March 5, 1919

I strayed from my accustomed beat today and lunched with Baron Makino at the Hotel Bristol where the Japanese delegation, of which he is the leading member (for Prince Saionji never appears), occupies very sumptuous quarters. My excuse for trespassing is that at long last we at the Conference are hearing the East a-calling and also that I came to know the Baron quite intimately when I was secretary at our legation in Tokyo, 1895-1896. Indeed it was Makino who at that time proposed me as an associate member of the American Friendly Society, composed of students who had studied at our colleges and retained kindly memories of our people, despite harassing immigration and school legislation.

In later years Makino became one of the artificers of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance as well as Lord High Treasurer of the Imperial Household. Which reminds me of one of the violent speeches he made at a meeting of the society in which he told a story of “good old Sir Harry Parkes,” who in the last century was the idol of the “old China hands” because he preached and practiced the doctrine that the Eastern peoples had no rights that the Westerling was bound to respect.

“A ship arrived at Yokohama,” so ran Makino’s story, “with cholera on board and our medical men refused practique. But Sir Harry went to the Gaimasho (Foreign Office) breathing fire and sword, and under threat of war our government yielded; the passengers landed, also the cholera; as a result one hundred and ninety thousand Japanese died and the terrible disease ravaged our land for two years.”

Of course I do not know that this crime of Sir “Harry’s,” beloved of all the taipans of the Treaty ports, can be authenticated, but I do know that Makino believed it and that it had an unfavorable effect upon the relations between London and Tokyo for years. I tell the story to illustrate the truth of the maxim of that wise old diplomat who said, “Never forget that your enemy of today may be your ally of tomorrow.” And so Makino, with hot passion spent, became an advocate of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance which in recent years has so mightily shaped the history of the Far East.