much to say that legations and banks have been in most important matters the right and left hands of the same body. American business interests have complained in the past that the American government does not give to American traders abroad the same support that the nationals of other states receive. In the past these complaints have centred largely about actual wrongs suffered or believed to have been suffered by American business undertakings carried on in a foreign country. With the present expansion of capital and of commerce, the same complaints and demands are going to be made not with reference to grievances suffered, but with reference to furthering, to pushing American commercial interests in connection with large banking groups. It would take a credulous person to deny the influence of big business in domestic politics. As we become more interested in commerce and banking enterprises what assurance have we that the alliance will not be transferred to international politics?
It should be noted that the policy of the open door as affirmed by the great powers—and as frequently violated by them—even if it be henceforth observed in good faith, does not adequately protect us from this danger. The open door policy is not primarily a policy about China herself but rather about the policies of foreign powers toward one another with respect to China. It demands equality of economic opportunity for different nations. Were it enforced, it would prevent the granting of monopolies to any one nation: there is nothing in it to render impossible a conjoint exploitation of China by foreign powers, an organized monopoly in which each nation has its due share with respect to others. Such an organization might conceivably reduce friction among the great powers, and thereby reduce the danger of future wars—as long as China herself is impotent to go to war. The agreement might conceivably for a considerable time be of benefit to China herself. But it is clear that for the United States to become a partner in any such arrangement would involve a reversal of our historic policy in the Far East. It might be technically consistent with the open door policy, but it would be a violation of the larger sense in which the American people has understood and praised that ideal. He is blind who does not see that there are forces making for such a reversal. And since we are all more or less blind, an opening of our eyes to the danger is one of the conditions of its not being realized.
One of the forces which is operative is indicated by the phrase that an international agreement on an economic and financial basis might be of value to China herself. The mere suggestion that such a thing is possible is abhorrent to many, especially to radicals. There seems to be something sinister in it. So it is worth explaining how and why it might be so. In the first place, it would obviously terminate the particularistic grabbing for 'leased' territory, concessions and spheres of influence which has so damaged China. At the present time, the point of this remark lies in its implied reference to Japan, as at one time it might have applied to Russia. Fear of Japan's aims in China is not confined to China; the fear is widespread. An international economic arrangement may therefore be plausibly presented as the easiest and most direct method of relieving China of the Japanese men-ace. For Japan to stay out would be to give herself away; if she came in, it would subject Japanese activities to constant scrutiny and control. There is no doubt that part of the fear of Japan regarding the Pacific Conference is due to a belief that some such arrangement is contemplated. The case is easily capable of such presentation as to make it appeal to Americans who are really friendly to China and who haven't the remotest interest in her economic exploitation.
The arrangement would, for example, automatically eliminate the Lansing-Ishii agreement with its embarrassing ambiguous recognition of Japan's special interests in China.
The other factor is domestic. The distraction and civil wars of China are commonplaces. So is the power exercised by the military governors and generals. The greater one's knowledge, the more one perceives how intimately the former evil is dependent upon the latter. The financial plight of the Chinese government, its continual foreign borrowings which threaten bankruptcy in the near future, depend upon militaristic domination and wild expenditure for unproductive purposes and squeeze. Without this expense, China would have no great difficulty henceforth in maintaining a balance in her budget. The retardation of public education whose advancement—especially in elementary schools— is China's greatest single need is due to the same cause. So is the growth in official corruption which is rapidly extending into business and private life.
In fact, every one of the obstacles to the progress of China is connected with the rule of military factions and their struggles with one another for complete mastery. An economic international agreement among the great powers can be made which would surely reduce and possibly eliminate the greatest evils of 'militarism'. Many liberal Chinese say in private that they would be willing to have a temporary international receivership for government finance, provided they could be assured of its nature and the exact date and conditions of its termination—a proviso which they are sensible enough to recognize would be extremely difficult of attainment. American leadership in forming and executing any such scheme would, they feel, afford the best reassurance as to its nature and terms. Under such circumstances a plausible case can be made out for proposals which, under the guise of traditional American friendship for China, would in fact commit us to a reversal of our historic policy.
There are radicals abroad and at home who think that our entrance into a Consortium already proves that we have entered upon the road of reversal and who naturally see in the Pacific Conference the next logical step. I have previously stated my own belief that our State Department proposed the Consortium primarily for political ends, as a means of checking the policy pursued by Japan of making unproductive loans to China in return for which she was getting an immediate grip on China's natural resources and preparing the way for direct administrative and financial control when the day of reckoning and foreclosure should finally come. I also said that the Consortium was between two stools, the financial and the political and that up to the present its chief value had been negative and preventive, and that jealousy or lack of interest by Japan and Great Britain in any constructive policy on the part of the Consortium was likely to maintain the same condition. I have seen no reason thus far to change my mind on this point, nor in regard to the further belief that probably the interests of China in the end will be best served by the continuation of this deterrent function. But the question is bound to arise: why continue the Consortium if it isn't doing anything? The pressure of foreign powers interested in the exploitation of China and of impatient American economic interests may combine to put an end to the present rather otiose existence led by the Consortium. The two stools between which the past action of the American government has managed to swing the Consortium may be united to form a single solid bench.
At the risk of being charged with credulous gullibility, or something worse, I add that up to the present time the American phase of the Consortium hasn't shown perceptible signs of becoming a club exercised by American finance over China's economic integrity and independence. I believe the repeated statements of the American representative that he himself and the interests he represents would be glad if China proved her ability to finance her own public utilities without resorting to foreign loans. This belief is confirmed by the first public utterance of the new American minister to China who in his reference to the Consortium laid emphasis upon its deterrent function and upon the stimulation it has given to Chinese bankers to finance public utilities. And it is the merest justice to Mr. Stevens, the American representative, to say that he represents the conservative investment type of banker, not the 'promotion' type, and that thus far his great concern has been the problem of protecting the buyer of such securities as are passed on by the banks to the ultimate investor—so much so that he has aroused criticism from American business interests impatient for speedy action. But there is a larger phase of the Consortium concerning which I think apprehensions may reasonably be entertained.
Suppose, if merely by way of hypothesis, that the American government is genuinely interested in China and in making the policy of the open door and Chinese territorial and administrative integrity a reality, not merely a name, and suppose that it is interested in doing so from an American self-interest sufficiently enlightened to perceive that the political and economic advancement of the United States is best furthered by a policy which is identical with China's ability to develop herself freely and independently: what then would be the wise American course? In short, it would be to view our existing European interests and issues (due to the war) and our Far Eastern interests and issues as parts of one and the same problem. If we are actuated by the motive hypothetically imputed to our government and we fail in its realization, the chief reason will be that we regard the European question and the Asiatic problem as two different questions, or because we identify them from the wrong end.
Our present financial interest in Europe is enormous. It involves not merely foreign governmental loans but a multitude of private advances and commitments. These financial entanglements affect not merely our industry and commerce but our politics. They involve much more immediately pressing concerns than do our Asiatic relations, and they involve billions where the latter involve millions. The danger under such conditions that our Asiatic relations will be sacrificed to our European is hardly fanciful.
To make this abstract statement concrete, the firm of bankers, J- P. Morgan & Co., which is most heavily involved in European indebtedness to the United States, is the firm which is the leading spirit in the Consortium for China. It seems almost inevitable that the Asiatic problem should look like small potatoes in comparison with the European one, especially as our own industrial recuperation is so closely connected with European relations, while the Far East cuts a negligible figure. To my mind the real danger is not that our big financial interests will determine to set out upon selfish exploitation of China: intelligent self-interest, tradition and the fact that our chief asset in China is our past freedom from a predatory course, dictate a course of cooperation with China. The danger is that China will be subordinated and sacrificed because of primary preoccupation with the high finance and politics of Europe, that she will be lost in the shuffle.
The European aspect of the problem can be made more concrete by reference to Great Britain in particular. That country suffers from the embarrassment of the Japanese alliance. She has already made it sufficiently clear that she would like to draw America into the alliance, making it tripartite, since that would be the easiest way of maintaining good relations with both Japan and the United States. There is no likelihood that any such step will be consummated. But British diplomacy is experienced and astute. And by force of circumstances our high finance has contracted a sort of economic alliance with Great Britain. There is no wish to claim superior virtue for America or to appeal to the strong current of anti-British sentiment. But the British foreign office exists and operates apart from the tradition of liberalism which has mainly actuated English domestic politics. It stands peculiarly for the Empire side of the British Empire, no matter what Party is in the saddle in domestic affairs. Every resource will be employed to bring about a settlement at the Pacific Conference which, even though it includes some degree of compromise on the part of Great Britain, will bend the Asiatic policy of the United States to the British traditions in the Far East, instead of committing Great Britain to combining with the United States in making a reality of the integrity of China to which both countries are nominally committed. It does not seem an extreme statement to say that the immediate issues of the Conference depend upon the way in which our financial commitments in Europe are treated, either as reasons for our making concessions to European policy or on the other hand as a means of securing an adherence of the European powers to the traditional American policy.
A publicist in China who is of British origin and a sincere friend of China remarked in private conversation that if the United States could not secure the adherence of Great Britain to her Asiatic policy by persuasion (he was deploring the Japanese alliance) she might do so by buying it—through remission of her national debt to us. It is not necessary to resort to the measure so baldly suggested. But the remark at least suggests that our involvement in European, especially British, finance and politics may be treated in either of two ways for either of two results.
In this article I have set forth as conservatively as possible some of the reasons which seem to justify reasonable apprehension regarding our course at the Conference and in the future. In a further article I shall set forth the reasons for hoping that our ways will not part in this direction, and the main factor that seems to me involved in our deliberate entrance upon a better course.
II
That the Chinese people, generally speaking, has a less antagonistic feeling towards the United States than towards other powers seems to me an undoubted fact. The feeling has been disturbed at divers times by the treatment of the Chinese upon the Pacific coast, by the exclusion act, by the turning over of our interest in the building of the Peking-Canton (or Hankow) railway to a European group, by the Lansing-Ishii agreement, and finally by the part played by President Wilson in the Versailles decision regarding Shantung. Those disturbances in the main, however, have made them dubious as to our skill, energy and intelligence rather than as to our goodwill. Americans, taken individually and collectively, are to the Chinese—at least such was my impression—a rather simple folk, taking the word in its good and its deprecatory sense. In noting the Chinese reaction to the proposed Pacific Conference, it was interesting to see the combination of an almost unlimited hope that the United States was to lead in protecting them from further aggressions and in rectifying existing evils, with a lack of confidence, a fear that the United States would have something put over on it.
Friendly feeling is, of course, mainly based upon a negative fact, the fact that the United States has taken no part in 'leasing' territories, establishing spheres and setting up extra-national postoffices. On the positive side stands the contribution made by Americans to education, especially medical and that of girls and women, and to philanthropy and relief. Politically, there are the early service of Burlingame, the open door policy of John Hay (though failure to maintain it in fact while securing signatures to it on paper has a great deal to do with the Chinese belief in our defective energy) and the part played by the United States in moderating the terms of the settlement of the Boxer outbreak, in addition to a considerable number of minor helpful acts. China also remembers that we were the only nation to take exception to the treaties embodying the Twenty-one Demands. While our exception was chiefly made on the basis of our own interests which these treaties might injuriously affect, a sentiment exists that the protest was a pledge of assistance to China when the time should be opportune for raising the whole question. And without doubt the reservation made on May 16, 1915, by our State Department is a strong card at the forthcoming Conference if the Department wishes to play it.
From the American standpoint, the open door principle represents one of the only two established principles of American diplomacy, the other being, of course, the Monroe Doctrine. In connection with sentimental or idealistic associations which have clustered about it, it constitutes us in some vague fashion, in both Chinese and American public opinion, a sort of guardian or at least spokesman of the interests of China in relation to foreign powers. Although, as was pointed out in a former article, the open door policy directly concerns other nations in their relation to China rather than China herself, yet the violation of the policy by other powers has been so frequent and so much to the detriment of China, that American interest, prestige and moral sentiment are now implicated in such an enforcement of it as will redound to the advantage of China.
Citizens of other countries are often irritated by a suggestion of such a relationship between the United States and China. It presents itself as a proclamation of superior national virtue under cover of which the United States aims to establish its influence in China at the expense of other countries. The irritation is exasperated by the fact that the situation as it stands is an undoubted economic and political asset of the United States in China. We may concede without argument any contention that the situation is not due to superior virtue but rather to contingencies of history and geography—in which respect it is not unlike many things that pass for virtues with individuals. The contention may be admitted without controversy because it is not pertinent to the main issue. The question is not so much how the state of affairs came about as what it now is, how it is to be treated and what consequences are to flow from it. It is a fact that up to the present the intelligent self-interest of America has coincided with the interests of a stable, independent and progressive China. It is also a fact that American traditions and sentiments have gathered about this consideration so that now there is widespread conviction in the American people of moral obligations of assistance and friendly protection owed by us to China. At present, no policy can be entered upon that does not bear the semblance of fairness and goodwill. We have at least so much protection against the dangers discussed in the prior article.
Among Americans in China and presumably at home there is a strong feeling that we should adopt stronger and more positive policies for the future than we have maintained in the past. This feeling seems to me fraught with dangers unless we make very clear to ourselves in just what respects we are to continue and make good our traditional policy in a more positive manner. To some extent our past policy has been one of drifting. Radical change in this respect may go further than appears upon the surface in altering other fundamental aspects of our policy. What is condemned as drifting is in effect largely the same thing that is also praised as non-interference. A detailed settled policy, no matter how 'constructive' it may appear to be, can hardly help involving us in the domestic policies of China, an affair of factions and a game which the Chinese understand and play much better than any foreigners. Such an involvement would at once lessen a present large asset in China, aloofness from internal intrigues and struggles.
The specific protests of Chinese in this country—mainly Cantonese—against the Consortium seem to me mainly based on misapprehension. But their general attitude of opposition nevertheless conveys an important lesson. It is based on a belief that the effect of the Consortium will be to give the Peking government a factitious advantage in the internal conflict which is waging in China, so that to all intents and purposes it will mark a taking of sides on our part. It is well remembered that the effect of the 'reorganization' loan of the prior Consortium—in which the United States was not a partner—was to give Yuan Shih-kai the funds which seated him, and the militarist faction after him, firmly in the governmental saddle. Viewing the matter from a larger point of view than that of Canton vs. Peking, the most fundamental objection I heard brought by Chinese against the Consortium was in effect as follows: The republican revolution in China has still to be wrought out; the beginning of ten years ago has been arrested. It remains to fight it out. The inevitable effect of increased foreign financial and economic interest in China, even admitting that its industrial effect was advantageous to China, would be to create an interest in stabilizing China politically, which in effect would mean to sanctify the status quo, and prevent the development of a revolution which cannot be accomplished without internal disorders that would affect foreign investments unfavorably. These considerations are not mentioned for the sake of throwing light on the Consortium: they are cited as an illustration of the probability that a too positive and constructive development of our tradition of goodwill to China would involve us in an interference with Chinese domestic affairs injurious to China's welfare, to that free and independent development in which we profess such interest.
But how, it will be asked, are we to protect China from foreign depredations, particularly those of Japan, how are we to change our nominal goodwill into a reality, if we do not enter upon much more positive and detailed policies? If there was in existence at the present time any such thing as a diplomacy of peoples as distinct from a diplomacy of governments, the question would mean something quite different from what it now means. As things now stand the people should profoundly distrust the politicians' love for China. It is too frequently the reverse side of fear and incipient hatred of Japan, colored perhaps by anti-British feeling.
There should be no disguising of the situation. The aggressive activities of other nations in China, centring but not exhausted at this time in Japan, are not merely sources of trouble to China but they are potential causes of trouble in our own international relationships. We are committed by our tradition and by the present actualities of the situation to attempt something positive for China as respects her international status. To live up to our responsibility is a most difficult and delicate matter. We have on the one side to avoid getting entangled in quasi-imperialistic European policies in Asia, whether under the guise of altruism, of putting ourselves in a position where we can exercise a more effective supervision of their behavior, or by means of economic expansion. On the other side, we have to avoid drifting into that kind of covert or avowed antagonism to European and Japanese imperialism which will only increase friction, encourage a combination especially of Great Britain and Japan—or of France and Japan—against us, and bring war appreciably nearer.
We need to bear in mind that China will not be saved from outside herself. Even if by a successful war we should relieve China from Japanese encroachments, from all encroachments, China would not of necessity be brought nearer her legitimate goal of orderly and prosperous internal development. Apart from the question of how far war can now settle any fundamental issues without begetting others as dangerous, there is the fact that China of all countries is the one where settlement by force, especially by outside force, is least applicable and most likely to be enormously disserviceable. China is used to taking time for her problems: she can neither understand nor profit by the impatient methods of the western world which are profoundly alien to her genius. Moreover, a civilization which is on a continental scale, which is so old that the rest of us are parvenus in comparison, which is thick and closely woven, cannot be hurried in its development without disaster. Transformation from within is its sole way out, and we can best help China by trying to see to it that she gets the time she needs in order to effect this transformation, whether or not we like the particular form it assumes at any particular time.
A successful war in behalf of China would leave untouched her problems of education, of factional and sectional forces, of political immaturity showing itself in present incapacity for organization. It would affect her industrial growth undoubtedly, but in all human probability for the worse, increasing the likelihood that she would enter upon an industrialization which would repeat the worst evils of western industrial life without the immunities, resistances and remedial measures which the west has evolved. The imagination cannot conceive a worse crime than fastening western industrialism upon China before she has developed within herself the means of coping with the forces which it would release. The danger is great enough as it is. War waged in China's behalf by western powers and western methods would make the danger practically irresistible. In addition we should gain a permanent interest in China which is likely to be of the most dangerous character to ourselves. If we were not committed by it to future imperialism, we should be luckier than we have any right to hope to be. These things are said against a mental protest to admitting even by implication the prospect of war with Japan, but it seems necessary to say them.
These remarks are negative and vague as to our future course. They imply a confession of lack of such wisdom as would enable me to make positive definite proposals. But at least I have confidence in the wisdom and goodwill of the American and other peoples to deal with the problem, if they are only called into action. And the first condition of calling wisdom and goodwill into effective existence is to recognize the seriousness of the problem and the utter futility of trying to force its solution by impatient and hurried methods. Pro-Japanese apologetics is dangerous; it obscures the realities of the situation. An irritated anti-Japanism that would hasten the solution of the Chinese problem merely by attacking Japan is equally fatal to discovering and applying a proper method.
More specifically and also more genetically, proper publicity is the greatest need. If, as Secretary Hughes has intimated, a settlement of the problems of the Pacific is made a condition of arriving at an agreement regarding reduction and limitation of armaments, it is likely that the Conference might better never be held. In eagerness to do something which will pass as a settlement, either China's—and Siberia's—interests will be sacrificed in some unfair compromise, or irritation and friction will be increased—and in the end so will armaments. In any literal sense, it is ridiculous to suppose that the problems of the Pacific can be settled in a few weeks, or months—or years. Yet the discussion of the problems, in separation from the question of armament, may be of great use. For it may further that publicity which is a precondition of any genuine settlement. This involves public diplomacy. But it also involves a wider publicity, one which will enlighten the world about the facts of Asia, internal and international.
Scepticism about Foreign Offices, as they are at present conducted, is justified. But scepticism about the power of public opinion, if it can be aroused and instructed, to reshape Foreign Office policies means hopelessness about the future of the world. Let everything possible be done to reduce armament, if only to secure a naval holiday on the part of the three great naval powers, and if only for the sake of lessening taxation. Let the Conference on Problems devote itself to discussing and making known as fully and widely as possible the element and scope of those problems, and the fears—or should one call them hopes?—of the cynics will be frustrated. It is not so important that a decision in the American sense of the Yap question be finally and forever arrived at, as it is that the need of China and the Orient in general for freer and fuller communications with the rest of the world be made clear—and so on, down or up the list of agenda. The commercial open door is needed. But the need is greater that the door be opened to light, to knowledge and understanding. If these forces will not create a public opinion which will in time secure a lasting and just settlement of other problems, there is no recourse save despair of civilization. Liberals can do something better than predicting failure and impugning motives. They can work for the opened door of open diplomacy, of continuous and intelligent inquiry, of discussion free from propaganda. To shirk this responsibility on the alleged ground that economic imperialism and organized greed will surely bring the Conference to failure is supine and snobbish. It is one of the factors that may count in leading the United States to take the wrong course in the parting of the ways.

Russell, Bertrand. China and the powers. In : Foreign affairs ; 3. Nov. (1921).
China is by far the most important part of the earth's surface still unexploited and subject to a weak government. The Great Powers are determined to develop China, and the Washington Conference, if it succeeds, is to decide how the proceeds are to be shared. China has an ancient and valuable civilization, with a way of life far more humane than that of the white man ; this is to be destroyed. China wishes to develop her own industry, but not on the lines of private capitalism ; this must be prevented.
Four Powers are specially concerned with Chinese affairs : Japan, Great Britain, the United States, and Russia. Let us leave Russia on one side for the moment. Japan is more hated in China than any other Power ; we come next, as the allies of Japan, the possessors of Hongkong and Wei-hai-wei (the latter in explicit contravention of our treaty rights), and the aggressors in China's first wars with modern nations. The interests of the English and Americans in China are, however, more capable of adjustment than either with the Japanese, because both desire commercial, financial, and industrial advantages, while the Japanese desire territory to live in. The Japanese therefore, wherever they acquire a secure hold, will keep the exploitation to themselves, even if the open door is nominally safeguarded by treaty.
There are two ways of sharing Chinese loot ; one is that of spheres of influence, the other that of the Consortium, according to which the whole of China is to be exploited jointly. The Americans, who claim a monopoly of high moral sentiment, consider the latter method morally preferable, presumably because it gives a prospect of opening to their enterprise regions now monopolized by the Japanese. Wherever the can, however, the Americans secure monopolies for themselves. They negotiated in Peking a wireless monopoly, and were indignant when they discovered that the Chinese (with their usual sly fun) had granted the same monopoly simultaneously to the Japanese. Liberal Americans, from Professor Dewey downward, have denounced us, very justly, for the iniquitous Cassel agreement with the former Canton Government ; but not one of them, so far as I know, has so much as mentioned the at least equally iniquitous Shank Agreement [negotiated by George H. Shank, gives a twenty years' monopoly to America of all the industrial resources of Guangdong] concluded by the Americans with the present Canton Government. American Liberalism is in the Palmerstonian phase, able to see the faults of all other nations, but blind to its own, at any rate in international affairs. The fact is, of course, that all capitalist nations are equally vile in their dealings with China. The notion that some are better and others worse is merely a nationalist delusion.
The situation to be dealt with by the Washington Conference may be regarded from two points of view : first, that of China's welfare ; secondly, that of the preservation of peace among the Great Powers. I do not know whether the Americans desire the latter, or trust to Japanese mistakes to give them a moral pretext for war while securing our neutrality. Japan is in a mood like that of Germany before the war, and America is in a mood very like that of England before the war. The Japanese are hysterical and terrified, not realizing how imperialistic they are, feeling that nothing they can do will enable them to escape war with America, that when that happens we shall desert them, and that only vigorous military and naval preparation can preserve their independence. The Americans, on the other hand, believe that their own intentions are wholly virtuous, and that Japan's fears must be hypocritical. A little self-knowledge on both sides would solve the difficulty, but neither side has any. Japan has a surplus population and wants territory for emigration. America and the British dominions being closed, it is natural to turn to the mainland of Asia. There is room for a great increase of population in Manchuria, but hitherto the immigration there has been almost wholly Chinese. And this Chinese immigration must be restricted if there is to be room for the Japanese, which is impossible by any measures which America is likely to tolerate.
Meanwhile there is the Far Eastern Republic which, being in effect Bolshevik, is the enemy of mankind, i.e. of big finance everywhere. Neither it nor Russia is to be represented at Washington ; therefore we may presume that the Japanese are to be bought off, if possible, by permission to wage a holy war in Eastern Siberia. Clearly the easiest way to secure peace among the imperialist Powers is at the expense of Russia. Meanwhile Russia has her own new-style imperialism on the borders of China, having recently conquered and Bolshevized Mongolia, formerly part of the Chinese empire. Russia has, of course, the ardent sympathy of all the young advanced people in China, and is the only Great Power having access to China by land. The Japanese in Vladivostok (which is part of the Far Eastern Republic) are perpetually intriguing against the Chita Government, and war between the two has often seemed imminent. But for American hatred of Bolshevism, it would be natural for America to support Chita [capital of Far Eastern Republic] against Tokyo, but self-determination has its limits, and does not operate in favour of people who determine to be Communists. Therefore it is probable that, if the Washington Conference succeeds in reaching an agreement, America will allow Japan a free hand against the Far Eastern Republic, which, of course, involves a war between Japan and Soviet Russia.
Thus from the point of view of the interests of China, the Far Eastern Republic, and Soviet Russia, it is to be hoped that the Washington Conference will fail. But if it fails, there is the certainty of a great increase in naval armaments, the probability of a long war between American and Japan, leading to the complete destruction of the Japanese civilization, and the by no means remote probability of a war between America and Great Britain, involving our downfall and the death by starvation of half our population. Whether the brigands agree or disagree when they assemble at Washington, the outlook is equally gloomy for the world. It is possible that before all these evils are realized some spark of humanity, justice, or even common prudence may enter into the policies of great nations ? I doubt is ; yet there seems no other hope for humanity during the next few centuries.

Letter from Xu Zhimo to Bertrand Russell. 7.11.1921.
C[harles] K[ay] Ogden planed to publish a World philosophy series, in which Hu Shi's Zhongguo zhe xue shi da gang 中國哲學史大綱 [Outlines of the history of Chinese philosophy] was to be included upon Russell's proposal. The project of Ogden did not materialize.
Xu did not agree with Russell :
"The author [Hu Shi] is too much concerned with combatting his predecessors on points which are not likely to interest the Western readers not well-informed in this field ; in the second place, it is too bulky, the first volume alone amounting to four hundred pages.
It occurs to me [that] the best man for our purpose is Mr. Liang Qichao (the man who gave you that piece of painting) who, as you probably know, is one of the very most learned scholars and probably the most powerful and lucid writer China has ever produced. His continual effort of emancipating Chinese thought and introducing and popularizing Western ideas is worthy of our great admiration. His power of assimilating and discriminating learning has never been equaled. So it would be simply ideal if we could get him to do the job, and that I think more than possible. If you would just kindly write to him, urging him to produce a standard book on Chinese thought and indicating the general character of the Series, it would be, I have no doubt, a tremendous spur to his amazing creative energy and he would be more than pleased to comply with the request. There could be no better arrangement than this."

Russell, Bertrand. The future of China. In : The Labour News ; 10. Nov. (1921).
Progressive China undoubtedly has great hopes of the Washington Conference. Hitherto, in all dealings with foreign Powers, America alone has been found friendly. As everyone knows, the American share of the Boxer indemnity has been spent in education Chinese students, both in China and in America. This was in itself a friendly act, and had the result that a large majority of young educated Chinese have an American outlook. Our Government, very shortsightedly, has not yet seen its way to a similar restitution.
Another great cause of Chinese friendship for America is the fact that America has always opposed Japanese aggression, and has, alone among Great Powers, shown no desire to acquire t4erritory on the mainland of Asia, or even concessions in the Treaty Ports. American ambitions in China are commercial and industrial, not territorial. And in addition to education, the Americans have done much good work in the way of hospitals, famine relief, etc.
The ambitions of the Japanese are not merely capitalistic, they are also militaristic and imperial. It is true that the Japanese desire raw materials for their industry, which are to be had in China but not in Japan. This desire, however, if it stood alone, would be capable of gratification without infringing the principle of the Open Door. What makes the Japanese desire more than the Americans claim in China is the love of empire, the desire for might based on armaments which led Germany to disaster. The Japanese expected Germany to win the war, and are still inclined to adopt pre-war Germany as their model.
There is in Japan a Socialist and Labour Party on European lines, and among its leaders are some of the finest men I have ever met. But they have no influence on Japanese policy, and cannot hope to have while only about four per cent of the population are industrial. Even moderate Liberalism has little practical influence, because the Army and Navy are directly responsible to the Mikado, and not in any degree subject to Parliament or the Cabinet, or even the Prime Minister. Thus the extreme militarists have a free hand.
During the last quarter of a century, the Japanese have acquired Korea, Manchuria, and Shantung, in each case with the help of Great Britain. Korea was only loosely connected with China by a traditional protectorate, and although the sufferings of Koreans at the hands of Japan have been very great, Korea is hardly a Chinese question. Manchuria, on the other hand, concerns China vitally.
The Manchu conquerors came from there in the seventeenth century, and from there it is easy still to exercise military domination over Peking. There is in Manchuria, under Japanese protection and influence, a Chinese reactionary viceroy, who is often able to overawe the Peking politicians and compel them to adopt a pro-Japanese policy. In this way all China north of the Yangtse is more or less terrorized.
And civil discord is kept alive by skilful loans from the Japanese to all parties in the strife of rival generals. So long as Manchuria and the Chinese Eastern Railway remain subject to Japanese military control, it is not easy to see how this situation can be altered except for the worse.
The question of Shantung is, however, of still greater importance if China is to be saved from foreign domination. Shantung is as intimately Chinese as Kent is English ; the situation now is about what ours would have been if the Germans had held Dover and Folkestone and the South-Eastern Railway up to Sevenoaks.
Shantung interests the Chinese sentimentally, because it contains the birth-place of Confucius, and materially, because it has considerable wealth, which the Japanese are using for the subjugation of China. The Japanese announced in 1914 that they were attacking the Germans in Shantung with a view to restoring Germany's possessions to China, but they concluded secret treaties with England and France stipulating that they were to retain all they conquered from Germany.
These secret treaties were used to defeat President Wilson at Versailles. We forced China into the war as our ally, and rewarded her by robbing her of one of her richest provinces. And on account of the secret treaties, our emissaries at Washington will probably feel bound to support Japan in any resistance to restitution.
Nevertheless, there is reason to hope that the Shantung question may be satisfactorily dealt with at Washington, if the Powers succeed in reaching any agreement. America is not bound by the Treaty of Versailles, owing to the Senate's refusal to ratify ; and unless our support of Japan is more vigorous than it seems likely to be, fear of America may make the Japanese conciliatory to China, as it has made us to Sinn Fein.
If this should happen, however, it is by no means improbable that the Japanese will demand and obtain compensation in Siberia at the expense of the semi-Bolshevik Far-Eastern Republic.
It is not only by support of the Japanese that British diplomacy in China has been harmful. It has been almost invariably reactionary, supporting everything conservative against Young China, showing no understanding of the country's needs or desire for its regeneration.
A mere change of alliances without a change of outlook would not remedy our defects as regards China. So long as our diplomatic service remains what it is, every question not in the forefront of public interest will be decided by our diplomatists in an anti-progressive fashion. For example, when Yuan-shi-kai, in the early days of the Chinese Republic, was endeavouring to acquire arbitrary power without control from the newly-constituted Parliament, we hastened to conclude a loan which rendered him financially independent.
For the moment, America may prove useful to China, and Japan is certainly harmful. But in the long run China cannot be saved except by the Chinese. American imperialism is economic, not territorial ; but if it were firmly established it would involve a terrible suppression of liberty. It would soon be found, for example, that educated Chinese inclined to Socialism (as most of them are) would be unable to get employment.
The Chinese civilization, which is pacific and non-industrial, which cares more about beauty and truth than about railways or dividends, would be ruthlessly destroyed by apostles of 'pep'. The weakness of China in international affairs is due quite as much to Chinese virtues as to Chinese vices.
The Chinese have not that insane thirst for power and ruthless activity which characterizes the West, and especially America ; they were horrified by the war, far more than any European neutral. It is useless to hope that we shall acquire the Chinese virtues ; therefore, very patriotic Chinaman must endeavor to acquire our vices.

Dewey, John. The issues at Washington. III-IV [ID D28494].
III. China's Interest
China's relation to the Conference and to the possibility of war is a peculiar one. She is admitted on all hands to be the storm centre. But her share is passive, not active. She breeds trouble by exciting the cupidity of other nations, not by what she herself does. Yet what she is and still more what she isn't, her internal disorganization and inefficiency is such a factor in making her a lure for other nations that it must be reckoned with.
There are, so to speak, three Chinas. There is the China which generates friction and antagonism among the nations, the China of international relationships. There is domestic China, torn, distracted, factional, largely corrupt in government. And there is the China of the Chinese people, populous, patient, industrious, self-governing by nonpolitical methods, solid, enduring and persistent beyond the power of the Western imagination to figure, the real China of the past and of the potential future when China is transformed.
In objecting to international coordination of finance for railways and mines as a solution of present difficulties, on the ground that it treats China as a patient rather than as an active living force, it is the second and third of these Chinas that are in mind. Mr. Brailsford expressly provides for the first China. He stipulates that she 'must be an active and willing partner' in the arrangements made; that Chinese bankers must share in the syndicate; that she must retain political control of her railways; that provision be made for ultimate reversion of economic ownership and control; that an arbitral tribunal be established to which China can appeal against the 'tremendous power' of syndicated international finance. There is no slighting on Mr. Brailsford's part of the rightful share of China in fixing her international relationships.
Why, then, object to his plan? Because, to put it dogmatically and briefly, the worst thing in China, its present political and administrative condition, makes it impossible for China to be an active and willing partner, while the good things in China, her transformation into what she may and should become, make it undesirable—first, for herself and then for the world—that she should be a passive and coerced partner. The interest of China is that she have an opportunity to develop, and to develop in her own way. In my judgment, this is also the interest of the peace of the world, since any peace secured by other means is a temporary truce which only postpones an ultimate explosion.
Present domestic internal conditions in China make the formula of China's entrance into an international arrangement as an active and willing partner a barren thing. It is as remote from facts as the formulae of the past about its territorial and administrative integrity. Like them, it is a form of words when realistically confronted with actual conditions. There is danger that, like them, it will become a means by which foreign offices will quiet their consciences and deceive their peoples while predatory activities go on which are harmful to China and in the end productive of new sources of friction among the nations.
There is no Government in China capable of speaking for the country, none having jurisdiction, none having the power to execute the conditions of the proposed agreement. It could be carried out only by continual foreign interference in Chinese domestic affairs. It is natural that Chinese, especially those in political life, speaking to foreigners should put the best face possible on her present state. But it is no kindness to China to gloss over the fact that the Government at present recognized by foreign powers is a hollow shell whose jurisdiction hardly extends beyond the walls of Peking. It lacks the confidence and support of the educated and the commercial class, of all bankers except those political bankers who have profited by its corruption and inefficiency. It is largely dominated by self-appointed military provincial governors and generals.
This does not mean that foreign powers should recognize and deal with some other Government, such as the Cantonese. At present the latter is more decent and progressive. But its active jurisdiction hardly extends beyond two provinces. It is a fiction due to distance and ignorance which causes many Americans to think that the disturbed condition of China is due simply to a conflict between north and south. The importance of this conflict for China is immensely exaggerated. The fact is that there is a double conflict going on all over China which is independent of the conflict between north and south. One is the factional struggle of a large number of military provincial governors for increased power and revenue. To this are due the tremendous unproductive expenditure for soldiers, the ruling administrative inefficiency, neglect of schools and constant interference with normal commercial development. For legitimate industrial enterprises are now only an invitation to governmental graft and plunder.
The other and promising conflict is that of the enlightened class—teachers, students, the more farsighted merchants, the bankers, the convinced republicans—against existing governments, both national and provincial. This movement now finds expression in a desire for local self-government and provincial autonomy. It is a movement based upon recognition of the fact that the revolution of 1911 was abortive, that the republic then established has now become a name, that as respects political administration—though not social and intellectual affairs—the country is now worse off than it was under the Manchus. Its purpose is to change the nominal revolution into a fact. The failure of the hopes entertained in 1911 only makes it the clearer that this transformation will not be accomplished in a day or in a few years.
This state of affairs makes it impossible for China to enter as an active partner into any proposed international arrangement for her economic exploitation. Any agreement to which the nominal assent of China is given would involve constant interference in Chinese domestic politics. It would require increasing supervision of her affairs, a supervision which in a crisis could not be made effective without the presence of foreign soldiers. And Japan, be it noted, is the only country near enough to deliver large numbers of soldiers at short notice, and the country in which there would be least popular objection to armed interference in China. Moreover, Japan in such a situation would act as the authorized agent of the powers that had entered into the agreement involving international regulation of China's economic interests.
To add that such an arrangement would tend to arrest the normal political development of China from within is perhaps a consideration too disinterested to appeal to any but idealists. But it also enlists American self-interest. If the United States became in the present state of China a partner in any arrangement for international exploitation of China, the effect would be to destroy the greatest asset of America in China—the good will of the Chinese people. The future cannot be predicted. But under certain circumstances the scheme might ultimately throw China into the arms of a Japanese Pan-Asianism, especially if Japan were to show more tact and sense than she has in the past. Linder other circumstances, it might create what would be virtually an offensive and defensive alliance with a restored Russia, or with Russia and Germany.
That the proposed arrangement would arrest and distort the normal economic development of China is also a remote and disinterested suggestion. China has so far resisted the rapid introduction of Western industrialism. To most this seems to be a piece of stupid conservative inertia. To a few, it appears to be an expression of a sound instinct to resist the introduction of forces which man has not learned to control and which have caused the exploitation of man by man and brought about bitter class conflict. Educated Chinese have a unanimous and lively sense of the dangers of industrialism. In a vague and ethical sense of the word, they are almost to a man socialistic. If the Chinese are permitted to work out their own economic destiny, it is conceivable that they will evolve some better scheme than that which now troubles Western nations. The natural resources of China in coal and iron have been enormously exaggerated. The capacities of its vast and industrious working population with its habituation to low standards of living have been underestimated. He is a recklessly brave spirit who will take the risks of forcing the pace of the industrialization of China.
There is a practical detailed objection to the proposed scheme. It is proposed that various nations should make pro-rata contributions to the syndicated fund. What nations are in condition to do so at the present time? The existing consortium is cited as a beginning in the right direction. So far the consortium has brought good rather than harm to China, barring the implied reservation of Japanese special rights in Manchuria. But so far its action has been negative and preventive. It has stopped national monopolistic loans. One reason for its failure to function in a more positive way has been the inability of England and European countries to export capital, an inability consequent upon the war. They have no desire to see the United States and Japan the active agents in financing China. An enlarged proposition of the same general nature would, in effect, mean that the United States and Japan would mainly supply the funds allotted to other nations. Hence the scheme would work out to give these two countries an economic lead in China. Such an arrangement does not appear calculated to reduce international friction.
IV. Suggested Measures
Previous articles have been given up to stating some of the conditions in the Far East which produce international friction. Conclusions so far have been chiefly negative. On the one hand, we have China, which moves slowly, which is just beginning her transformation socially and politically. On the other hand, there are acute urgent clashes of interest between Japan and the United States and remoter difficulties between England and the United States. Is it possible to find measures which will both safeguard China’s slow but normal and independent development and also remove the sources of discord among other nations? This seems to me to define the basic problem at Washington. A solution is not easy. It almost reminds one of the old question of what will happen when an irresistible force meets an insurmountable obstacle.
The present writer has no cut and dried solution to offer. It does seem possible, however, to indicate the helpful way of approaching the problem. Coordination of action among other nations in respect to the issues of the Far East is a necessity. But there is a wide difference between a coordination of foreign powers which is directed at China and one which is directed toward one another. A solution should be sought which involves the minimum of international supervision and control of China, while it involves the maximum of practicable international supervision and control of individual nations' activities toward China. Let us try out international regulation on one another before we try it out on China.
This seems to me the first formula with which to attack the problem of combining justice to China—and Siberia—with lessening of friction between other nations. This general formula translates into the concrete in some such fashion as follows: The Conference should establish a permanent international commission for Far Eastern affairs. In order to secure proper supervision of foreign activities in China without unduly interfering with China itself the Conference should establish a kind of constitution to govern the conduct of the commission. This should cover the following points:
1. All monopolies and monopolistic contracts should be absolutely forbidden. More space than these articles occupy would be required to give a history of monopolistic contracts which in the past have brought friction between other nations and limited the freedom of action of China. The nations should agree that every contract of China for public services and properties should be submitted to the commission, not for confirmation but for rejection if it implies any monopolistic features.
2. All consenting nations should agree to submit to the commission all existing contracts involving governmental action of Chinese governments, national and provincial. They should agree to gradual, if not immediate, cancellation of all monopolies provided for in these contracts, though, of course, this need not involve abandonment of specific works already undertaken.
3. All loans to Chinese governments, national and provincial, should be prohibited which make possible a diversion of Chinese funds to unproductive purposes, including so-called administrative loans. Such loans as are made by nationals of any of the countries entering into the agreement should establish credits to be drawn upon as work is actually done in constructing ports, building railways, developing mines, etc.
Why has China given so many concessions and bartered away so many resources in the past? Not wholly because of foreign pressure. Internal corruption and inefficiency have played a part. The ordinary technique is as follows: Some group of Chinese officials needs money, partly for settling accounts, partly for their own pockets. Some foreign concern with banking affiliations offers to loan a certain number of millions, provided they are given a monopolistic concession or provided China will buy some materials, wireless apparatus, airplanes or whatever the foreign concern wishes to dispose of. The loan is not, however, in the form of a credit for the specified purchase. The loan is used to pay current debts and is squandered in 'administration', mostly squeeze. It becomes accordingly another debt to be met when it falls due by a repetition of the same process. If the Conference can take steps absolutely to prevent this sort of operation in the future it will be to the benefit of China, and will also eliminate one source of friction between the lending nations.
4. The commission should make an honest effort to list all Chinese obligations, including indemnities, which are outstanding, with full information regarding their terms. It should then see what can be done in the way of pooling and refunding. At present it is practically impossible in Peking itself to discover just what are the debts and revenues of China, especially the domestic ones. China's ability to avoid bankruptcy and meet its foreign obligations is so great that foreign nations holding Chinese securities are entitled to secure a definite system of auditing and publicity as a precondition of any more foreign loans for any purpose whatever.
This involves some supervision of Chinese administrative finance, just as our third provision requires supervision, technological and by auditing, of expenditure on credits established. But it is a supervision for specific purposes that involves no political interference, and it is in the interest of a more honest and intelligent administration of public funds in China. As such, free from all the interference which accompanies present methods, it would be welcomed by intelligent Chinese.
5. There should be provision for the maximum of publicity about public works to be undertaken whether nationally or provincially, and for open bidding. China recently needed some locomotives for the only railway built wholly under Chinese direction and under exclusive Chinese management. The wants were made known and there was free international bidding. As a result, a Belgian firm secured the contract for most of the locomotives, an American firm for the remainder. If this practice could be made universal and compulsory for all purchases of supplies—in connection with the abolition of monopolies and 'preferences'— it would automatically do away with many of the financial practices which now create international friction and which further domestic corruption in China.
6. The consortium, already in existence, forms a nucleus for the commission on the side of finance. It should, however, be freed from its monopolistic features, its limitation to four powers and to select groups of bankers in the four countries. It should also be openly associated with authorized representatives of the governments concerned.
There is now a tacit, a disguised alliance between the consortium bankers and their respective governments. It should be made avowed, so that there would be political responsibility and publicity for the bankers' activities. Up to the present the consortium has not been recognized by the Chinese Government, largely because the Government wants unproductive administrative loans which the consortium will not make. Its existence, however, has been the chief factor in stopping loans which meant only the further alienation of Chinese resources.
However, the expenses of maintaining a consortium can hardly be kept up indefinitely for the sake of protecting China against the incapacity—and rapacity—-of its own officials. The Governments should assume their share of the expense. Then the consortium might function in a small way as an international syndicate, confining itself, at least until it had been tried out, to minor undertakings, branch railways and those having no strategic or political importance.
7. The Conference should take steps which will result in restoring to China control over her foreign tariffs. Foreign control of Chinese customs was established because of foreign debts and indemnities. It seemed to be the only way—probably it was the only way—by which foreign nations could be assured of repayment of loans and meeting of indemnities. But as a consequence, confirmed by a network of treaties, China cannot now regulate her tariff on imports. Not only that, but the assent of other nations to any change requires unanimity. Any single nation can now block an increase of a tariff which was fixed at 5 per cent ad valorem on an arbitrary basis and is not now over 7 1/2 per cent. The inability of China to increase her national revenues through customs charges is one of the occasions that make her resort to continuous foreign loans. The Conference should by concerted action and by moral or economic pressure on recalcitrant nations remedy this serious abuse.
The suggested program will meet with two opposite objections. It will be regarded as too modest, as failing in constructive sweep. It will also be regarded as going too far, impracticable, involving too much surrender of vested interests by foreign nations, especially by Japan. For it implies a surrender of her claims to 'special' interests in China.
There is no space to argue the whole matter. But it may be pointed out that action on these or similar concrete proposals is a test of the sincerity of the loud profession of the nations regarding their supreme hope for peace. Japan's economic interests, however it may be with her political, lie in establishing good relations with the Chinese people.
At present her industrialists say they are compelled to employ courses which they would prefer not to use in getting hold of raw materials, etc., because of the corruption of provincial officials. Put the whole matter of purchases aboveboard and she would have the advantages of proximity and would not need to resort to measures which give her possession of materials only at the expense of irritating and alienating Chinese and making her an object of suspicion to the rest of the world.
The United States ought also to assist in guaranteeing Japan direct access to oil supplies for industrial purposes, even if that means Mexico. It needs to be borne in mind that general advantage to traders and industrialists as distinct from profit to small groups of concessionaires and bankers depends wholly upon an increase of purchasing power by the Chinese people. China as she now stands isn’t a market that ranks high; it is not worth the fuss made over it. Give her a chance to develop herself and she will become a great market for regular peaceful trade, in which Japan has many natural advantages.
It cannot be stated too often that the essence of the Chinese question is time. The West and Japan are in too much of a hurry. The war has increased impatience till the world is almost in a state of hysteria about the Far East. Such measures as are indicated, even though they are largely negative, will secure a breathing space. During this period the world can recover from the shock to its nerves and regain sanity. There will be opportunity for further needed measures to reveal themselves, and in a normal way. Put a stop to the piecemeal partition of China and the alienation of its resources from without; put a stop to the building of warships and the problems of the Far East will gradually present themselves in a proper perspective. It will not then be many years before the world will be able to look back with a smile at its state of alarm over the problems of the Pacific in 1921. Fail to do these things, and the small causes of friction will go on accumulating and present fears will be realized. After the catastrophe men will realize how little was actually at stake in comparison with the evil done and how a moderate amount of prevision and good-will might have prevented the conflagration.

Dewey, John. Shrewd tactics are shown in Chinese plea [ID D28495].
The Chinese proposals are both shrewd and wise. It was good tactics for the Chinese delegates to present their own case instead of having it first presented by either the United States or Japan, thus saving the susceptibilities of both Oriental countries. It was shrewd to conceive the 10 points in broad fundamental terms. No nation can object to points 1 and 2, for example, regarding the territorial integrity and political independence of China and regarding the open door. All nations have repeatedly put their assent on paper. But the formal reassertions by all nations at this time of joint conclave puts China in a position of vantage in calling attention to the specific points in which prior agreements have been violated.
It was shrewd not to make demands too immediate and to allow for compromise in time of execution, as for example, in Point 5, regarding removal of limitations on China's present freedom of action. It would not be of advantage to China itself to have an immediate abolition of extra-territorial rights nor to have the customs administrations turned over to her out of hand. She is entitled, however, to know the conditions under which these things will be done so she can have assurance that at a definite time in the future these things will be done, provided she takes certain specified steps.
Point 3 is a shrewd way of approaching the Anglo-Japanese alliance and the Lansing-Ishii agreement, both of which concern China and in neither of which was she consulted. The proposition that she be notified of all engagements affecting her and be given a chance to share is so reasonable that a nation which declines to give assent at once puts itself under suspicion.
Wisdom, as distinct from good tactics, centres to my mind in Point 4, to which 6 and 7 are auxiliary, and 10, to which presumably g is auxiliary. For 'provisions for a peaceful settlement of international disputes' is mere Pickwickian verbiage, without provision for future conferences. Neither provision can be carried into effect without something which, in fact if not name, will be a permanent committee of reference and arbitration in which China will sit as a partner and not as a victim.
Point 4 contains the teeth of the document. It is a bold and just move to demand that all commitments, special rights, privileges, etc., be made public under the penalty of otherwise being voided, and that they and those already public be examined with reference to their validity and harmony with one another, and that they be construed strictly in favor of the grantor.
These clauses go to the root of the matter. They will bring to light all of China's grievances against Japan in particular and other nations in general. They make open diplomacy a reality. They abolish that atmosphere of secrecy and intrigue which has been China's greatest enemy within as well as without. It is a bold move, because if this point is accepted and full publicity follows it will expose something of China’s own weakness and official corruption as well as the cupidity and intrigues of other nations. It is a guarantee of better internal government in China as well as a safeguard against other nations. It undoubtedly goes much further than appears on the surface.
Nothing is said about the 21 demands. But it is impossible to harmonize some of the clauses of the treaties based on these demands with other commitments which China has made with other nations. The question of their validity brings up the state of duress under which the treaties were signed, an ultimatum with virtual threat of war.
Nothing is said about Shantung. But so far as China’s consent is concerned the occupation of Shantung rests upon the 21 demands, while it also is in conflict with the terms of China's treaty with Germany, which made German leases and privileges inalienable to any third nation. Any nation which openly objects to articles 4, 6 and 7 at once comes under suspicion of harboring unfair designs. To give assent means rectification of some of the worst wrongs from which China suffers. The more one studies these articles in the light of past events the more far-reaching they are seen to be. The danger is that they will be accepted 'in principle' and then whittled down in fact.
Coming to lesser points the Associated Press has reported that Point 8 is the one which most puzzles Japanese circles. Considering the point declares that China's rights as a neutral are to be fully respected in all future wars, and considering that Japan's wars with Russia and Germany were both fought in violation of Chinese neutrality, this puzzlement is not easy to understand. It becomes a little ominous in view of the accompanying suggestion that the point may mean that the powers guarantee China’s neutrality, reducing her to a Belgium, and that its enforcement along with other points goes back to a question of China's internal order and governmental unity.
It is too early to predict, but it looks as if Japanese policy were going to be an expression of general sympathy with China’s aims, while laying emphasis upon her lack of internal unity, her so-called chaos, and the argument that in order to secure an eventual realization of China's aims and aspirations she must be put for a period under some kind of international tutelage. In the latter case, Japan would become in virtue of propinquity the actual guardian and trustee in behalf of the powers. In that case Japan will have gained her point as regards China plus the blessing of the powers.

Dewey, John. Four principles for China [ID D28496].
If the four principles regarding China, adopted by the Wash-ington Conference, concluded discussion instead of beginning it, they would be most discouraging. They would show that the old tactics of diplomacy had been victorious and that general formulae, susceptible as Admiral Kato is reported to have said of various interpretations, were to be again handed out to China as they have been in the past.
It is not necessary to say that China needs definite action, as concrete as the proposals regarding limitation of armament, not kind words and pious phrases. But coming at the outset instead of at the end, it is only fair to assume that the principles represent the framework of a chart which subsequent decisions will develop into a detailed scheme of action.
Regarded as a basic outline, two questions arise. Are the principles exclusive of all matters not directly touched upon? Or do they admit of additions as well as interpretation? Unless the latter is the case, they do not directly affect past actions. The fundamental question is whether they only concern acts to be performed in the future or whether they are to be applied also to the rectification of acts committed in the past.
If the former, then Japan has won a large part of her case. Certain things very important to her will be treated as accomplished facts not open to revision. China will have gained certain securities against similar acts in the future, which is something. But accomplished facts are stubborn things and they will have a way of going on and influencing the future in comparison with which general guarantees will be rather impotent.
It is hard to reconcile this interpretation, however, with the sweeping terms of the first and third principles. To respect the administrative integrity of China and to use influence for effectually establishing and maintaining equal opportunity for all na-
[First published in Baltimore Sun, 23 November 1921.] tions mean, if words mean anything, an opportunity to examine existing commitments and privileges which violate these principles. In this case, China has gained a virtual recognition of her point requiring an examination of existing commitments of all sorts. The teeth of the Chinese proposals will then begin to bite.
The third point regarding the enforcement of the open door and the fourth pledging all nations to refrain from taking advantage of the troubled condition of China to secure special privileges and rights, will, if acted upon, at least prevent the granting of industrial and commercial monopolies in the future. They will also prevent such demands for special advisers, financial and military, for special police and for rights to make loans for railway undertakings and ports, such as have played havoc with China in the past. But there are so many ways of infringing upon these principles without openly violating them that they will be likely to become a dead letter unless provision is made, as suggested in the tenth Chinese point, for a continuing commission or recurrent conferences and for continuing official publicity.
The four principles have apparently been framed to dodge or postpone one important matter. Just what is China geographically? What about its relations to Manchuria, Mongolia and Thibet? And Japanese claims to special rights in Mongolia are complicated by the fact that at present Russians, rather than either Chinese or Japanese, are in practical control there.
China, south of the Great Wall, sounds like a complete entity. But one look at the map will decide how slight is the probability that it would maintain its political and administrative integrity with a great power in command of the territory to the north as well as of the seas. The Great Wall itself is evidence of the difficulty of doing this when China was in contact with only barbaric hordes and when railways and steamships were not in existence.
Congratulations on what has been accomplished are premature. There is a promising start. But the start only indicates the lines whose further development must be closely watched. The tug will come when the attempt is made to define the territory of China; when it is shown whether the four principles are to be limited to future actions to the exclusion of accomplished facts, and when we find out whether provision is to be made for some agency of continuing conference, arbitration and publicity.
Till we know these three things we shall not know whether the demands of the Chinese points have been met in fact or only in polite phrases to the evasion of the real issues. Further developments on these three points will decide whether a genuine attempt is being made to help China or whether diplomats are leading us into the old trap, where burning affairs are settled in words, only to be evaded and postponed in fact by the use of vague and ambiguous formulae. Let us wait and see.

Russell, Bertrand. A plea for China : her independence chief question. In : The Sun ; 24. Nov. (1921).
The great thing to be desired is the independence of China with help from friendly powers in quelling anarchy. I should rejoice greatly if Great Britain led the way in restitution by resoring Hongkong and Wei-Hai Wei. The latter is possible, the former I fear is not.
The Japanese must evacuate Shantung unconditionally. There can be no question about that. If this is not brought about the Washington Conference will fail as regards China.
China joined us in war and was rewarded by the loss of one of her best provinces. The former German position in Shantung was absolutely indefensible, but the Japanese claim even more than the Germans had. My sincere hope is that Britain will not support Japan at Washington in her Chinese contentions.
The proposed joint control of the Shantung railroads is not sound. It means, in practice, Japanese control. There is no doubt of that. It is vital that there should be exclusive Chinese control.
There is nothing in the Japanese pretence of a Pan-Asiatic movement. The feeling of antagonism upon the part of the Chinese is much more against the Japanese than any other foreigner. The Japanese position in Manchuria is a menace to Peking and prevents any genuine independence of the Chinese Government. The Chinese forces in Manchuria are compelled to serve Japan.
The Japanese control of the Chinese Eastern Railway prevents through traffic to the Siberian Railway which the Far East republic desires. This makes the journey to Europe six weeks in length, instead of fourteen days. Chinese independence requires control of all its railways. It also means autonomy as regards tariff, which now is fixed by treaties with thirteen States and requires unanimous consent of the thirteen before any alteration can be made.
One difficulty that faces China is honest administration. That has been solved in the customs service by employing foreigners appointed by China. This system is good in time of transition and might be extended with a time limit.
Military anarchy must be stopped, the Canton Government should be recognized on the condition of federal union with North China, provincial autonomy is necessary, private armies should be disbanded and private occupations found for the soldiers. All this should be offered China with a reconstruction loan and a restitution of stolen territory and abandonment of monopoly rights.
The reconstruction scheme could be drawn up in consultation with leading Chinese, excluding the military. The adoption of general principles only is possible at the Washington Conference. The details will require time.
The dangers to this programme are, of course, certain Japanese opposition. America wants Japan's consent to the naval programme. Perhaps Japan will consent only if allowed to keep all she has in China. The Washington Conference might easily lead to war if Japan is obstinate. I earnestly hope she will not be, both for the sake of Japan as well as of China. It is vitally important that England should not encourage Japan, first, because American friendship is necessary to us ; second, because the American policy in China is better than ours and better than Japan's ; third, because this is the last moment when Japan can avoid disaster my moderation.
If Japan does not moderate her demands she will sooner or later be smashed by America. I do not desire this. I hate war and wish the peaceful development of Japan.
The open door consortium and so forth are not enough for China. They only give the foreign nations equality in exploitation and do not give freedom to China. China should be allowed freedom for development even if it is slow.
The progress of modern education will make China a different country twenty years hence. China ultimately will be invincible and it will be disastrous if foreigners take temporary advantage of her present weakness. The Chinese civilization is quite as good as ours. We must not imagine ourselves as missionaries of a higher culture. The Chinese are more patient, philosophic, pacific, artistic and are only less efficient in killing. Why force them to learn this from us ?
It is a pity Russia is not represented at Washington. She has been and will be a great pacific power. She can dominate China from the north and already holds outer Mongolia. There is likely to be a conflict between Russia and Japan before long. I hope Japan will not be compensated in Eastern Siberia without Russian participation, as no such agreement will give China security.
Japan will not voluntarily adopt a generous policy towards China. She must be coerced. If England supports America diplomatic pressure will suffice. If not, there is a great danger of war between American and Japan soon or late. The British in the Far East are almost unanimous against the Anglo-Japanese alliance. The time for its usefulness is gone. A generous policy towards China is best for our interests as well as theirs. China's immense potential market requires a better government and foreign friendship for development.
Japan wants raw material for her industries and could get them with the 'open door'. She also wants territory for the glory of the empire. She must be thwarted in this. She does not want more territory for colonizing, as few go to Manchuria, Korea or Formosa. In Manchuria there are 100 Chinese immigrants to one Japanese. The Chinese are stronger in the long run because they are more patient, more populous, less ambitious and also are more genuinely civilized in their mental outlook.
The limitation of naval armament also is very important. I rejoice at the prospect of the Hughes plan being adopted. But the freedom of China is even important. The Chinese are one-fourth of the human race and the most ancient civilization now existing. It is different from ours, but it makes the Chinese happy. They are one of the happiest peoples on earth. All advanced nations are greedy for China's industrial resources. American capitalists are like the others, although the American Government is blameless. The Chinese mentality is not yet adapted to modern industrial methods, but perhaps in time they will develop better methods than ours.
The Chinese want to learn our science, which they think is good, but not our ruthlessness, our purposeless bustle or our indifference to individuals. Their civilization is gentler than ours, less persecuting and will remain so if they are not too much bullied. If forced to adopt our vices, they will become the strongest nation in the world, but lose those qualities which make them worth preserving.
The Washington Conference is the turning point in the world's history. If China is liberated she will develop freely and do great things towards founding a new civilization better than ours. If coerced, she ultimately will achieve freedom through war, then become imperialistic and be as bad as her present oppressors. All that is liberal in the world looks to America at this moment. Can America save other powers from their own egoistic follies ? And if so, will America in the long run escape similar follies on her own account ? The future of civilization depends upon the answer to these questions.

Russell, Bertrand. China and Chinese influence. In : The Manchester Guardian ; 29. Nov. (1921).
There are many Europeans who view China simply as a diplomatic question, which the Powers must settle if they are not to fight. To such people, China seems analogous in this generation to Africa thirty or forty years ago. This analogy is profoundly misleading to all whom it influences. Africa is a continent of many races and many religions, with no indigenous civilization except to some slight extent along the Mediterranean. China is homogeneous (broadly speaking) in race and culture ; a great empire which has subsisted for thousands of years, and which is a definitely a civilizing influence in the Far East as ancient Greece was in Europe. The nearest analogue to present-day China is Rome at the time of the barbarian invasion. The Chinese Empire has been, until very recently, much greater in extent than the Roman Empire, and is still much greater in population. Its first philosopher, Lâo-tsze, who lived in the sixth century B.C., laments the hurry of modern life and the loss of that simplicity which was practiced by 'the pure men of old'. From his day to our own, China has been a highly civilized country in all that concerns art and literature, manners and government. For 2'000 years, officials have been chosen by competitive examination, and have had all the characteristics which that method of selection would lead one to expect.
Those who would see in its true perspective what is happening in China must learn to regard themselves as the analogues of the Chilperics, Theodorics, and Attilas who swooped down upon the Roman Empire when it had grown too civilized to fight. Where we differ from these worthies, we differ for the worse, since they at least revered the majesty of Rome even in decay, while we have no sense of the historical greatness of China, because our conventional culture still considers that no country is spiritually important unless it is near the Mediterranean. Those who destroyed Rome politically nevertheless allowed something of Roman culture to be transmitted to future ages ; but the armies which attack China from without and the missionaries and merchants who undermine Chinese civilization from within have no idea that there is anything of value to be preserved in a country which is bad at making munitions and a bit too provident in the use of soap. So long as this ignorance persists, it is impossible to understand the Chinese question.
The question 'What is China ?' which is being asked in bewilderment by those who would wish to help the Chinese, can be answered only by some understanding of the historical position of the Celestial Empire. The Chinese first appear in history along the banks of the Yellow River, a fierce unnavigable stream, constantly in flood and occasionally changing its course, spreading fertility and devastation by turns, tempting men to cultivation of the alluvial soil, and then drowning them by the hundred thousand. The earliest annals of China are concerned with attempts to curb the inundations of the Yellow River. In the time of Confucius, China was still confined to this region, embracing roughly the provinces of Shansi, Chili, and part of Shantung. The so-called First Emperor (ca. 200 B.C.) extended the empire to the Yangtze, while his successors of the Han dynasty conquered the south almost up to the boundaries of present-day China before the beginning of the Christian era. The empire of the Han dynasty, with a few additions, constitutes China proper in the narrowest sense, excluding Manchuria, consists of eighteen provinces, extending from Peichi-li (containing Peking) in the north of Kwang-tung (containing Canton) in the south, and from Shantung (containing the birthplace of Confucius) in the east to Sze-chwan on the borders of Tibet in the west.
The four hundred millions who are said to constitute the population of China are mainly concentrated in China proper, which is densely populated while its dependencies are but sparsely settled. There has never been an accurate census in China, but it is probably safe to assume that the number of inhabitants of China proper is between three and four hundred millions. Almost the whole of this area has had for 2'000 years a uniform administration, a uniform culture, a uniform written language, education, literature, and art. The spoken language differs greatly in different places – about as much as French differs from Italian – but owing to the non-phonetic character of the Chinese script, there is no corresponding difference in the written language. Educated people speak what is called the 'Mandarin language', which is approximately the dialect of Peking ; but knowledge of the Mandarin is by no means universal even among the most cultivated. There is strong provincial patriotism, sufficiently strong to make a federal constitution desirable ; but as against the foreigner the Chinese feel themselves very definitely one nation.
Outside China proper there are vast areas loosely connected with China. Burma, Annam, Korea and Japan all at one time or another acknowledged the suzerainty of China. (As regards Japan, the facts are briefly set forth in Putnam Weale's 'The truth about China and Japan', pp. 16-19.) From China the Japanese adopted their writing, art, and religion, and, broadly speaking, whatever civilization they had before 1868. Political relations with these countries, however, were at most times slight. Much closer and more interesting were the relations with Tibet and Mongolia. Buddhism, the one important foreign element in Chinese civilization, has, as everyone knows, a northern and a southern form, with Lhassa as the religious headquarters of the northern branch. Tibet and Mongolia are almost identical in matters of religion ; they both have Lamas, who hold all the power in Tibet and most of it in Mongolia. Both are fanatically religious. At times when the belief in Buddhism was increasing in China, the Lamas acquired considerable favour ; thus Lamaism has been an influence on China, as well as China on Lamaism. But the usual temperament of the Chinese educated classes is skeptical, polished and literary, more inclined to make epigrams about a religion than to believe it. The Mongolians are at a very much lower level of culture than the Chinese, being largely nomads and almost all sunk in superstition. There is in Peking a Lama temple, where Tibetan and Mongolian religious pictures and statues can be seen. They are dark and terrible, altogether unlike the gay, cheerful art of Chinese temples. One feels at once the hot breath of barbarian fierceness, the sort of spirit that one associates with the name of Attila. Moreover, the Mongolians have a strong though intermitted anti-Chinese nationalism ; they remember that Jenghis Khan was of their race, and they cherish the hope that some day they will repeat his conquest of China. They are described with affectionate humour by the Jesuit missionary M. Huc, whose 'Souvernirs d'un voyage dans la Tartarie et le Thibet pendant les années 1844, 1845, et 1846' is one of the most delightful books with which I am acquainted.
Mongolia is not really part of China, and in losing it the Chinese lose what they have always held by conquest only. It is divided into two parts, inner and outer, of which the former is more or less under Japanese control, while the latter has had, during the last twelve months, a series of adventures typical of the confusions existing in that part of the world. I must beg the reader not to disbelieve in these adventures merely because they sound romantic.
Soon after I arrived in Peking, the newspapers there were full of the new that Urga, an important town of Outer Mongolia, had been attacked by a certain leader of Russian White troops named Baron Ungern. The Chinese garrison resisted, but was overpowered. The Japanese were understood to be, as usual, supporting the Russian reactionaries. The Chinese refugees appealed to Peking, which paid Chang-tso-lin, Viceroy of Manchuria, several million tales to undertake the reconquest of Mongolia. Unfortunately, however, he lost the whole sum within a few days by gambling, and was forced to retire in Mukden to economize. Meanwhile the Mongolians, in alliance with the reactionary Russians, had started a religious and nationalistic revival, under the leadership of the Chief Lama of Urga, a living Buddha commonly known as the Hu-tuk-tu, although in fact are many other Hu-tuk-tus. The Government of the Far Eastern Republic (which is in effect Bolshevik) made many offers to the Chinese to help in expelling Ungern from Chinese territory, but Peking refused their help, from fear of offending the Powers, especially the Japanese.
Unfortunately for the Hu-tuk-tu, however, he had a wife. Living Buddhas used to be vowed to celibacy, but the Chinese Government, on rationalist grounds, issued orders, many years ago, that they were all to marry. They obeyed ; like the curate in the 'Bab Ballads', they 'did it on compulsion'. The Hu-tuk-tu was therefore married, and, what was more, his wife was (if report spoke true) a Bolshevik. As he was invariably drunk, she acquired control of policy. Accordingly – so a least the correspondent of the 'Times' in Peking reports – the Bolsheviks descended on Urga, captured Baron Ungern, sent him to Moscow, exhibiting him at every station as a monster, plied the Hu-tuk-tu with all the liquor he desired, declaring that when he dies of 'delirium tremens' he is to have no successors, and explained to the nomads and bandits that they were permitted by the doctrines of communism to take to themselves the flocks and herds hitherto belonging to the Mongolian Princes. Consequently Outer Mongolia, which is about half the size of India, is now part of the Bolshevik Empire and a firm believer in the religion of Karl Marx.

Dewey, John. Underground burrows [ID D28609].
Ever since the Conference was called I have believed that in the end publicity would be more important than the particular decisions reached. We are at a point where the chief guarantees for the peace and security of the world are found in the trust of the nations in one another’s good faith and good will. Publicity is the way to develop mutual trust. Nations who have no sinister plans have everything to gain from making their attitude known; nations with predatory policies are best restrained by the knowledge that their operations are subject to exposure and general discussion. Publicity means, of course, the utmost possible in the way of open diplomacy. But it also means an education of the public so that it will be immune against dishonest propaganda and reasonably intelligent in passing judgment on events as they happen.
Coming to Washington for a few days with this prepossession in mind, my first concern was naturally to try to get an idea of the atmosphere. I wanted to know how much ventilation and circulation there was, whether things were stifling and close or open and relaxed. Thanksgiving was a critical time.
At the beginning of the Conference the American eagle had made a great flight in the open. No one had expected so much frankness; having had a good taste of it, we all hoped for as much candid publicity in the discussion of Far Eastern issues.
But it didn’t come. The American eagle seemed to be idly perched on a tree half asleep, while moles and woodchucks were burrowing underground and rabbits scurrying for cover. Two of the European nations at the Conference were accusing France of insincere statements and a desire to promote her own advantage, even if it wrecked the Conference. It was reported that the Chinese so resented the interpretation put by British delegates objected to even the measure of publicity involved in keeping records of meetings; that the Chinese delegation was losing the support of Chinese unofficial representatives because they were dickering privately with the Japanese over Shantung; that the British were saying nothing and lying low; that the Japanese after saying at first that a 50 per cent, navy was adequate for defensive purposes were holding out for 70 per cent.; that the Root principles were meant to refer only to the future and out of deference to Japanese and British susceptibilities would consolidate the status quo—and so on and so on.
In short, there was an unmistakable atmosphere of nervousness; there was an air of distrust. The nervousness and distrust were associated with shutting down on the publicity that accompanied the naval proposals. The latter days of the week brought official denials of a number of the rumors mentioned above. There followed an unmistakable letting down of the tension of the previous days. Some of the reports, however, were not denied; they were confirmed. Out of the combination of denials and confirmations there formed in my mind a picture of the situation which I give for what it may be worth.
As compared with the earlier days, there is an absence of disclosures on important topics. The public has no such clear and authorized idea of the position of the various nations on Far Eastern issues as it has on their attitude toward naval reductions. This, however, is not so much because important events going on behind the scenes are kept from the public as because the leading nations are hesitating from bringing up any issue which is so important that to talk about it would result in committing the nation and giving away its position.
If there weren't so much public publicity there might be, so to speak, more private, more diplomatic, publicity. As it is, the nations seem to feel that they are approaching a mined field. No one wishes to step on it first for fear of the resulting explosion. Each delegation is rather waiting in hopes that some other delegation is going to make a false move which will redound to its own advantage.
This means in effect that there are a series of committee meetings, occupied in part in reducing to stated form decisions already reached and in part with discussion of minor points, minor comparatively speaking. Extra-territoriality, postoffices and customs are not exactly minor points for China, the last in particular. But they are much less explosive than the 21 demands and Manchuria, or than Shantung. For it seems likely that the Chinese could get large concessions about the latter if they were willing to join other nations in admitting Japan's special rights and privileges in Manchuria and Mongolia. The present disposition seems to be to assist China in getting what she can on minor points, lest raising the bigger points would result in a breakup and China would depart having gained nothing.
This phase of diplomacy was probably inevitable. It denotes some marking time and some deploying to sound other nations out, and to discover a policy by which each nation can later justify itself, in case nothing significant is done about the Far East. The Conference is entitled to breathing spells, especially when during them routine business is accomplished. But they cannot last indefinitely. The dangerous questions exist and they must be faced.
The most important of all the issues of the Conference is still in suspense. When the 21 demands, Manchuria, Shantung and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance are dealt with is it to be in the light of open and avowed statements of the respective positions of Japan, Great Britain and the United States? Or are the main issues to be lost in a fog of irrelevant issues, pious generalities, evasions, dickerings, private understandings? The United States appears committed by a high authority to the former alternative. The next best thing to getting results is for the public of all countries to know just why they were not got and who has stood in the way and why. It is not too much to say that the failure or success of United States policies now depends upon their being backed up by an adequate demand for publicity on the part of all nations. Underground burrows have got to be dug open.
Meantime Great Britain, to my mind, is the sphinx. I have found no one who professes to know exactly where she stands on any specific issue. Speaking for myself alone, I shall judge the probable outcome of the Conference by watching to see whether in the next week or two she breaks her sphinxlike silence. We know in general what the United States and China want. We know what Japan would like, although we do not know just what she would be willing to accept. It seems to be Great Britain's turn to come forward and tell what she wants. Opportunism is well enough under some circumstances. An excess of opportunism on the part of the British may spoil the Conference.

Russell, Bertrand. The problem of China. In : The Manchester Guardian ; 30. Nov. (1921).
With the exception of America, all the Powers have a thoroughly discreditable record in China. But although the first and worst crime was ours (the Opium War of 1840), the chief offender at the present day is Japan, not because of any special depravity (Japan has merely been copying Christian morals), but because of propinquity and freedom from preoccupation with the war. It is a mistake to suppose that one nation is better or worse than another ; they merely differ as to the direction taken by their criminal tendencies. Americans vent their brutality on negroes and socialists, and their subtlety on business rivals, while the Japanese are brutal to the Koreans and subtle in their diplomacy ; neither side has any ethical superiority. I wish to emphasize this point, because I am firmly convinced that the belief in the moral superiority or inferiority of one nation to another is thoroughly mischievous, and a source of much futility in the efforts of reformers.
The two regions which the Japanese are specially engaged in absorbing are Manchuria and Shantung. Manchuria is not part of China proper, but is much more intimately related to China than Mongolia is. One might compare Manchuria to the Highlands of Scotland and Mongolia to Ireland ; the analogy must not be pressed, but will serve to give a rough idea.
As everyone knows, the Manchus differ from the Chinese in race, and originally in language ; they were a warlike northern tribe who conquered the Chinese throne in 1644, and retained it until the revolution of 1911. But in the meantime they had adopted the Chinese language and many Chinese customs ; immense numbers of Chinese settled in Manchuria, and are continuing to do so. Ever since 1644, Manchuria has been administered as an integral part of China, except in so far as foreigners have interfered. From the point of view of sentiment, language, customs, and even population (on account of immigration), Manchuria must now be reckoned as thoroughly Chinese. The Russians acquired Port Arthur and the railway rights as a reward for befriending China after the Sin-Japanese war of 1894-95 ; the Japanese acquired Port Arthur and the Russian rights in South Manchuria by their war against Russia in 1904-05, while they replaced Russia throughout the rest of Manchuria after the Bolshevik revolution – of course with the tacit approval of the Powers, as the champions of civilization against the Red Spectre. The Chinese still have the nominal sovereignty and the civil administration, but the Japanese have Port Arthur, the railway, control of all the industrial undertakings, the right to military occupation, and in short everything worth having.
Chang-tso-lin, the Chinese viceroy, has a Chinese army, and is nominally subject to Peking. But in fact whatever energy he can spare from serving his own ends has to be devoted to the interests of the Japanese, upon whom he is utterly dependent. He and his army are a constant menace to the Peking Government, upon which he descends from time to time to levy blackmail. (He was originally a bandit, and is now a government servant.) If the Peking Government did anything annoying to Japan, Chang-tso-lin's army could be used to cause repentance, without Japan's appearing in the business. So long as Japan retains her exclusive position in Manchuria, this situation is difficult to avoid unless the Chinese develop a strong patriotic army. It may be said : How can Chang-tso-lin get an army of Chinese to work against China ? One might as well ask : How can governments get armies of proletarians to shoot down strikers ? The answer is the same in both cases : ignorance. But there is a further factor in China. The immense majority of Chinese are peaceful and law-abiding ; the armies are a very small proportion of the population. Soldiers are despised, and are largely criminals and bandits. Does anyone doubt that if we went round the German prisons we should find men willing to 'maintain order' in return for liberty and pay ?
The question of Manchuria must be dealt with if China is to have any real independence. Except in the southern corner, the claims of Japan have never, so far as I know, been formally recognized by the Powers. Certainly America has never assented to them. It would probably be impossible to get the Japanese out of Port Arthur without a first-class war, which I fear is in any case very probable sooner or later. But outside Port Arthur and its neighbourhood, perhaps the Open Door and the rights of China could be insisted upon, and Japanese military occupation could be prevented. I doubt, however, whether, short of war, a virtual Japanese protectorate over Manchuria is now avoidable, until China becomes strong enough to fight her own battles. And the question of Manchuria, important as it is, is certainly not worth a first-class war.
Shantung is at once a more vital and a more hopeful question. The Washington Conference will have failed hopelessly as regards China if it does not secure the complete evacuation of Shantung by the Japanese and of Wei-hai-wei by ourselves. To begin with the latter : The lease of Wei-hai-wei to the British provides that we are to hold it as long as the Russians hold Port Arthur. The Russians lost Port Arthur sixteen years ago, but we still hold Wei-hai-wei. To all Chinese protests, we reply that the Japanese are just as bad as the Russians, implying that, in spite of the alliance, we regard a war with Japan as by no means improbable. We thus simultaneously display bad faith to the Chinese and show the Japanese how little we believe in the alliance. Our delegation at Washington ought at once to announce the unconditional return of Wei-hai-wei to the Chinese. We should then be in a better position to join America in insisting upon the Japanese restitution of Kiao-chow.
The history of Kiao-chow is briefly as follows : In 1897 two German missionaries were murdered in Shantung, and the Germans made this an excuse for seizing the port of Tsingtau, and extracting by force from the Chinese a treaty which gave them (1) the right to use Tsingtau as a naval base ; (2) a lease of Kiao-chow for ninety-nine years ; (3) the right to construct certain railways and have a controlling interest in them ; (4) preference for German firms as regards all industrial undertakings in Shantung. (Shantung is a province, Kia-cho Bay a district in Shantung, and Tsingtau a harbor in Kiao-chow Bay. The text of the Sino-German Treaty of 1898 is given in George Gleason's 'What shall I think of Japan ? Appendix to Chap. IV). In 1914, the Chinese were willing to join the Allies and undertake, with Allied help, the reconquest of Kiao-chow ; but this did not suit the Japanese, who kept China neutral (till 1917), and themselves presented an ultimatum to Germany, demanding the cession of all that the Germans possessed in Kiao-chow 'with a view of eventual restoration of the same to China'. In 1915, after the Japanese had succeeded, Notes were interchanged between China and Japan, stipulating that 'when, after the termination of the present war, the leased territory of Kiao-chow Bay is completely left to the free disposal of Japan, the Japanese Government will restore the said leased territory to China' under certain conditions. In 1917, secret agreements were concluded by Japan with France and England, whereby those Powers undertook to support Japan's claims in Shantung at the Peace Conference. By the Versailles Treaty, 'Germany renounces in favour of Japan all her rights, title and privileges' acquired by the treaty of 1898. This might be taken as an epitome of the Versailles Treaty : whatever iniquity Germany had committed in the past is henceforth to be committed by the Allies.
Fortunately, America is not a signatory of the Versailles Treaty, and is free to raise the Shantung question at Washington. The Japanese have lately been making efforts to secure a direct settlement with China, so as to prevent the raising of the question at Washington ; but the Chinese, very wisely, have rejected the Japanese proposals as containing merely illusory concessions, and have firmly demanded the unconditional retrocession of all the rights acquired by Germany in 1898, as well as those extensions subsequently acquired by Japan. In this America will no doubt support them, and I earnestly hope that we shall not support Japan.

Letter from Bertrand Russell to Gilbert Seldes, editor of The Dial. In : vol. 71, no 6 (Dec. 1921).
Your letter of October 6 reached me in Peking, and before I had time to answer it I began to die. I have now finished with this occupation, although the Japanese journalists first announced my death and then tried to make the announcement true by mobbing me as I passed through Japan when I was convalescent.

Russell, Bertrand. Is Chinese independence possible ? In : The Manchester Guardian ; 2. Dez. (1921).
It is common form for every Power to profess a desire for the integrity and independence of China. To preserve these is one of the purposes of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, and as regards this purpose the Alliance has succeeded admirably, having enabled Japan to absorb Manchuria and Shantung and establish a virtual protectorate over North China as a result of the twenty-one demands presented by Japan to China in 1915. (For the text of these demands, in their original and revised forms, see George Gleason, 'What shall I think of Japan' p. 80ff.) The uninitiated require a dictionary in reading diplomatic documents. When A and B guarantee the independence and integrity of C, that means that they have agreed how C is to be partitioned. For example, England and France made a treaty guaranteeing the independence and integrity of Morocco, with secret articles specifying the parts of Morocco which were to belong to France and Spain respectively. Ignorant people regarded the published articles as deceitful when the secret articles became known ; but those who understand the language of diplomacy could have inferred the secret articles from those which were published.
Accordingly the Chinese were justly alarmed when they learned that the Preamble of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance mentions 'the independence and integrity of the Chinese Empire and the principle of equal opportunities for the commerce and industry of all nations in China' as one of the objects which the Alliance had in view. One of the most obviously legitimate of China's demands at Washington is that no treaties mentioning China shall be concluded without Chinese participation. We should certainly be surprised if we found that France and Italy had agreed to preserve the independence and integrity of Great Britain, especially if we had reason to think that France was going to preserve them in England and Italy in Scotland. Such agreements are an infringement of sovereignty, and are never concluded except as a prelude to interference.
I have considered the integrity of China in connection with Manchuria and Shantung ; I wish now to consider its independence. Apart from the military influence of Japan, all the powers except America have acquired rights which gravely limit the autonomy of China, and it is not easy to see how these rights are to be abrogated.
We may take as typical the question of the Chinese Customs. On this subject there is in 'The Times' of November 26 a leading article which is amazingly misleading, the writer of which (for the sake of his moral character) I presume to be profoundly ignorant. The facts are as follows : By the treaty of 1842, we stipulated with the Chinese that they were to impose a uniform duty of five per cent on all imports. By the treaty of 1858, it was agreed that this duty should be reckoned on a schedule of prices to be revised every ten years. It was, however, only revised twice, in 1901 and 1918, and on the latter occasion current prices were rejected as being inflated by the war, and the average prices of 1913-1916 were taken as the basis of the new schedule. In virtue of commercial treaties involving most-favoured-clauses, no alteration in tariff or schedule is possible without the unanimous consent of thirteen foreign Powers. Meanwhile the Customs receipts, while remaining essential for China's revenue, have become the security for the Boxer indemnity and for many loans. China is allowed by treaty to levy an export duty of not more than five per cent, and is compelled to do so, in spite of the bad effect on Chinese trade, because otherwise it would be impossible to raise sufficient revenue. It is obvious that this system constitutes at once a grave interference with Chinese independence and a serious drawback to Chinese industry, because all imports are charged at the same rate, whether they are raw materials or finished articles, necessaries or luxuries.
Quite distinct from this system, though also regulated by treaty, is the administration of the Customs. Ever since 1842, the collection of the duties has been under the control of foreigners. The system now in force for many years is that there is an Inspector-General, appointed by the Chinese Government, but bound by treaty to be British so long as the British Empire has a greater share of Chinese trade than any other Power. The Inspector-General has the appointment of his subordinates, and gives the higher posts to foreigners. In 1918 (the latest year for which I have figures) there were in the Customs administration 2'000 foreigners and 5'000 Chinese. The foreigners, from the inspector-General downwards, are responsible to China, not to their own governments. Sir Robert Hart, for many years Inspector-General, won universal admiration, and the Chinese themselves are quite content with the system for the present, since it affords a training-ground for more honest and efficient officials than those produced by traditional Chinese methods. Mr. Sih-Gung Cheng, M.A., B.Sc., in his book on 'Modern China' (an admirable work, published by the Clarendon Press), says :
'The foreign members of the staff have served China loyally, and have never shown any prejudice in favour of their own countries. They have maintained the standard of efficiency and vigilance set up by Sir Robert Hart, and have won the admiration of foreigners and the Chinese alike… So long as the loans and indemnities mortgaged on Customs receipts are not redeemed by China, it will be difficult to get the foreign Powers, who are distrustful of the Chinese on monetary matters, to consent to a restoration of the Customs Administration to the Chinese themselves. (Pp. 206-6).'
Reforming and patriotic Chinese desire fiscal autonomy for their country as regards the tariff, but are in no hurry to see a change as regards the administration of the Customs. Mr. Wellington Koo, at Washington, has issued a statement setting forth this point of view. 'The Times', in the leader mentioned above, assumes that it is the administration that he wishes to see in Chinese hands, and insinuates that the motive for this desire is the hope of corrupt pickings out of dishonest dealings with traders. The last two sentences deserve to be quoted :
'That the Mandarins would like to have the handling of the large sums receivable by the Customs is undoubted ; that the people would care to see it in their hands is very doubtful indeed. The eloquence of the Chinese delegates may delude the uninformed ; it can only serve to remind those who know Asiatics that the more an Oriental diplomatist is Westernized the less confidence does he command in the East.'
Was ever such an amazing insult of the Minister of a friendly Power ? Mr. Koo speaks throughout of the tariff, not of the administration. I do not know how long the writer of this tactful and polite article has spent in China, or how intimately he is acquainted with modern-minded reforming Chinese. Probably he only knows China through the reports of business men whom he has met in his club. I can assure him that 'those who know Asiatics', at any rate those who know them in China, do not take the view which he attributes to them. My own experience of the Chinese who have had a modern education was that they are as upright, as intelligent, as delicately considerate, and as free from national prejudice, as any set of men it has ever been my good fortune to meet. They have to contend against a mass of bad tradition in their own country, and they are intensely grateful for Western help in this struggle. But those who pretend that they are not to be trusted, and are only seeking to deceive the guileless Westerners, must be either very ignorant or very depraved. One is often tempted to think that Europeans wish China to remain weak and corrupt, in order that they may obtain such pickings as 'The Times' supposes Mr. Wellington Koo to hanker after. America has adopted a more enlightened policy, and there are signs that our Government intends to follow America's lead. Even Lord Northcliffe, since he visited Peking, has become a champion of China. But he has apparently not yet succeeded in impressing his new knowledge upon his organs at home.
I have no space to deal with various other issues, analogous to the tariff, involving China's legitimate claims to independence. In all these issues, men with financial motives which they dare not avow will mislead journalists and public opinion at home, if they can. It is therefore necessary to be very wary, and above all the remember that the Chinese are not an inferior race, but a great nation with a civilization at least as good as our own. Their only serious inferiority is in scientific homicide.

Russell, Bertrand. Sketches of modern China. In : The Nation and the Athenaeum ; vol. 30, 3, 10, 17. Dez (1921).
I. The East and the eclipse.
China is traditionally a land of leisure, but the visiting foreigner must not hope for much personal experience of this side of Chinese life. The busiest thirty hours I ever spent in my life were spent in Chang-sha, a city which is reached by travelling up the Yangtze for three or four days from Shanghai to Hankow, and then going south for another day across a vast lake. (In spite of its remoteness it is a Treaty Port.) When I arrived in Chang-sha, there was an educational Congress in session, at which all kinds of people lectured on all kinds of subjects. During my thirty hours, I gave four lectures and two after-dinner speeches, and attended a great reception at the American hospital. My lectures, which were on Russia, displeased the student by being somewhat critical of the Bolsheviks, whom almost all Chinese students passionately admire. I spent the night (in a Chinese hotel), as Saint Paul spent his time in Ephesus, fighting with wild beasts. So on the whole my impression of Chang-sha was lacking in Oriental calm.
The proceedings ended with a great feast given by the Tuchun, the military governor of the Province of Hunan. Most Tuchuns are wicked ; indeed they are the chief internal source of trouble in China. They intercept the provincial revenue and spend it on raising private armies ; they indulge in war, one against another ; and they practice depredations in the style of Verres. A British missionary for many years resident at Chang-sha assured me that the predecessor ou our host had, in two years, amassed a fortune of thirty million dollars, partly by downright robbery and partly by debasing the currency in his province. At the end of that time he had fled from popular vengeance, with his plunder, to Japan, where, I gathered, he is living happily ever afterwards. An Englishman not accustomed to China might expect to find, in consequence of this worthy's activities, such scenes of desolation as are now to be seen in Eastern Europe, but he would be agreeably disappointed. Chinese scoundrels have sill much to learn from the West as regards efficiency in evil, and it was clear that the absconding Tuchun had done far less harm than is done by the 'honest' governments of the Great Powers. The Chinese government does some harm to its own people, but none to anybody else ; from an international point of view, it is the best government in the world, because it is the most inefficient.
However, the Tuchun who was our host was an exception to the general rule, being perfectly virtuous and a great friend of education. (He fell a few weeks after my visit.) The guests were received in one vast hall, and banqueted in another. The food was European ; there was an endless succession of courses and an infinite variety of wines. Our host, through an interpreter, apologized to me for the frugal fare he was offering in his humble abode, but said he thought we would rather have a glimpse of every-day Chinese life than be treated to a display of pomp and splendor. I tried to remember quickly all I had read of Chinese etiquette, and mumbled something about my pigship being honoured that His Magnificence should deign to notice me ; but I fear I was not very adequate.
If the Tuchun displayed something of traditional Chinese manners, the after-dinner speeches differed from those of Europe in the opposite direction, by being free from make-believe and humour, very serious and very businesslike. Professor Dewey spoke of Chinese education and of the lines along which it should progress ; Mrs. Dewey informed the dignitaries of Chang-sha that in some provinces co-education had been adopted, and that Hunan ought to do likewise. To this the Tuchun made a statesmanlike reply, promising that the matter should receive his best consideration, and that action should be taken when the time was ripe. Various Chinese educationists, whose speeches were interpreted into English by Chinese interpreters, spoke of their aims and their efforts, and of what they hoped from their European and American guests. Reverence for sages is traditional in China, and many modern Chinese transfer this attitude to the educationists who come from foreign countries. Their expectations are so far beyond one's powers as to be often embarrassing ; it is very difficult to explain that one is not a sage without feeling that one is rather a fool.
The educationists and the students in China are extraordinarily keen, and there is no doubt that the movement for modern education represents the most solid advance that is being made. Chinese who have been at foreign universities do not become unbalanced, or unable to see what is good in China (except in art). Their native civilization is sufficiently strong and solid to enable them to assimilate what the West has to teach without becoming simply Europeans ; and, strange to say, they like our best better than our worst. They are, as a rule, less learned than Japanese professors, but more genuinely cultivated, more open-minded, more capable of a scientifically skeptical outlook. Nationalism and religion, the two great enemies of honest thought in the West, are absent from the educated classes in China ; respect for Confucius is not excessive among those who have assimilated Western culture. I was never conscious in China, as one almost always is in Japan, of a barrier to mutual comprehension. The Oriental is said to be inscrutable and remote, but this is certainly not true in China. I found the Chinese just as easy to talk to as the English, and just as easy (or as difficult) to understand psychologically.
But Young China has to contend against a terrible dead-weight of ignorance and superstition in the mass of the people. When I left the banquet to go on board the boat on which I was leaving Chang-sha, it happened that en eclipse of the moon was in progress. As in the earliest annals of Chinese history, the streets were full of people beating gongs to frighten away the Heavenly Dog who was supposed to be trying to eat up the moon ; little bonfires were being lit everywhere to rekindle the moon's light by sympathetic magic. The missionary whom I mentioned earlier told me that often, as he walked about, he had heard passers-by express astonishment that he could bend the knee, because he was a 'foreign devil', and devils have to keep their knees always straight. They also can only travel in straight lines, and therefore every Chinese house has the front door opening onto a blank wall, with the courtyard round the corner. Even within the courtyard, a screen provides other corners, so that at worst the evil spirits cannot get beyond the servants' quarters. Great care has to be taken in putting up telegraph wires to prevent them from pointing straight at any man's house, because if they did they would help devils to get at him. There are innumerable superstitions of this kind, some merely picturesque, others very inconvenient. Educated people do not believe them, but they have to be respected in any public undertaking. Until recently, no house could be built of more than one story, for fear of disturbing the spirits of the wind and the air.
The only cure for these superstitions is universal education, and for that, at present, there are not enough funds or enough modern teachers. But the love of education and respect for it are so great that one may hope to see it rapidly extended, provided political troubles can be sufficiently settled for the money to be forthcoming. I hope that, when education becomes more widespread, it will be in the hands of the Chinese themselves, not in those of missionaries, clerical or lay, who want to spread our civilization as the finest thing on earth. China has shortcomings, which to us are very obvious, but it also has merits in which we are deficient. What is to be hoped is not that China should become like ourselves, reproducing our Napoleons and Bismarcks and Eminent Victorians, but that a new civilization should be developed, combining our knowledge with Chinese culture. The Chinese are capable o this, if they are encouraged but not coerced. The methods of Europe and Japan would force them in time to become like Japan, militaristic, imperialist and brutal ; the methods of America would persuade them to become like America. But if their development can be left free, I think they can give the world a new civilization, to carry on the arts and sciences after Europe has perished in a sea of blood.

II. Chinese ethics.
The Chinese are more fond of laughter than any other nation with which I am acquainted. Every little incident amuses them, and their talk is almost always humorous. They have neither the grim determination to succeed which characterizes the Anglo-Saxon, nor the tragic self-importance of the Slav ; Samuel Smiles and Dostoevsky, the typical prophets of these two races, are both equally remote from the Chinese spirit. A Slav of Teuton believes instinctively that he alone is truly real, and that the apparently external world is merely a product of his imagination ; hence the vogue of idealistic philosophies. It follows that one's own death is a tremendous event, since it makes the universe collapse ; nothing short of personal immortality can avert this awful cataclysm. To the Anglo-Saxon, it is his own purposes rather than his own imaginings that are sacred, because he cares more for action than for thought ; but to him, as to the Slav, the ego is all-important, because the immutable principles of morality demand the victory of his volitions. And so he snatches a moral victory out of the very jaws of death by alliance with a Heavenly Will.
These solemnities are not for the Chinese. Their instinctive outlook is social rather than individual ; the family takes the place which for us is taken by the single personality. To us, self-development or self-realization is not a palpably absurd basis for ethics ; to the Chinaman, the development of the family is not a palpably absurd basis. Accordingly, when a Chinaman finds that he is dying, he does not take the event tragically, as we do ; he merely follows the rites. He assembles his sorrowing family (their sorrow is part of the rites) ; he makes an appropriate farewell speech to them ; he sees to it that his coffin is duly prepared, and that his funeral will be worthy of so important a family. When these duties are accomplished, his dead is an occurrence to which he resigns himself without any particular interest or emotion.
This absence of self-feeling produces and absence of pomposity ; Meredith's Egoist would be impossible in China. The Chinese, of course, are selfish, like other people, but their selfishness is instinctive, as in children and animals, not clothed in fine phrases as ours is. I doubt whether psycho-analysis would find much material among them. There is in Chinese no word for 'persecution' ; I forgot to ask whether there was any word for 'prig', but I doubt it. Barring Confucius himself, I cannot think of any Chinaman, either in history of among my acquaintance who could be described as a prig. The result of all this is a liberation of the impulses to play and enjoyment which makes Chinese life unbelievably restful and delightful after the solemn cruelties of the West.
It would, however, be misleading to suggest that Chinese conventional morality is less absurd, or demands less self-sacrifice, than that of Christian countries. While I was in Peking an old woman of no particular importance died, and her daughter died of grief immediately afterwards. (I heard of the case from the European doctor who was attending them, and who assured me that no ordinary cause of death could be found in the daughter.) To die of grief on the death of a parent is a supreme victory of filial piety, conferring great lustre upon the individual and the family. It is customary to put up memorial arches, nominally at the public expense, in some public place, to hand down to posterity the knowledge of such signal virtue. So far, so good ; but the sequel is not so pleasant. In the case in question, public opinion demanded that the family should provide a specially magnificent funeral for the mother and daughter, and in order to defray the expenses, the sons, who were moderately well-to-do, had to sell all they possessed and become rickshaw coolies. This is one concrete example of the harm done by making the family the basis of ethics.
The family is the source of a great deal of the corruption that vitiates Chinese public life. When a man is appointed to a post, filial piety demands that he should use his position to enrich his relations. As his legitimate salary does not admit of much being done in this way, he is compelled to eke it out by methods which we should consider dishonest ; if he does not, he is condemned by public opinion as an unnatural son or brother. Many returned students who begin with Western ideals find themselves caught in this net and unable to escape from its meshes.
The subjection of women is, of course, essential to a strong family system, and is carried very far by Chinese conventional morality, though not so far as in Japan. Old-fashioned Chinese women are not allowed to see any men except their husbands' relations, though they may go out (with a female attendant) for shopping or visiting other women. When a man marries, he takes his wife to live in his father's house, and she becomes, usually, the slave of her mother-in-law, who believes any slanders brought by the servants, and uses them to keep her daughter-in-law in subjection. The wife is not considered to have any ground of complaint if her husband takes a concubine, and she is censured if she marries again after his death. Betrothals are arranged by the parents of the young people, who do not meet until the wedding ceremony. Betrothals are often entered into in infancy, and are more binding even than marriage. There are recognized grounds for divorce, but there is no recognized way of escaping from a betrothal.
All this is, of course, very bad, and Young China reacts against it vigorously. I became acquainted with various married couples living in houses of their own, where the wife enjoyed all the liberties that an English wife would have. Many girls nowadays are well educated on Western lines in normal schools and afterwards in colleges or universities. They are admitted to Peking Government University, where quite a number attended my lectures. These girls, naturally, are not willing to enter upon the old-fashioned kind of marriage, and the men students whom I came across were quite at one with them on this point.
When I arrived in Peking, I said that I wished to have a seminar for the better students. Accordingly they organized what they called a 'Society for studying Russell's philosophy', which met one a week under the presidency of an Oxford philosopher, Professor Fu, who usually acted as interpreter. We met in the 'Returned Students' Club', the pupils seated at a long table and the professors at a smaller table with tea and cakes. The pupils asked questions and discussed our answers with great keenness and perfect candour. After spending some time on problems of pure philosophy, we began to consider social questions, which interested them far more. We had lively debates on communism and Bolshevism, most of the students taking the view that China could and ought to become communist tomorrow. But the liveliest evening of all was devoted to the family system. Afterwards I discovered that these youths, to whom a new intellectual and moral world was just opening, were most of them already married or betrothed, without their participation, to girls whom they did not know and who were presumably full of traditional prejudices. This presented an acute moral problem, upon which it was difficult for an outsider to offer an opinion.
It is clear that worship of the family in China is an evil comparable in magnitude to worship of the State or the nation among ourselves, though the nature of its bad effects is quite different. Most Europeans in China are ultra-conservative as regards Chinese institutions, and assert that without the family ethic all Chinese morality would crumble. I believe this to be a profound mistake. All progressive Chinese take the opposite view, and I am firmly convinced that they are right. All that is worst in Old China is connected with the family system. In old days, some degree of public duty was deduced from the system by the fiction that filial piety demanded service of the Emperor. But since the establishment of the Republic this fiction no longer serves, and a new morality is needed to inculcate public spirit and honesty in government. Young China fully understands this need, and will, given time, provide the new teaching that is required. But whether the Powers will allow enough time is very doubtful. Chinese problems are not capable of being satisfactorily settled by a mechanical imposition of order and what we consider good government. Adjustment to new ideas demands a period of chaos, and it is not for the ultimate good of China to shorten this period artificially. But I doubt whether this view will commend itself to the foreigners who think they know how to save China.

III. Chinese amusements.
One of the most obvious characteristics of the Chinese is their love of fireworks. On arriving at a Chinese temple, the worshipper is given a set of Chinese crackers to explode on the temple steps, so as to put him in a good humour. When I invited the most intellectual of my students to an evening party, they sent several days ahead extraordinarily elaborate 'feux d'artifice' to be let off in my courtyard. On the night of the Chinese New Year (which is different from ours) it is impossible to sleep a wink, because every household north, south, east, and west, spends the whole night sending off rockets and golden rain and very imaginable noisy display. I did not find any Chinaman, however grave, who failed to enjoy these occasions.
Chinese New Year is like our Christmas, or rather, what our Christmas would be if no one in the country were over ten years old, except the shopkeepers and confectioners. Everybody buys toys of one sort or another : paper windmills which go round and round in the wind as they are held in the hands of fat old gentlemen in rickshas ; rattles more rattling than any European baby enjoys ; gaudy paper pictures of all kinds ; Chinese lanterns with horsemen on the outside who begin to gallop round as soon as the lantern is lit. All these things are sold in the courtyards of temples, which take the place of Hampstead Heath on a Bank Holiday. I went on their New Year's Day to the 'Temple of the Eighteen Hells', where the posthumous tortures of eighteen kinds of sinners are depicted in the spirit of 'Ruthless Rhymes'. A vast crowd was going round, shouting with laughter at the various horrors, none of which were portrayed in any but a comic spirit. In the largest, gayest and most crowded temple, in the inmost court, I found the Salvation Army singing hymns to a brass band and preaching through an interpreter, assuring the Bank Holiday crowd that its amusements were idolatrous and must infallibly bring eternal damnation. The crowd enjoyed this even more than the eighteen native hells, laughed more vociferously, and applauded with vast good humour. I do not think it occurred to any of them that the Salvationists were in earnest, for if it had, good manners (never deficient in any class in China) would have demanded a different reception. I alone was left somewhat pensive, reflecting upon the benefits of the civilization we are bringing to the poor benighted heathen.
The educated classes, though they do not lose the capacity for childish pleasures, have also others of a more refined kind ; in fact the art of exquisite enjoyment has probably been carried to greater perfection than anywhere else in the world. In all the most beautiful places are Buddhist monasteries, to which scholars go when they desire a studious retreat. At any specially admirable point of view, one finds a pavilion, put up, not by a tourist agency, but by some Emperor of poet with a perfect appreciation of what the landscape needs. No sooner has one sat down in this astonishing summer-house than some kind person, like a genie in 'The Arabian Nights', brings tea in little cups – not the gross liquid that we call tea, but an amber-coloured nectar with an intoxicating fragrance, half aromatic, half like the meadows in June, combining the freshness of spring with the beauty of summer sunshine robbed of its dust and heat. One's Chinese hosts begin immediately to discuss some ancient philosophic theme : whether progress is rectilinear or cyclic; whether the perfect sage must be always self-sacrificing, or may on occasion consider his own interest; whether it is better to meditate on death or to ignore it. These subjects will he argued with a wealth of classical quotation and anecdotes of ancient philosophers. But presently some one will mention Japanese aggression in Shantung, or missionary education, or labour conditions in the cotton mills on the Yangtze. At once the delicate spell is broken, and one realizes that, willingly or unwillingly, one is part of the force that must inevitably destroy this beauty and peace inherited from a happier age.
The Chinese have a great aptitude for games of skill. They play a kind of chess which is far more complicated than ours, and needs a board of 256 squares. Those who subsequently learn our variety of the game find it exceedingly simple, and can soon beat quite good European players. They are also much addicted to various easier games, which they play for money. Gambling has always been a national vice, and is their principal vice now that the smoking of opium has been nearly stamped out except where Japanese pedlars can smuggle it in.
One of the less agreeable sides of Peking life is the enormous number of beggars. Even in the severest winter frosts, they are dressed in rags which let die air through; sometimes they have wounds or sores at which they point like the Saints in medieval pictures. As one goes through the streets in a ricksha, beggars run after one, calling out in a piteous voice: 'Da lao yeh!' which means 'Great old sire'. If one is on foot, they sometimes perform the kow-tow to one in the middle of the street. All this is embar¬rassing and painful, and at first one reacts with a C.O.S. emotion. But gradually one discovers that they have their beats and their office hours ; that well-to-do Chinese like giving to them, and that many of them are fat. When they are not at work, they congregate together under a sunny wall and smoke cigarettes. At these times they take a holiday from the pretence of misery, and talk and laugh with the utmost gaiety. I do not think any European tramp could endure the hardships they put up with, and live ; but there is no doubt that they preserve to the full that capacity for enjoy¬ing every pleasant moment which is the gift of the gods to the Chinese nation.
Educated Chinese derive considerable pleasure from gently pulling the foreigner's leg—but with such delicacy that no one could possibly be annoyed. I was taken one day by two Chinese friends to see a famous old pagoda, which was in a slightly ruinous condition. I went up the winding stairs to the top, and thought they were following; but when I emerged I saw them below me engaged in earnest conversation. On reaching the bottom again, I asked why they had not come up. Their reply was characteristic : 'We debated for a long time, with many weighty arguments pro and con, whether we should follow you or not. But at last we decided that if the pagoda should crumble while you were on it, it would be as well that there should be some one to bear witness as to how the philosopher died, so we stayed below.' The fact was that the weather was warm and one of them was fat.
The modernized Chinese, unfortunately, have mostly lost the power to appreciate native art; when I praised Chinese pictures, they invariably retorted that the perspective is wrong. I was assured by Europeans that good pictures in the old style are still being produced, but I saw none of them myself ; I was shown the imitations of our painting produced in the up-to-date art schools, but it was a devastating and horrible experience. The older Chinese still appreciate the old pictures, many of which are inconceivably beautiful. There is in China a much closer connection than in Europe between painting and poetry, perhaps because the same instru¬ment, the brush, is used for both. The Chinese value a good piece of calligraphy just as much as a good picture; often the painter will write a poem or sentiment on the margin of his picture, and the beauty of the writing will be as much admired as that of the painting. Pictures are not hung on walls, as with us, but kept rolled up, and treated like books, to be read one at a time. Some of them are so long that they cannot be seen all at once ; they represent, perhaps, all the scenery that you might see suc¬cessively during a long day's walk in the mountains. At the beginning of the picture you see two figures starting up a footpath from the plain, probably with a willow-pattern bridge in the foreground; presently you find the same figures ascending through strange gorges and forests, which are realistic though no one unacquainted with China would think so ; just as your legs begin to ache in sympathy, the friends arrive at some exquisite temple and enjoy tea with philosophic converse in a pavilion. From there the mountains rise vaster and more inaccessible, into dim regions where their shapes seem like misty epiphanies of something divine, and the spectator cannot tell where solid ground has passed into the cloud-shapes of mystical imagination. This is only one style of picture; there are many others, just as admirable. For my part, I derive far more pleasure from them than from even the best of European pictures; but in this I am willing to suppose that my taste is bad. I wish I could believe that some¬thing of the Chinese capacity for creating beauty could survive, but at the devastating approach of the white man beauty flies like a shy ghost. For us, beauty belongs to museums or to the final self-glorification of blatant millionaires ; we cannot regard it as a thing for every day, or as equal in importance to health or cleanliness or money. Chinese dealers, with whom avarice is a passion, will sacrifice large sums sooner than sell a beautiful thing to a person of no taste. But neither they nor anyone else can keep alive the ancient loveliness of China, or the instinctive happiness which makes China a paradise after the fierce weariness of our distracted and trivial civilization.

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.

Letter from Xu Zhimo to Bertrand Russell. 6. Dez.1921. [Birth of Kate Russell].
Do let me congratulate Mrs. Russell and yourself most heartily upon the advent of your beautiful baby as I learnt from Miss Power whom I met the other day in Cambridge. We should expect dyed eggs and stewed noodles as is the custom with us in China on this occasion. We expect Mrs. Russell shall be able to come with you on the 10th.